Opposition stage protest over demolition of Mullivaikkal war memorial

Tamil Nadu opposition parties including Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and MDMK staged a protest outside the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commission at Nungambakkam against the removal of a war memorial (commemorating the Mullivaikkal massacre of 2009), at the Jaffna University in Sri Lanka.

Tamil Nadu leaders, cutting across the political spectrum, have strongly condemned the demolition of the memorial.

Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Edappadi K Palaniswami took to Twitter to strongly condemn the demolition and said, "The news that a monument erected at the Jaffna University campus in memory of university students and the general public who were mercilessly killed in the final phase of the war in Mullivaikkal, Sri Lanka, has been demolished overnight is shocking."

The decision to remove the Mullivaikkal War Memorial at the Jaffna University was taken by Vice-Chancellor of Jaffna University Professor Satkunarajah, said University Grants Commission (UGC) Chairman Professor Sampath Amaratunga on Saturday.

The memorial in Jaffna University was built in 2018 in memory of the people and students who died in the Mullivaikkal war in 2009 between the Tamil extremist group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sri Lanka government forces.

The Jaffna area has a majority ethnic Tamil population. The area witnessed a brutal civil war between the LTTE and Sri Lankan forces that continued for several years and led to the loss of lives of thousands of people.