Lawyer questions freedom of speech at uni, after it cancels her speech

The University of Jaffna Teachers’ Association (UTA) was, this week, forced to withdraw a statement it had released underscoring the importance of freedom of speech, intellectual debate and ideas exchange within the institution.

The UTA Executive Committee released its statement on Wednesday after the University of Jaffna (UoJ) capitulated to a section of undergraduate students and cancelled a scheduled speech by lawyer Swasthika Arulingam on the grounds that she had previously made comments critical of the LTTE.

But they were forced to withdraw their statement on Thursday after student unions surrounded and blockaded the Chemistry Department, where UTA head Prof P Iygaran works, and also locked and demonstrated around the university’s main gates.

“We believe that we should have academic freedom and freedom of speech in the university, otherwise there is no point in having a university,” Prof Iyngaran told the Sunday Times yesterday. “That is why we issued that statement.”

“But due to pressure from student unions, and to create a conducive environment for the functioning of the university, as they had closed the gates and my department and gathered in front, we withdrew the statement,” he said.

Ms Arulingam, a trade unionist and activist, had been due to speak on “Judicial Independence in Times of Crisis” at an event organised by the UoJ’s Law Department on October 31.

The event was called off “at the last minute” after some students protested that she had called the LTTE a fascist organisation in an earlier speech made elsewhere.

She later released a letter she wrote to the Acting Vice Chancellor of UoJ to protest against the cancellation of her event. She said the Dean of the Law Department had informed her they decided to “defer” her speech to avoid unpleasantness.

She maintained that, by cancelling it, the UoJ had “sent a message not just to me but to society at large that any alternative opinions to that of the LTTE will not be tolerated within the university space”. She wrote that “it was ironic that the Law Department invited me to speak on the independence of the judiciary when there was hardly any freedom of expression in the university”.

The UTA issued a statement using Ms Arulingam’s incident as an example of what might happen in future, if students opposed the political views of a speaker. They said they were aware UoJ students were themselves hindered from expressing their political views, engaging in memorialisation activities and participating in protests due to intense state and military surveillance and control.

It was, therefore, disappointing and sad that a section of the student community that regularly faced intimidation and repression from the state and the military decided to block Ms Arulingam’s speech, they maintained, expressing worry that it would set a bad precedent.

The VC and Dean were not available for comment.