Veteran Sri Lankan Tamil chief Rajavarothiam Sampanthan passes away at 91. File
| Picture Credit score: Particular Association

Veteran Sri Lankan Tamil chief Rajavarothiam Sampanthan, who devoted his political life to pursuing a simply resolution to the island nation’s Tamil query, handed away in Colombo late on Sunday. He was 91.

Mr. Sampanthan, of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK), was a sitting MP from the jap Trincomalee district, and led the Tamil Nationwide Alliance, the principle grouping representing Tamils of Sri Lanka’s war-hit north and east. He was Chief of the Opposition between 2015 and 2018.

A parliamentarian for almost half a century, Mr. Sampanthan was a daring and relentless voice within the Home. For the reason that finish of the civil struggle in 2009, he tirelessly demanded equal rights for Tamils, inside a ‘united, undivided, indivisible’ nation. Educated as a lawyer, he primarily based his arguments for a political resolution on Sri Lanka’s constitutional historical past and the numerous guarantees that the southern Sinhalese institution made previously however did not hold.