Rajan Hoole

Rajan Hoole is a Tamil Human Rights activist and a co founder, along with the late Ranjani Thiranagama, of University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna branch, while affiliated to the Department of Mathematics, University of Jaffna. His full name is Michael Richard Ratnarajan Hoole.He is the eldest son of Rev.Richard Herbert Ratnathurai Hoole.

Soon after the assassination of Rajini Thiranagama in 1989, Rajan Hoole along with Sritharan, another UTHR activist, fled Jaffna . Since then, for more than a decade, Hoole functioned in Colombo . In his book, "The Arrogance of Power - Myth, Decadence and Murder", he compiled a catalogue of human rights violations by the Sinhalese politicians belonging to the UNP and SLFP as well as LTTE. . He continues to document human rights violations by different armed actors in Sri Lanka. Hoole was trained as a classical pianist. In 2007, Hoole received the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2007 along with Kopalasingham Sritharan.

Publications

1. The Broken Palmyrah (1989, Co author, Harvey Mudd College California)

2. Sri Lanka: The Arrogance of power; Myth, Decadence and murder (2000, UTHR, Colombo)

External links

* [http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/srilanka/profile.html PBS Frontline profile of Rajan Hoole – A lonely warrior for Human Rights]
* [http://www.thesamnet.com/issue26/page11.htm Introduction in Tamil]