From: 2067bh@gmuvax.gmu.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil
Subject: Rama, Sita and Ravana
Date: 8 Oct 92 13:58:56 GMT
Organization: George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By DEXTER CRUEZ
 Associated Press Writer
   COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) -- Poet Thiagarajah Selvanithy  seemed
to  be foretelling her own future when she wrote: "My heart hangs
on a split thread/ That could snap any time."
   Selvi, as she is known to her friends, is a 28-year-old  Tamil
student.  She wrote the poem last year, before she was taken cap-
tive by the Tamil Tiger guerrillas who control her home  town  of
Jaffna.
   The Tigers are fighting the Sinhalese-dominated government  in
Colombo  for  an independent Tamil homeland in the north and east
of this Indian Ocean island.  The  9-year-long  war  has  claimed
17,000 lives.
   Selvi was a third-year student in dramatic arts at the Univer-
sity  of  Jaffna when she was abducted from her boarding house in
Jaffna city on Aug. 30, 1991.
   Though no reason was given for her kidnapping, she was to have
acted  the next day in a play that could have been interpreted as
criticizing the Tigers.
   In the Jaffna Peninsula, the northern tip of  the  island  off
India's  southern  coast, few dare to openly reproach the Tigers.
Newspapers and journals are subjected to strict censorship.
   The last time Selvi was seen was two months ago, by  a  former
prisoner in Jaffna, her friends said.
   She is one of four  university  students  among  an  estimated
2,000  people being detained by Tigers. Among them reportedly are
50 writers, artists, and playwrights.
   Selvi was the 1992 recipient of the Freedom-to-Write award  by
PEN,  an  international  literary association that has championed
the cause of hundreds of writers  whose  works  have  jeopardized
their safety.
   The prize, shared with Haitian journalist Jean Mario Paul, was
awarded  six  months  ago but the announcement was withheld until
Sept. 2 on the advice of friends who feared what might happen  to
her
   PEN, whose name stands for poets, playwrights, essayists, edi-
tors  and  novelists,  is  a  nonprofit London-based group with a
worldwide elected membership  of  10,000.  It  sponsors  literary
events and works on behalf of imperiled artists.
   Selvi's friends said the writer was sometimes disapproving  of
the  rebels  when  speaking  in private. The friends agreed to be
interviewed if their  names  were  not  disclosed,  for  fear  of
endangering relatives in Jaffna.
   "Her poems were first-person accounts of imaginary  people  in
situations  of conflict," said one friend. "She is part of a gen-
eration of feminists fighting for women's rights since the  early
1980s."
   Her poem, "Rama Turns Ravana," is taken from an ancient  Hindu
legend  about  the abduction of Sita, the wife of the Indian god,
Rama, by the Sri Lankan king Ravana.
   In the poem, the wife discovers she has been kidnapped by  her
own  husband.  She laments: "When I happened to see Rama changing
his mask to Ravana,/ My heart shattered./ Who is going to release
this Sita?'


Saddned by this ?
well then, time for some good news

Yoga joins Sivarasa in hell....
If you forgot about Sivarasa, he is the one eyed jackass who
plotted Rajiv's assasination

....


RTw  09/24 0833  Sri Lankan policeman's suspected killer dies

    COLOMBO, Sept 24, Reuter - A man  suspected  of  murdering  a
senior  Sri  Lankan  policeman  on Wednesday committed suicide by
swallowing a cyanide capsule on Thursday as he was  about  to  be
arrested, police said.
    A motorcycle gunman shot and killed A. Theophilus,  a  senior
superintendent attached to the Fraud Bureau, as he got out of his
car on a busy Colombo street on Wednesday.
    Police, acting on a tipoff,  went  to  a  house  in  suburban
Colombo where Kulasingham alias Yogachandran, 23, was living.
    As they were about to take him  away,  the  man  swallowed  a
cyanide  capsule  hanging round his neck. The suspect had foreign
money, a gun and cartridges by his side, police said. A  motorcy-
cle was also recovered.
    Tamil separatist rebels killed  the  police  superintendent's
son  when Theophilus served in eastern Sri Lanka about five years
ago.
    The rebels, who are fighting for their own state in the north
and  east,  are  known  to wear cyanide capsules and swallow them
rather than face capture.
 REUTER MDS MH SM
Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil