T. Kumar, Rights Activist Who Was Shaped by Time in Prison, Dies at 76

T. Kumar/ LinkedIn/t.kumar

By Adam Nossiter

Jan. 31, 2026

Thambithurai Muthukumarasamy, a human-rights activist who went by T. Kumar and whose advocacy for victims of governmental repression around the world was inspired by his years spent in Sri Lanka’s prisons for his work as a resistance leader, died on Jan. 19. He was 76.

His death was confirmed by Amnesty International, where Mr. Kumar worked for over 20 years, including serving as director for international advocacy and advocacy director for Asia. The cause was complications of sarcoidosis, an inflammatory condition, his sister Krishnal Muthukumarasamy said in an interview. He lived in the Washington, D.C., area but it was unclear where he died.

For years Mr. Kumar spoke out, in congressional testimony, at the United Nations and elsewhere, against China, Vietnam, Afghanistan and other countries whose governments, justice systems and prisons had violated their citizens’ rights.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, he told a congressional committee that the “Taliban’s Shariah courts and religious police” in Afghanistan “impose cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.” He told another committee in 2017 that in Vietnam, “prisoners of conscience were tortured and otherwise ill-treated, and subjected to unfair trials.”

Many people listening to him were unaware that Mr. Kumar spoke about these issues from personal experience.

As a young man, he spent more than five years in various stints in the prisons of his native Sri Lanka — repeatedly arrested, beaten and ferried from jail to jail because he was an outspoken student leader for the persecuted, predominantly Hindu Tamil minority. (Courtesy: The New York Times)