Midnight Terror For Ananthi

By Dharisha Bastians -September 21, 2013 |

Dharisha Bastians

Historic elections in the Northern Province took a vicious turn 24 hours after campaigning ended, when the Jaffna home of the Tamil National Alliance candidate Ananthi Sasitharan was besieged and her supporters and a local election monitor assaulted early last morning.

Sasithran had noticed uniformed personnel outside her home out of her window and made several phone calls in quick succession. The first was to Police Emergency, 119 who she says told her they do not respond to such political calls. She then informed TNA MPs Marvai Senathirajah and Saravana Bhavan and also immediately informed the election monitors. The assailants had been looking for her, says Sasitharan and shouted threats from outside the house. “They slashed the tyres of my vehicle and then they moved out,” she recalls, back at her residence by mid morning yesterday.

Twin attacks on Sasitharan’s Chullipuram residence occurred at least 15 minutes apart, with the lapse between the two raids giving her supporters time to remove the candidate and her three daughters to safety. At least eight of Ananthi’s supporters were injured in the attacks. In an ironic twist, a PAFFREL polls monitor was also caught in the midnight violence that all the victims claim were perpetrated by men in military uniform men carrying assault weapons and heavy poles.

Kanakaratnam Sugash, lawyer for the Peoples’ Alliance for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), a local polls monitoring group, says he hopped on his motorbike shortly after midnight and rushed to Chullipuram, off Vaddukoddai to check on a complaint of violence he had received.  The complaint said 50 military personnel had surrounded a TNA candidate’s home. As he approached her residence, Sugash claims he noticed four Indian manufactured Mahendra jeeps speeding away from the house. Once inside the residence, the election monitor spoke with supporters of the candidate and asked for particulars. But what had started off as a routine monitoring job ended in nightmarish scenes when a second group of uniformed assailants surrounded the candidate’s home 15 minutes after the PAFFREL monitor had arrived.

Fifteen to 20 uniformed personnel entered the house, according to the PAFFREL monitor. Moments later, they were attacking Sasitharan’s supporters, Sugash says. “I knew there would be trouble the moment they surrounded the house, but the boys inside begged me not to leave them, they thought I would be some kind of protection against greater violence,” he tells Daily FT, seated at the Accident Ward of the Jaffna Teaching Hospital yesterday. He had not been spared either.Read More