University Teachers for Human Rights

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The University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) or UTHR(J) was formed in 1988 at the University of Jaffna, Jaffna, in Sri Lanka, as part of the national organization University Teachers for Human Rights. Its public activities as a constituent part of university life came to a standstill after the assassination on September 21, 1989 of Rajini Thiranagama, a key founding member, for which the group blamed the LTTE.

In 1990, the others who identified openly with the UTHR(J), such as its current head, Professor Rajan Hoole, were forced to leave Jaffna. Rajan Hoole lived in hiding in Colombo and permanently resettled in Jaffna only after the war ended.^[1] By the beginning of 2010 the UTHR(J) had ceased to operate following the defeat of the LTTE.^[2]

The UTHR(J) functioned as an organization to uphold its professed aim: "to challenge the external and internal terror engulfing the Tamil community as a whole through making the perpetrators accountable, and to create space for humanising the social and political spheres relating to the life of our community."^[3] Among its long-held ideals was that "the due rights of the minorities, taking into account Sinhalese concerns, could ideally be met in a united Sri Lanka under federalism."^[4]