by Dr. Punsara Amarasinghe, South Asia Monitor, October 7, 2025 This controversial project of the mid-1980s, inspired by Israeli models, ultimately failed to achieve its intended outcomes. Nevertheless, Israeli involvement left a lasting imprint on the Mahaweli Development Project and agricultural settlements in Sri Lanka. The continuing association between the military and the Mahaweli Development… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Economy
Devolution Without Power is Meaningless
by Raj Sivanathan, Groundviews, Colombo, March 26, 2026 A version of this article is also on Jaffna Post at The NPP Must Deliver Devolution and Economic Justice Now – Sri Lanka News Sri Lanka stands today at a decisive and defining moment in its post-war political and economic journey. For more than three decades, the… Read more »
A Public Holiday Every Week?
Sri Lankans Bemoan the Enforced Day Off. The island’s government, rationing fuel amid shortages from the Iran war, surprised residents by imposing an unusual four-day week. by Pamodi Waravita and Anupreeta Das, The New York Times, March 21, 2026 A vendor waiting for customers at a railway station in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Wednesday, after… Read more »
Declassified Documents Detail Israel’s Role at the Start of Sri Lanka’s Civil War
by Eitay Mack, TheWire.In, March 17, 2026 Not only did Israel ignore the severity of the human rights situation, it also knew from the outset that its military assistance had limited prospects of success. The Sri Lankan government has acknowledged that there could be as many as 65,000 people missing following three decades of civil… Read more »
Oakland Institute: The Systemic Dispossession of the Indigenous Tamil People
Joint Dossier and Submission SUBMITTED: February 17, 2026 SUBMITTED BY: ABC Tamil Oli (NGO in Special Consultative Status with ECOSOC) SUPPORTED BY: The Oakland Institute, Mullaitivu Land Protection Council, and associated civil society organizations. DISTRIBUTION LIST: ADDRESSED MANDATE HOLDERS (FEBRUARY 2026) To: Dr. Albert K. Barume Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples To: Mr. Balakrishnan Rajagopal … Read more »
PEARL: State-Sponsored Sinhalization of the North-East
The Anti-Development Machine by People for Equality and Relief in Lanka, January 2026 Examining Sri Lanka’s State-Led Land Dispossession and Anti-Development Policies Targeting Eelam Tamils Full report: PEARL_Sinhalization-as-an-anti-development-machine_report Case Study: Tamil Dairy Farmers’ Protest in Mayilaththamadu-Madhavanai, Batticaloa PEARL_Sinhalization-as-an-anti-development-machine_CASE-STUDY EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report is part of the Sinhalization series and builds on the themes of PEARL’s… Read more »
PEARL Releases New Report on Alleged ‘Sinhalisation’ in Sri Lanka
by Daily FT, Colombo, January 20, 2026 Flags off State-led land dispossession and anti-development policies targeting Eelam TamilsPeople for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) has released a new report and accompanying case study examining the Sri Lankan state’s ongoing project of Sinhalisation in the North-East, with a detailed focus on land dispossession and violence against… Read more »
UN’s Cyclone Ditwah Situation Report #6
by United Nations office in Sri Lanka, January 23, 2026 UN Cyclone_Ditwah__SitRep #6 Jan 23 2026 Cyclone Ditwah has triggered the most extensive flooding and landslide damage in the past two decades in Sri Lanka, impacting approximately 2.2 million people across all 25 districts of the country. According to the Disaster Management Center, the cyclone… Read more »
What is Local Governance?
