Who gets heard? by Aingkaran Kugathasan, The Sunday Observer, Colombo, July 19, 2026 * For decades, minority politics in Sri Lanka has been shaped by a fundamental question: who speaks for communities that often feel unheard within the State? The political changes of 2024 appeared to offer a different answer, that a national political movement… Read more »
Monthly Archives: July 2026
Whose Self-Determination?
Tamil Guardian editorial, July 17, 2026 When Argentina’s players unfurled a banner reading “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” after their World Cup semifinal victory over England this week, the British state required no time for reflection. Within a day, Downing Street had urged FIFA to investigate, ministers had denounced the gesture, and the Prime Minister’s spokesperson… Read more »
How Palestinians Are Building a Digital Archive That Can’t Be Erased
Distributed backups, cyber resilience, and a half-million records are preserving Palestinian history beyond any single building or border. by Wired, San Francisco, July 6, 2026 Palestinian culture has been looted, destroyed, and displaced for decades. Since October 2023, however, the destruction of Gaza’s cultural institutions has accelerated, prompting a team in the occupied West Bank to build something they hope cannot… Read more »
Gaza and the Problem of Moral Stupidity
Articulating the Tamil experience — Editor: Entering the Western public square required that you suppress your own grief and fury. Palestinian suffering was admissible only when abstracted from its own content – drained of the names of villages, the mechanics of land seizure, the grammar of permit and curfew and demolition order – and repackaged… Read more »
From Sachi’s Files – Chapter 31
25th Anniversary of the Battle of Katunayake Airport by Sachi Sri Kantha, July 19, 2026 Introduction The heroic performance of 14 daring, unidentified Tamil Tigers on July 24, 2001 at the Battle of Katunayake Airport deserve recognition. In Tamil, there is a battle lingo called ‘pidari adi’. ‘Pidari’ is the upper region of the nape;… Read more »
ITJP: Sri Lanka’s Office of Missing Persons (OMP)
Architecture of Denial by International Truth & Justice Project, Sri Lanka, South Africa, July 16, 2026 ITJP ENG_ARCHITECTURE-OF-DENIAL-SRI-LANKA-S-OFFICE-ON-MISSING-PERSONS Summary Sri Lanka’s first permanent disappearance commission, the Office on Missing Persons (OMP), mandated in August 2016,1 has spectacularly failed to deliver truth, accountability or meaningful redress over the last decade. The OMP in Sri Lanka has… Read more »
Hindu: Sri Lanka’s Minority Parties Launch Common Platform
For Shared Concerns by Meera Sirinivasan, The Hindu, Chennai, July 13, 2026 Prominent political parties representing Sri Lanka’s Tamil-speaking ethnic minorities have launched a platform to voice shared concerns around the pending political solution to the island’s national question and the persisting challenges to their communities’ land rights. Addressing a press conference in Colombo on Monday (July 13, 2026), leaders from political parties and alliances —… Read more »
Literature and the Politics of Plural Identity, in and beyond Sri Lanka
by Nadeera Rajapaksa, Polity.lk, Colombo, July 2026 Translated into French at Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières Two Sri Lankan writers: Antonythasan Jesuthasan in 2026 and Shehan Karunatilaka in 2025, have been awarded in consecutive years the Prix Émile Guimet, the French prize for Asian literature in translation. About the same time in 2025 during a visit… Read more »
Investigation of Easter Terror Attacks a Break in Trend in Sri Lanka
by Sulochana Ramiah Mohan, Sydasien, Sweden, July 7, 2026 [Translated from the original Swedish by Google translate.] Traces of terror in a wall of Church Zion in Batticaloa, which did not completely collapse during the terrorist attack on April 21, 2019. The Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith and the Vatican Envoy at Remembrance Day,… Read more »
TG: Transitional Justice Cannot Exist Without Truth
Sri Lanka and the continuing erasure of the Eelam Tamil genocide by Simhanjana Gopikrishna Sumathi, Tamil Guardian, London, June 29, 2026 “It happened; therefore, it can happen again…it can happen everywhere.” — Primo Michele Levi, Jewish Holocaust survivor Seventeen years after Mullivaikkal, Sri Lanka continues to stand as one of the starkest examples of… Read more »
TG: Prison Rules
Tamil Guardian editorial, London, July 13, 2026 Last week saw the second deadliest episode of prison violence in Sri Lanka’s history. Over two days at Negombo Prison, at least 28 people were killed, among them seven prison officers, and more than a hundred were wounded. By the time the violence which began on Sunday evening… Read more »
ITJP: Chemmani Mass Grave
‘We are still searching” by International Truth & Justice Project, Sri Lanka, South Africa, July 13, 2026 ITJP CHEMMANI-MASS-GRAVE-WE-ARE-STILL-SEARCHING-JULY-2026 Executive Summary ‘We are still searching,’ is how the statements of the families typically end. It has been thirty years of waiting for a body to mourn, let alone justice. Chemmani mass grave in the northern Jaffna… Read more »
‘Amirthalingam Assault Drama’ in the Sri Lankan Parliament
After 45 Years by Sachi Sri Kantha, July 15, 2026 Prelude Nearby I provide images of autographs from Savumiamoorthy Thondaman (1913-1999) and Appapillai Amirthalingam (1927-1989) that I collected on Apr.3, 1978 in Colombo, at a function that felicitated the 80th birthday of S.J.V. Chelvanayagam (1898-1977). Both had participated. At that time, Thondaman was the sole… Read more »
From Sachi’s Files – Chapter 30
Snippets from Diary Entries of 1976 by Sachi Sri Kantha, June 30, 2026 An Introductory AI review of this series As this ‘From Sachi’s Files’ series has reached chapter 30 with this segment, for the benefit of old and ‘new’ readers I’m pleased to cite an introductory (but not critical!) AI review of this series…. Read more »