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Marking the 29th anniversary of the death of Lt. Col. Thileepan who fasted to death on hunger strike, the Tamil National Alliance held a memorial event in Kilinochchi on Sunday.
The TNA MP S Sritharan took part in the event along side the TNA youth wing leader.
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Thileepan, a former medical student, was the political wing leader of the Jaffna district for the LTTE. On the 15th of September 1987, Thileepan took to a podium around the historic Nallur Kandaswamy temple in Jaffna. Over 100,000 people had gathered to hear Thileepan outline 5 demands to the Indian government:
- the release of all Tamils held under Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA),
- a halt to the state-sponsored Sinhala colonisation of Tamil lands,
- an end to the building of new Sri Lankan military camps in the Tamil areas,
- the withdrawal of the Sri Lankan security forces from Tamil schools, and
- the disarming of Sinhala and Muslim paramilitary militia.
He died after 11 days of fasting on September 26th.