Eelanatham – fought till the end and was fallen with Mullivaikal Massacre
Eelanatham People´s Daily was started on 19th February 1990 in Jaffna. Eelanatham has been in the midst of many crises since its inception. It was one of the leading dailies, which wrote about the suffering of the Tamils in Sri Lankan. After the war between the Sri Lankan Army and the LTTE in 1995, Eelanatham moved to Chavakachcheri. Later, Eelanatham was relocated to Kilinochchi and continued its work.
Due to the Satjaya Army operation towards Kilinochchi in 1996, Eelanatham was relocated to the old Murikandi area and then moved again to Karipattamurippu.
Eelanatham was one of the only popular media outlets in the Vanni controlled area from 1996-2002, the period of the opening of the main Kandy Road.
The magazine, which operated in Kilinochchi after the Memorandum of Understanding in 2002, was also published in other districts. It had also appeared in the military controlled areas of Jaffna, Vavuniya and Mannar.
Eelanatham was the only newspaper, which had been published in the Vanni region after August 11, 2006. Moreover, it continued to bear the crisis of the Tamil people.
After the occupation of most of the land in the Vanni during the final days of the war, Sri Lankan troops occupied the area around Kilinochchi and carried out shelling and heavy airstrikes on Kilinochchi and its environs.
In this situation, Eelanatham moved from Kilinochchi to Dharmapuram area in early October 2008 and started functioning temporarily.
Later in January it was operating from Dharmapuram area in Udayarkaddu area. Later it was operated in Suthanthrapuram area and on 10th February in Devipuram area. The Eelanatham newspaper was published in the Devipuram area for only one day.
Printers and furniture from the Devipuram area were damaged in the heavy shelling by the Sri Lankan troops. Then Eelanatham evacuated to the Ranaipalai area with the cooperation of a large number of personnel. However, the printing presses were so badly damaged that there was no possibility of printing the newspaper.
The machine called Blade Maker was repaired at the initiative Sukanthan, as the Eelanadam press machines were completely damaged at this time.
With the help of a company, the printers were loaded into a vehicle and operated as a moving newspaper company. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the first moving newspaper company in Sri Lanka. Antony (Antonykumar) and Tharshan were the ones who worked 24 hours a day to move the vehicle to another place when the heavy shelling were falling too close. Both are skilled at moving the vehicle to another location. In fact, other journalists have been amazed at their courageous work.
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