Vijay remembers civilians who died on last day of Sri Lanka’s civil war against LTTE

Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay on Monday remembered civilians who fell prey to the bullets of the Sri Lankan Navy on the last day of the 30-year-old civil war, observing the 17^thanniversary of the Mullivaikkal killings. 

“We will carry the memories of Mullivaikkal in our hearts. We will always stand in solidarity for the rights of our Tamils,” Vijay wrote on his personal X page.

The Chief Minister had in November 2025 as the TVK chief tweeted in praise of those who sacrificed their lives for a separate Tamil country in Sri Lanka on the occasion of Maaveerargal Naal.

Vijay has been a vocal supporter of Tamil Eelam (a separate country for Tamils). 

May 18 is observed as the Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day to honour the civilians who were killed on that day in 2009 in the Sri Lankan Army’s final push against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). 

The neighbouring country’s Army had announced the end of the civil war on May 18, 2009 with the killing of LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran and his lieutenants, including his son and commander Charles Anthony. 

However, it released the pictures of Prabhakaran’s bullet-ridden body only the next day after flying down one of his former aides, Karuna alias Muralitharan, to Mullivaikkal to identify him. 

 Thousands of innocent civilians were killed by the Army as they ambushed Mullivaikkal, a village on the northeastern coast of Sri Lanka, which was the scene of the final battle of the civil war, as they believed the top LTTE leadership was holed up there.