COLOMBO: Veteran Sri Lankan Tamil journalist S Sivanayagam died here on November 29, said the Tamil Information Centre (TIC), which he headed for long. Sivanayagam (80) was founder-editor of the popular-Jaffna based English weekly Saturday Review and head of the TIC branch in Chennai from 1983 to 1987. An articulate spokesperson of the Tamil Eelam movement, Subramaniam Sivanayagam was a major source of information for Indian and international journalists who covered the Tamil movement in Lanka in the 1980s. Sivanayagam, who wrote both in English and Tamil, had earlier worked in the Ceylon Daily News (1953-55) and Ceylon Daily Mirror (1961-69). He was also the editor of publications at the Ceylon Tourist Board. He fled to Tamil Nadu after the government banned Saturday Review in July 1983 just before the anti-Tamil riots in Colombo. While in India, he edited the TIC fortnightly, the Sri Lanka Situation Report and Tamil International. Later, he edited a fortnightly, Tamil Nation, from London. Sivanayagam was jailed in India for a year under the National Security Act when the LTTE began fighting the Indian army in north-east Lanka. A sick Sivanayagam was detained again at a Chennai hospital for six months. He left India under duress in January 1993 and sought political asylum in France in 1994. While in Paris, he edited the monthly journal, Hot Spring, which later shifted to London. In Europe, he wrote two books - The Pen and the Gun and Sri Lanka: Witness to History.