Taraki Sivaram

Taraki Sivaram or Dharmeratnam Sivaram (11 August 1959– 28 April 2005) was a popular Tamil journalist of Sri Lanka. He was kidnapped by four men in a white van on April 28, 2005, in front of the Bambalapitya police station. His body was found the next day in the district of Himbulala, near the Parliament of Sri Lanka. He had been beaten and shot in the head.

Biography

Sivaram, the well-known and controversial political analyst and a senior editor for Tamilnet.com, was born on August 11, 1959 in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka, to a prominent local family with significant land holdings and political connections near the village of . He was educated at St. Michael’s College in Batticaloa, and later at Pembroke and Aquinas College in Colombo. He was accepted into the University of Peradeniya in 1982 but soon dropped out due to tensions associated with the first phases of Sri Lanka civil war in 1983 (see Black July pogrom).

On September 8, 1988 he married Herly Yogaranjini Poopalapillai of Batticaloa. They eventually had three children: Vaishnavi, Vaitheki, and Seralaathan.

Political activity

In 1982 Sivaram joined the Gandhian Movement, then a front organization for the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), one of the many Tamil organizations. After Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict erupted into civil war in 1983, Sivaram, under the alias......
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