by Minority Rights Group International (MRG), the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR) and Women Development Innovators (WDI), May 11, 2017 *** Sri Lanka: Issues of land and sea grabbing on minorities brought to UN In order to reflect the current situation of minorities in Sri Lanka, IMADR, Minority Rights Group International (MRG)… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Demography
Report of the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues
Report of the Special-Rapporteur on minority issues on her mission to Sri Lanka Feb 2017 Contents I. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 3 II. Minority rights: legal, political and institutional framework………………………………………………… 4 III. Overall challenges for minorities …………………………………………………………………………………….. 6 A. Governance and political participation ……………………………………………………………………… 6 B. Linguistic rights …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 6… Read more »
Immediately Release Land of the People of Keppapilavu
Statement by Civil Society Feb 17 Civil Society Statement re Keppapilavu – Final We, the undersigned civil society organizations, write this statement to express solidarity with protestors of Keppapilavu and condemn the Government’s lack of appropriate and timely response or action towards releasing their land from military occupation. 1 For over two weeks, villagers from… Read more »
Migration and Labour Shortages in Asian Countries
Where workers will be needed in the region, and where they could come from by The Data Team, ‘The Economist,’ London, February 10, 2017 Graphic detail THE Asian “model” of migration tends to be highly restrictive, and often appears more dedicated to stemming immigration than to managing it. The continent′s governments frequently curtail entry… Read more »
On Keppapulavu
by Groundviews, Colombo, February 9, 2017 Residents of Keppapulavu, in Mullaitivu, have been protesting, demanding the return of their land, which is currently occupied by the Air Force. The families have now been protesting outside the airforce camp for 9 days. The struggle for the return of their land however has been ongoing for years…. Read more »
Even Fish Have an Ethnicity
by Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA), Colombo, January 31, 2017 Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA) cordially invites you to a CEPA Cafe event presenting Even fish have an ethnicity… : a study on how ethnic identities mediate livelihoods in a fishing community in post-war Sri Lanka While discussions on ethnicity and tensions based on ethnic… Read more »
Demographic Genocide at Entrance to Jaffna
by TamilNet, 30 January 2017 Colombo proves State recognition for demographic genocide at entrance to Jaffna The Colombo regime of Maithiripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickramasinghe has officially donated 50 houses on Monday through ‘National’ Housing Development Authority (NHDA) to the Sinhala colony, that has been created by the occupying Sinhala military and Sinhala-Buddhist extremist ‘Sinhala… Read more »
Demographic Genocide Against Ancient Tamil Villages in Trincomalee
by TamilNet, 27 January 2017 Sirisena wages demographic genocide against ancient Tamil villages in Trincomalee The unitary State of genocidal Sri Lanka, particularly its president who hails from the North Central Province, is slowly and silently annexing lands of the ancient Tamil village Thamapalakaamam, an agricultural village, which is also a suburb of Trincomalee city… Read more »
Only 5.2% of Sri Lankan Military Occupied Land has been Released to Tamils
by P.K. Balachandran, The New Indian Express, December 11, 2016 COLOMBO: The Chief Minister of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province, C.V.Wigneswaran, has said that out of the 67,000 acres of private lands of the Tamils seized by the Sri Lankan armed forces during the war, only 3,500 acres have been returned so far. Since the war… Read more »
Why Just Counting the Dead in Syria Won’t Bring Them Justice
A full tally of the war’s horrific violence requires estimates, models, and sophisticated pattern analysis to understand who’s responsible and why. by Patrick Ball, ‘Foreign Policy,’ Washington, DC, October 19, 2016 Nearly 18,000 people died in Syrian government prisons between March 2011 and December 2015. My colleagues and I at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group(HRDAG)… Read more »
Land Grabbing & Accountability
by South Asia Centre for Legal Studies, Colombo, September 27, 2016 Despite land grabbing being a common feature of many armed conflicts and an integral part of discriminatory policies against minority groups, it is insufficiently addressed in post-conflict or transitional justice accountability processes. While truth-commissions, in particular the Truth Commission in El Salvador, have highlighted… Read more »
Still Missing in Mullaitivu
by Meera Srinivasan, ‘The Hindu,’ Chennai, October 1, 2016 More than seven years after the brutal three-decade-long civil war ended in Sri Lanka, people are still picking up the pieces and searching for their loved ones. The last time Mary Sabamalai saw her son Mayuran was in 2008, when he came home for his 21st birthday…. Read more »
Sirisena’s Mahaweli Ministry Spearheads Massive-scale Sinhala Colonisation in Batticaloa
In the first place, the Tamils were not even given the so-called ‘national ethnic ratio’ in the distribution of lands. Secondly, the Mahaweli Ministry was completely ignoring the Tamils in the allocation of lands. Thirdly, most of the lands being seized in the border areas of the three districts are pasturelands. The farming activities of… Read more »
Deforestation Now Urgent Concern in Post-War Sri Lanka
By Johann Rebert, Asia Foundation, San Francisco, March 16, 2016 Following parliamentary elections in August 2015 and six years after the end of a bloody, decades-long civil war, Sri Lanka’s newly elected president, Maithripala Sirisena, has made the important decision to keep the Ministry of Environment directly under his wing. The move, which also positions the… Read more »
Asia Foundation: Sri Lanka Strategic Assessment 2016
by Asia Foundation, San Francisco, March 2016 Asia Foundation Sri Lanka Strategic Assessment 2016 Sri Lanka underwent a major political transition in 2015 with the election of President Maithripala Sirisena and the establishment of a new coalition government between the United Front for Good Governance (UNFGG) and one faction of the United Peoples’ Freedom Alliance… Read more »
BTF: Land Grab and Cultural Genocide of the Tamils‘ Homeland on Sri Lanka
by British Tamil Forum, June 2016 Press release re numbers included in report April 2016 Land grab and cultural genocide of the Tamil land in Sri Lanka BTF Land grab and cultural colonisation of the Tamil land in Sri Lankav v7 1. Introduction. Reliable field data obtained by BTF indicates that the land currently occupied… Read more »
Colombo Beefs Up Naval Installations along Eastern Coast
by TamilNet, June 3, 2016 Emboldened with the blessings coming from the diplomatic US Establishment and its increased ‘military-to-military’ rapport with the Sinhala navy in the island, the military Establishment of genocidal Sri Lanka has stepped up its programme of militarisation and Sinhaliciation of the strategic belt in the three coastal directions of the country… Read more »
Waiting to Return Home
by Oakland Institute, California, May 31, 2016 http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/SriLanka_Return_Home_final_web.pdf Press release Introduction Sri Lanka’s 26-year-long civil war officially ended in 2009 with the defeat of Tamil separatists, led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), through a bloody military offensive that led to widespread destruction, the killing of tens of thousands of civilians by government… Read more »
Action on Mahaweli System B in Batticaloa
[TamilNet, Wednesday, 16 March 2016, 23:47 GMT] Maithiriapala Sirisene, the president of genocidal Sri Lanka, who visited his native district of Polonnaruwa last week, has vowed to ‘develop’ the villages that are being Sinhalicised along the border of Batticaloa and Polonnaruwa through ‘Mahaweli System B’, which is being accelerated according to his latest instructions. Hailing… Read more »
State-aided Sinhala Colonisation
submitted by International Human Rights Association Bremen Before the armed resistance of the Tamil people took the centre stage, three major processes could be identified aimed at the marginalisation and destabilization of the Tamil nation. The first was the state sponsored colonisation schemes, which under the pretext of development, settled depressed peasants and later lumpen… Read more »