Sri Lanka’s Complex Dance of Sinhala and Tamil Nationalist Politics
With mainstream Sri Lankan parties feeling compelled to pander to Sinhala Buddhist voters, Tamil-led parties have been pushed to take more hardline positions to address Tamil voters’ frustrations – historically and today by Uditha Divapriya, Himal, Colombo, July 30, 2024 At present, the Sri Lankan government is caught in a tricky situation. Elections are slated… Read more »
Opening Statement of Elizabeth K. Horst, Nominee to be U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka
by Senate Foreign Relations Commitee, Washington, DC, May 9, 2024 Video – Hearing: [2024-06-13] NOMINATIONS | United States Senate Committee on… (Sri Lanka starts at 1 hour, 13 minutes, plus the introductory statement by the Chair early on.) Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Rickets, and distinguished Members of the commitee, thank you for holding this hearing…. Read more »
Amnesty: Fifteen Years After the End of War, Victims Still Await Justice at Mullivaikkal
by Amnesty International, London, May 18, 2024 Victims still await justice at Mullivaikkal, Sri Lanka (amnesty.org) Speaking at a commemoration marking the 15th anniversary of the end of Sri Lanka’s internal armed conflict on 18 May 2009, which culminated in the brutal Mullivaikkal offensive where countless civilian lives were lost, Agnès Callamard, Secretary General at Amnesty… Read more »
by Tamil Guardian, London, May 18, 2024 To mark 15 years since the Sri Lankan military onslaught that massacred tens of thousands of Tamils, we revisit the final days leading up to the 18th of May 2009 – a date remembered around the world as ‘Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day’. After providing an initial death toll of 40,000, the UN… Read more »
Sri Lanka: Accountability Needed for Enforced Disappearances
Sri Lanka must ensure accountability for decades of enforced disappearances – UN report UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights press release, Geneva, May 17, 2024 GENEVA (17 May 2024) – Sri Lanka’s Government must take meaningful action to determine and disclose the fates and whereabouts of tens of thousands of people who… Read more »
by Centre for Policy Initiatives, Colombo, accessed March 19, 2024 High atop Vedukkunaari Hill in Sri Lanka’s Vavuniya district, an ancient temple stands at the precipice of a religious and legal storm. Revered by the local Tamil community as the Vedukkunaari Aathi Lingeswarar Temple for over 3,000 years, it now finds itself embroiled in a… Read more »
by Sachi Sri Kantha, March 14, 2024 Front Note Puvaneswary Sachithanantham, my mother, died on March 2, 2024. Born in April 10, 1936, she had lived for 87 years and welcomed four great grandsons. For her memory, I provide excerpts of a 1995 essay I wrote in English. This was the title essay of my… Read more »
The Office on Missing Persons in Sri Lanka by Chulani Kodikara, International Journal of Transitional Justice, olume 17, Issue 1, March 2023, Pages 157–172 Kodikara OMP in Sri Lanka 2023 ABSTRACT In 2016, the Sri Lanka Parliament passed the Office on Missing Persons Act (OMP) ‘to search for and trace missing persons.’ At the time,… Read more »
Religious Majoritarianism in South Asia by Knox Thames, Global Policy, Durham University, UK, May 18, 2023 Politics of Hate: Religious Majoritarianism in South Asia edited by Farahnaz Ispahani. HarperCollins India 2023. 336 pp., £17.99 paperback 9789356293557, $14.99 e-book 9789356290013 The history of the Indian subcontinent is as vast as the region’s size and population. Consequently, foreign… Read more »
Book Review: Prisoner #1056 – How I Survived War and Found Peace
by Roy Ratnavel, Viking/Penguin Random House, Canada, 2023, 260 pp, US$27.00 by Sachi Sri Kantha, October 28, 2023 This book of memoir by Roy Ratnavel (born 1969), a naturalized Canadian of Sri Lankan Tamil descent, has achieved bestseller status in Canada this year. The memoir has 12 chapters altogether, among which the first three (in… Read more »
Purse-seiners, Trawlers, and the Epic Fight over Fishing in Tamil Nadu
A ban on purse-seine fishing in Tamil Nadu has threatened thousands of fishers’ livelihoods – and they are refusing to give up without a fight by Jeff Joseph, Himal magazine, Colombo, September 7, 2023 “There were young people with degrees taking to purse seines because of the pay,” Karthi P said. “It was easy work.”… Read more »
by Watchdog, Colombo, July 12, 2023 For years, Sri Lankans have risked everything, trying to escape their homeland. Crushed by a failing economy, cold-hearted politics, and the brutal realities of world events, many venture into the unforgiving sea. Few return. This is their story. Story by Andrew Fidel Fernando and Mohammed Fairooz Additional reporting and translation… Read more »
by Himali Innis, Granta, May 11, 2023 When Nisha performs the burial ceremony for AJ, her 26-year-old son, she has to imagine his body lowering into the earth. Without a body, cremation is impossible. This ceremony, instead, is a commingling of the Christian traditions practiced by Nisha’s husband Sam, and the ancient Hindu rites of… Read more »
Two thoughtful contributions by Sri Lankan academics Neil DeVotta and Gehan Gunatilleke show how majoritarianism’s relentless othering is less about the majority’s imagined ideal minority-free state, and more about the satisfaction derived from blaming, punishing and depriving the “others” — the Sinhala Buddhist majority’s first target was the Indian Tamils. by Nirupama Subramaniam, Indian Express,… Read more »
And the importance of Muslim Christian Hindu unity A Presentation made by Senator Usha S Sri-Skanda-Rajah at the 9th Sitting of the 3rd Parliament of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam – Delivered May 20th 2023 on her behalf by Senator Satya Sagar Rt Hon. Prime Minister, Hon. Mr. Speaker, My Hon. colleagues in the… Read more »
Sri Lanka has been seen as one of China’s string of pearls by Centre for Strategic Studies – Trincomalee, May 24, 2023 China is turning its attention to the Tamils in the north, using some of the same tactics previously employed during the Rajapaksa era to slowly win the trust of the Tamil minority. That,… Read more »
“‘Song of the Sun God’ is a novel that interrogates the injustices faced by the Tamil people” by Krishna Selvaseelan, Tamil Guardian, London, March 20, 2023 I will begin this piece with a confession. In times of emotional distress and crisis, I often watch YouTube clips of the 1991 film ‘Thalapathi’, a film which is… Read more »
by Human Rights Watch, New York, March 8, 2008 HRW Recurring Nightmare-Full_Report srilanka0308cases This report was originally posted with links to HRW, but those links are being moved, so the report is being reposted here. The current link is Recurring Nightmare: State Responsibility for “Disappearances” and Abductions in Sri Lanka | HRW See HRW statement… Read more »
A dark side by Centre for Strategic Studies, Trincomalee, February 2023 The Power Plant The Lakvijaya Power Plant, also known as the Norochcholai Power plant, is situated in Norochcholai, Puttalam in the Northwestern province of Sri Lanka, at the southern end of Kalpitiya peninsula. It is the largest thermal power plant in Sri Lanka. The… Read more »
Abandoned to Their Fate, Northern Villagers Battle to Survive
by Minoli de Soysa, Groundviews, Colombo, November 29, 2022 They are a small, tight knit community held together by their shared suffering and insurmountable difficulties. Ever since the start of the 1983 civil war, their lives have been marked by tragedy and misery. The 22 families who live in the village of Kanchanamutti in the… Read more »