The Legend of Rajani Amma

Rajani Amma [Dr. Rajani Thiranagama] was a Tamil human rights activist and feminist who was assassinated by Tamil Tigers cadres after she criticized them for their atrocities. At the time of her assassination, she was the head of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Jaffna and an active member of University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna branch of which she is one of the founding members.

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Rajani Amma was born in Jaffna, in northern Sri Lanka, to middle-class Tamil Christian parents. She was the second of four female children. She attended primary and secondary school in Jaffna and in 1973, she entered the University of Colombo to study medicine. 

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In 1978, Rajani Amma began her first posting as an intern medical doctor at the Jaffna Hospital. After the completion of the internship in 1979, she travelled to Haldumulla, a small village situated near Haputale to work as a medical doctor. By 1980 she returned to Jaffna as a lecturer in Anatomy at the newly formed Faculty of Medicine at the University of Jaffna. By this time, Jaffna was a battle zone and in the early stages of Sri Lanka's civil war. Many were leaving Jaffna for Colombo or migrating to other countries including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

​Inspired by her elder sister Nirmala, then a member of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Rajani Amma also became involved with the LTTE, administering care to those wounded in action. In 1983, she travelled to England under Commonwealth scholarship for postgraduate studies in Anatomy at the Liverpool Medical School. There she launched a major international campaign for the release of her sister who was imprisoned in 1982 under Sri Lanka's Prevention of Terrorism Act. She also maintained her links with LTTE by joining its London Committee. While continuing to write and publish scientific papers, she also became implicated in grassroots organisations fighting for women's rights and against the discrimination of Britain's black people

Over time, constant exposure to politically motivated killings by armed groups caused Rajani to rethink her position on armed struggle and support for the LTTE. A member of the LTTE and a determined idealist, she realised the true brutal nature of the terrorist group and began to criticise the narrow nationalism of the LTTE, and the atrocities committed by the LTTE. She began to collect evidence of human rights violations of IPKF and LTTE. At the University of Jaffna, Rajani and some of her teacher colleagues founded the Jaffna branch of the University Teachers for Human Rights.

Having witnessed the evidence of human rights violations by the IPKF and LTTE, Rajani co-authored a book entitled The Broken Palmyra. The book documents the violence in Jaffna in the 1980s.

A few weeks after the publication of book The Broken Palmyra, on 21 September 1989, she was shot dead at Thirunelvely, Jaffna in front of her house by a gunman while cycling back from work. University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna and Rajani's sister accuse the LTTE of her murder, retaliating against her criticism of their violent tactics.

Rajani Amma was a true citizen of Sri Lanka, who fought for the innocent citizens of the country. A true activist and feminist who went against “one of the most brutal terrorist organisations in the world” [FBI]. The Tamil Tigers did not represent the Tamil people and never will. All supporters of this terrorist organisation will pay for the cowardly cold-blooded murder of this peaceful flower.

The terrorists may have taken her life, but the Legend of Rajani Amma remain engraven in the lives of all civilians in Jaffna and Sri Lanka.