Rajani Thiranagama

In a documentary released worldwide in 2005, No More Tears Sister, produced by the National Film Board (NFB) of Canada, Rajani's life and her legacy are brought to life. This film is available in free streaming on the site of the NFB.

A few weeks after the publication of her book The Broken Palmyra, on 21 September 1989, she was shot dead at Thirunelvely, Jaffna in front of her house by a gunman while cycling back from work. University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna and Rajani's sister accuse the LTTE of her murder to retaliate against her criticism of its violent tactics.

wrote Rajani in 1989, a few months before she was killed.

Inspired by her elder sister Nirmala, then a member of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Rajani became involved with the LTTE by administering care to those wounded in action. In 1983, Rajani travelled to England under Commonwealth scholarship for postgraduate studies in Anatomy at the Liverpool Medical School. There, she launched a major international campaign for the release of her sister, who was imprisoned in 1982 under Sri Lanka's Prevention of Terrorism Act. She also maintained her links with LTTE by joining its London Committee to educate human rights groups and other international organisations about the atrocities occurring in Sri Lanka. While continuing to write and publish scientific papers, she also became implicated in grassroots organisations fighting for women's rights and against the discrimination of Britain's black people and became involved in the international campaigns of other liberation groups.

Having witnessed the evidence of human rights violations by the IPKF and the LTTE, Rajani co-authored a book, The Broken Palmyra. The book documents the violence in Jaffna in the 1980s.

In 1978, Rajani began her first posting as an intern medical doctor at the Jaffna Hospital. After the completion of the internship in 1979, she travelled to Haldumulla, a small village near Haputale, to work as a medical doctor. By 1980 she had returned to Jaffna as a lecturer in Anatomy at the newly formed Faculty of Medicine at the University of Jaffna. By then, Jaffna was a battle zone and in the early stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War. Many were leaving Jaffna for Colombo or migrating to other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

During her stay at Colombo University she met a politically active student leader from Kelaniya University named Dayapala Thiranagama. Dayapala was from a rural Sinhala Buddhist background. Rajani broke ethnic and religious barriers and married Dayapala in 1977. They had two daughters: Narmada (1978) and Sharika, 1980. Narmada now lives in Britain and works for the public sector union UNISON. Political Anthropologist Sharika Thiranagama currently teaches at Stanford University, and is married to fellow anthropologist Thomas Blom Hansen. In 2005, Sharika portrayed the role of her mother in a documentary film on Rajani, No More Tears Sister.

Rajani was born in Jaffna, in northern Sri Lanka, to middle-class Tamil Christian parents. She was the second of four female children. She attended primary and secondary school in Jaffna, and in 1973, she entered the University of Colombo to study medicine. In university, she became actively involved in student politics.

Dr. Rajani Thiranagama (née Rajasingham) (23 February 1954 – 21 September 1989) was a Tamil human rights activist and feminist who was assassinated by Tamil Tigers cadres after she had criticised them for their atrocities. At the time of her assassination, she was the head of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Jaffna and an active member of University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna, and was is one of its founding members.