M. K. Shivajilingam

Mahalingam Kanagalingam Shivajilingam, also spelled Sivajilingam, was born in 1956 or 1957 in Valvettithurai, a coastal town in Jaffna District in northern Sri Lanka. He was a distant relative of V. Prabhakaran, the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who was also from Valvettithurai.

Shivajilingam began his political career as a member of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) and served as chairman of the Valvettithurai Urban Council. On 20 October 2001 TELO joined the All Ceylon Tamil Congress, the EPRLF and the Tamil United Liberation Front to form the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). He was one of the alliance's candidates in Jaffna District at the 2001 parliamentary election and was elected, receiving 17,859 preference votes, and he was re-elected in 2004 with 42,193.

In 2010 he contested the presidential election as an independent, finishing ninth with 9,662 votes. He left TELO and the TNA that year and formed the Tamil National Liberation Alliance with other dissidents, which won no seats at the 2010 parliamentary election and was dissolved in June 2011, when he rejoined TELO and the TNA. He was elected to the Valvettithurai Urban Council in 2011 and to the Northern Provincial Council in 2013, taking his oath on 14 October 2013 at a beachside Hindu temple in Mullivaikkal, the scene of the final battle of the civil war. He was appointed to assist the Chief Minister of the Northern Province on employment.

He stood unsuccessfully in Kurunegala District in 2015, and in 2019 gave up the chairmanship of TELO to contest the presidential election again, receiving 12,256 votes. He later served as general secretary of the Tamil National Party, and at the 2025 local elections he was elected to the Valvettithurai Urban Council, serving as its chairman until his death.

Shivajilingam was regarded as a maverick in Sri Lankan Tamil politics. For many years he was the only prominent Tamil politician to call openly for an independent international investigation into alleged war crimes in the final stages of the civil war, and he called for Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseka to be tried at the International Criminal Court. He organised Mullivaikkal remembrance events and other commemorations despite restrictions, and campaigned for Tamil political prisoners, for the families of the disappeared and against land seizures in the north and east. He claimed that the Sri Lankan military, the Eelam People's Democratic Party and the LTTE had each tried to assassinate him, and in a Canadian refugee hearing in 2012 a Sri Lankan army captain said he had been ordered to plant a bomb at Shivajilingam's home. He was a Hindu.

Shivajilingam had been ill with kidney failure for some years and underwent a kidney transplant at a private hospital in Colombo on 11 June 2026. After a relapse he was admitted to the intensive care unit of Point Pedro Base Hospital on 3 November 2026. He died at around 11.50pm on Saturday 14 November 2026, at the age of 69, according to Hiru News and JVP News; some reports gave the date as 15 November. Ada Derana, Hiru News and Tamil media reported his death, and condolences came from across the political spectrum. Funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of the first reports.

Shivajilingam is remembered as a persistent and uncompromising voice for Tamil political rights and accountability for the civil war, who kept campaigning through illness and official pressure. Tamil media described him as a field fighter who broke through repression and as a brave voice in Tamil national politics.