Shoba Sakthi

Antonythasan Jesuthasan, born in 1967, is a Tamil writer and actor of Sri Lankan origin. He also goes by the pen name Shobasakthi. He hails from the village of Allaipiddy on Velanaitivu Island in northern Sri Lanka. At the age of 16, Jesuthasan joined the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a helper due to the Black July anti-Tamil riots. He became a full-time member in 1984 and participated in the LTTE's street drama, Vidduthalaikaali, in 1985. Jesuthasan was punished because he deserted the LTTE in December 1986 after eventually growing weary of the group. After the Indo-Lanka Accord was signed in 1987, Jesuthasan moved to Colombo, but he was arrested for being an LTTE member when war broke out between the LTTE and the Indian Peace Keeping Force.

He was released once the peace talks began between the LTTE and the Premadasa government. In 1988, Jesuthasan went to Hong Kong where he stayed for six months before moving to Thailand, living as a refugee in a suburb of Bangkok with the help of the UNHCR. Later on, he bought false French passports from a Frenchman and, in 1993, he flew to France with his sister and brother, where they were granted political asylum. Once the Sri Lanka Navy seized Allaipiddy and transformed it into a naval base in 1990, Jesuthasan's parents escaped by boat to Madras, India. He worked in various low-paying jobs in Paris, such as street sweeping, stacking shelves in supermarkets, cooking, hefting boxes, dishwashing, and construction work. He also worked as a bellhop at Euro Disney.

During this time, he became involved in left-wing politics and joined the Revolutionary Communist Organization, of which he was a member for four years. After severing his connections with the LTTE, he began campaigning against the Sri Lankan Civil War and the human rights abuses committed by the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE. Jesuthasan's friends introduced him to literature during his time in the Revolutionary Communist Organization, and he began writing under the pseudonym Shobasakthi in the late 1990s, producing short stories, plays, political essays, and novels based on his personal experiences during the civil war.

His first novel, Gorilla (2001), was based on his experience as a child soldier in the LTTE, while his second novel, Traitor (2003), was based on the 1983 massacre of political prisoners in Sri Lanka. In 2011, Jesuthasan created and featured in Sengadal, a movie about Tamil fisherman eking out a life in Dhanushkodi, southern India. This marked the start of his acting career. In 2015, he starred in Dheepan, a film about a former LTTE member who claims political asylum in France by posing as a husband and father, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Despite the civil war having ended, Jesuthasan does not feel safe returning to Sri Lanka due to the ongoing armed attacks against minorities and the unknown fate of LTTE members taken prisoner by the Sri Lankan military.