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| MP Namal Rajapaksa while he was detainee over alleged corruption case in 2016. |
Tamil Solidarity, a collective of Tamil activists across globe expressed ‘deep outrage’ over MP Namal Rajapaksa is scheduled to speak at prestigious Oxford Union and Cambridge Union end of this month.
Mr Rajapaksa is scheduled to speak at the Oxford Union on February 25 and the Cambridge Union on February 27.
Pointing out that both Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union are two of the most renowned student debating societies in the world, formed to protect the right to freedom of speech, the outfit said Mr Rajapaksa is not a legitimate political figure deserving of such a platform.
“Let us be clear, Namal is now a central figure of the Rajapaksa regime. The two events appear to be a deliberate platforming of a representative of a family synonymous with war crimes, mass repression, corruption, and the brutal persecution of Tamils in Sri Lanka”, the statement said.
He is the son of Mahinda Rajapaksa, the architect of the genocidal onslaught that annihilated tens of thousands of Tamil civilians in 2009 which entrenched a culture of impunity that continues to this day, and institutionalised state terror in the years that followed, it further added.
Excerpts from the full statement:
Alongside Gotabaya Rajapaksa, they are inseparable from enforced disappearances, torture chambers, mass graves and systemic crushing of dissent. In 2022, the Rajapaksa regime was overthrown by the Aragalaya mass protest as a result of their corrupt reign, which saw the country plummet further into economic crisis and bankruptcy. The Rajapaksa clan remain ousted and rejected by the vast majority of the Sri Lankan population, including the Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim populations.
Instead of distancing himself from these crimes and figures who have been firmly ousted by the masses, Namal Rajapaksa has consistently defended and benefitted from this violent regime. He stands accused of serious offences including corruption, money laundering, academic fraud, intimidation, and involvement in grave human rights abuses. Journalists, whistleblowers, political opponents and oppressed communities who challenged the Rajapaksa’s are known to have been abducted, raped, tortured, disappeared, and murdered: a reign of terror that remains largely unpunished even with the new regime under NPP-led Anura Kumara Dissanayake.
Namal is currently the national organiser for the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (‘SLPP’), the political party that restored the Rajapaksa family including Namal, who became the Minister of Youth and Sports to power in 2019, and oversaw further repression, corruption, and economic collapse. Even after the Aragalaya mass protest, criminal investigations into the Rajapaksa family are prevented by impunity whilst Namal rose safely through the corridors of political power.
To grant such a figure a platform within the Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union is not academic engagement, it is political rehabilitation.
Oxford University and Cambridge University are home to Tamil students, many of whom are the children of genocide survivors, refugees, and families who fled state violence. This invitation by the Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union is undoubtedly re-traumatising for its students and communities directly impacted by mass atrocities. Under the guise of ‘free speech’, these events legitimise alleged perpetrators of war crimes and corruption, and turn academic spaces into image-laundering platforms for impunity. There is no neutrality in the face of genocide and war crimes.
We therefore demand the immediate cancellation of both events, a full explanation from the Unions of how such a decision was allowed to proceed, and a commitment that individuals implicated in war crimes and corruption will not be platformed within the Unions.
Should these events proceed, students and the wider community will be forced to mobilise in opposition, with a real risk of lawful citizen intervention including citizens arrest.
War criminals and their political heirs do not belong in our academic spaces. Genocide will not be whitewashed.
Crimes against humanity will not be normalised.
If the Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union proceed with these events, they do so with the knowledge that they have chosen to protect an alleged perpetrator over students, communities and survivors he helped destroy and they alone will bear responsibility for the consequences that follow.
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