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Sri Lankan police threaten Annai Poopathy's family against commemoration

Sri Lankan police have threatened the family of Annai Poopathi, warning that if they commemorated her death anniversary near her grave, they would be imprisoned under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). 

Annai Poopathy's elder daughter Ms Lokeshwaran Santhi, while speaking to the press in Batticaloa Press Club, said that her family was instructed by the police not to commemorate her mother in her resting place. 

“We have been paying homage at our mother’s memorial in Navalady for more than the past three years. But today, the Kattankudy Police Inspector forbade us from doing the same and threatened us with punishment if we went ahead,” Santhi said. 

“It is deeply regrettable that we have been denied permission to remember our mother in the place where she is buried,” she lamented.

“This is not a political act. Annai Poopathy is my mother and we are memorialising her,” Santhi said.

“My mother opposed Indian army through an organisation called Mother’s Front. She never took up arms. She only fought to oust Indian troops from this country.”

“We are not remembering her through any political party,” she continued. “We and our family alone are commemorating her. It is saddening that we are being told not to do so in such a situation.”

“As my mother is being commemorated all across the world, it is agonising that we are being denied permission to remember her in her resting place.”

 

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