[This article is interesting because it is by a Sinhalese author. Tamils have been advocating for more decentralized government since independence, to no avail. Note that in the early 1980s the Sri Lankan government proposed District Development Councils to counteract calls for more autonomy for the North and Eastern Provinces. The Tamils were not in… Read more »
Who Gets Warned? Language, Discrimination, and Disaster Communication in Sri Lanka
by Sanjana H., LinkedIn, Colombo, Nov.29, 2025 In a recent article related to the devastating impact of Cyclone Ditwah on Sri Lanka, the Tamil Guardian noted that, Officials describe the impact of Cyclone Ditwah as one of the deadliest weather-related disasters in recent years. Yet even as Tamils in the North-East grapple with the impact of of the… Read more »
Rivers of Sri Lanka
by Nuwan I. Senaratna, Dec, 6, 2025 From his X account: We cannot hope to understand floods without first understanding the #rivers that shape them. This repository offers GeoJSON maps of Sri Lanka’s rivers, extracted from from https://hydrosheds.org. (Each color in the map represent a river basin. The colors have been picked at random) @Github… Read more »
The Great Flood
by B. Skanthakumar, Polity, Colombo, December 5, 2025 Cyclone Ditwah ripped through Sri Lanka between 27 and 29 November. The toll is devastating. Seven days later, the official count is 486 deaths and 341 missing. To which should be added five navy and one air-force officer killed in rescue operations; and an electricity board technician… Read more »
Sri Lanka’s President Surprises with Pro-Market Pivot
by Uditha Jayasinghe and Krishna N. Das, Reuters, London, September 23, 2025 Summary President Dissanayake’s government plans fresh steps to boost investment after 2022 economic collapse Power tariffs raised, state-run electricity board being broken up despite union protests $100 mln in cannabis-based medical oil projects expected for export to US and Europe Analysts say strong… Read more »
Government Announcing Release of Lands in Jaffna Largely Political Rhetoric
by LankaFiles, July 28, 2025 It has been revealed that the repeated claims made by successive presidents, including the current head of state, regarding the release of ancestral lands in the Valikamam region of Jaffna district, are largely political rhetoric. At a press conference held in Jaffna, civil society activists and local residents asserted that… Read more »
Data from Presidential Truth Commission Report on Black July 1983
by Presidential Truth Commission on Ethnic Violence 1981-1984, September 2002 Evidence provided to the 2002 Commission by victims who requested compensation for primarily property damage during the violence of the anti-Tamil pogrom of 1983’s Black July. truth-commission-list_from presidential_commission_report on ethnic violence 1981-1984 [Excel file] Data is from the report of the Presidential Commission and is… Read more »
Letter to Pres. Dissanayake re Land Settlement Ordinance Notice of March 28, 2025
by MP M.A. Sumanthiran, May 3, 2025 See page 6 for the Notice: 2025-03-28(III-0)E.pdf
Impediments to Agricultural Livelihoods among Ethnic Minority Farmers in Post-War Sri Lanka
Displacement and degradation Sinhalese (Buddhist) farming households have more viable agricultural livelihoods than Tamil (Hindu) or Moor (Muslim) households. While all of the Tamil and Moor household in our sample reside in communities that were directly affected by the war, only a small subset of Sinhalese communities are within the former conflict zone. Notably, Sinhalese… Read more »
Peasants, Paddy and Ethnic Space in Sri Lanka’s Post-War Frontier
Marginal placeholders by Bart Klem & Thiruni Kelegama, The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol.47, Issue 2, 2020 ABSTRACT This study explores the political significance of peasant identities, rice cultivation and land struggles in the context of civil war. It comprises two agrarian settlements in Sri Lanka’s former war zone: a state-sponsored Sinhala settlement colony (Weli… Read more »
Peasant Politics, Frontier Colonization and the Cunning State in Sri Lanka
The lure of land by Thiruni Kelegama & Benedikt Korf, Modern Asian Studies, Vol.57, Issue 6, UK, November, 2023 Abstract This paper studies the contradictions of peasant politics in Sri Lanka’s dry zone frontier in a highly militarized colonization scheme (‘System L’ of the Mahaweli Development Programme in Weli Oya in northern Sri Lanka). Through… Read more »
TCHR: Sinhala Colonisation 2000
by K Sachithanandan, Tamil Centre for Human Rights, Paris, 2ooo Presented to the UN Human Rights Council, Geneva, March/April 2000 The original text was produced in Tamil by the Author in 1980s TCHR Sinhala Colonisation 2000 K Sachithanandan SINHALA COLONISATION IN THE HEREDITARY TAMIL REGIONS OF THE ISLAND OF SRI LANKA An appeal to… Read more »