Relangi Selvarajah (1960 – 12 August 2005) was a popular Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

 broadcaster

Presenter

A presenter, or host , is a person or organization responsible for running an event. A museum or university, for example, may be the presenter or host of an exhibit. Likewise, a master of ceremonies is a person that hosts or presents a show...

 and a one time actress. She was assassinated by unknown assailants on August 12 in Colombo

Colombo

Colombo is the largest city of Sri Lanka. It is located on the west coast of the island and adjacent to Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte, the capital of Sri Lanka. Colombo is often referred to as the capital of the country, since Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte is a satellite city of Colombo...

, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

.

Biography

Relangi was born in Jaffna

Jaffna

Jaffna is the capital city of the Northern Province, Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna district located on a peninsula of the same name. Jaffna is approximately six miles away from Kandarodai which served as a famous emporium in the Jaffna peninsula from classical...

 to minority

Minority group

A minority is a sociological group within a demographic. The demographic could be based on many factors from ethnicity, gender, wealth, power, etc. The term extends to numerous situations, and civilizations within history, despite the misnomer of minorities associated with a numerical statistic...

 Sri Lankan Tamil parents and grew up in Jaffna. She was married to Sinnadurai Selvarajah who was also killed along with her. The couple had a girl who was less than one year old when the parents were killed.

Career in Journalism

In 1987 she joined the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation

Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation

The Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation came into existence on January 5, 1967 when Radio Ceylon became a public corporation. Dudley Senanayake who was the Prime Minister of Ceylon in 1967 ceremonially opened the newly established Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation along with Minister Ranasinghe...

 (SLBC) and was working as a senior announcer since 2000. Later she worked as an announcer and news reader in Srilanka Rupavahini

Rupavahini

Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation , is the national television network of Sri Lanka. Gifted by the people of Japan to the people of Sri Lanka, mainly for the provision of education, information and entertainment....

 Corporation (SLRC). At the time of her death was working as a freelancer in SLRC. She was the announcer Uthaya Darisanam program on every Sunday at 9:00 a.m to 10:30 a.m. She started her career as an announcer in Jaffna Manikkural local broadcasting service from 1979 to 1983. She was named the best actress for her part in the locally made Tamil language

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

 film Theivam thantha Veedu in 1978. Local newspapers also reported that Selvarajah also produced the SLBC program Ithaya Veenai, a program known for criticizing the main rebel group LTTE, and allegedly funded by the opposition Tamil political party, the Eelam People's Democratic Party

Eelam People's Democratic Party

The Eelam People's Democratic Party is a political party and a pro-government paramilitary organization in Sri Lanka. It is led by its founder Douglas Devananda.-Background:...

.

Assassination

Relangi and her husband, a political activist, were killed by unidentified gunmen in Colombo on the same day that Lakshman Kadirgamar

Lakshman Kadirgamar

Sri Lankabhimanya Lakshman Kadirgamar PC was a Sri Lankan diplomat, politician and a lawyer. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka from 1994 to 2001 and again from April 2004 until his assassination in August 2005...

, Sri Lanka's foreign minister, was assassinated. Political leaders blamed the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was a separatist militant organization formerly based in northern Sri Lanka. Founded in May 1976 by Vellupillai Prabhakaran, it waged a violent secessionist and nationalist campaign to create an independent state in the north and east of Sri Lanka for Tamil...

 or LTTE for all three killings, charges the LTTE denied.

The attackers shot Selvarajah, 44, and her husband, Sinnadurai, in the office where they ran a travel agency. Sri Lanka's The Sunday Times

The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka)

The Sunday Times is a popular Sri Lankan Sunday broadsheet initially published by now defunct Times Group until the early 1980s, when it was taken over by Wijeya Newspapers Ltd...

reported that the LTTE had criticized Selvarajah for broadcasting anti-LTTE programs.

Selvarajah's husband was affiliated with the formerly militant and now mainstream group, the People's Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam PLOTE, according to local news reports and sources. PLOTE is critical of the LTTE; the LTTE accuses PLOTE of attacking its members, according to The Associated Press. Sri Lanka's Daily Mirror quoted police as saying that they suspected the couple may have been murdered because of Selvarajah's anti-LTTE programs.

External links

• UTHR(J) Report
• Somali-American Media Association report
• Common Wealth Press Union report
• Free Media Movement Report on her death - via International Freedom of Expression Exchange
  International Freedom of Expression Exchange
  The International Freedom of Expression eXchange , founded in 1992, is a global network of around 90 non-governmental organisations that promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression....