by Suvojit Bagchi, BBC, London, May 28, 2025 Could India’s decades-long jungle insurgency finally be approaching its end? Last week, the country’s most-wanted Maoist, Nambala Keshava Rao – popularly known as Basavaraju – was killed along with 26 others in a major security operation in the central state of Chhattisgarh. Home Minister Amit Shah called… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Military
FT: India Corners Maoist Rebels after Decades-long Struggle
Death of Naxalite insurgency’s leader a moment of triumph for Narendra Modi’s government by John Reed and Jyotsna Singh in New Delhi, Financial Times, London, May 23, 2025 Indian communist rebel Nambala Keshava Rao was one of the country’s most wanted men, but few images of him are publicly available. A photograph from his college days,… Read more »
Operation Sindoor
And the Evolution of India’s Military Strategy Against Pakistan by Arzan Tarapore, War on the Rocks, Washington, DC, May 19, 2025 Once more unto the breach, India struck inside Pakistan in response to a terrorist attack. Once more, the two sides escalated — again to unprecedented levels — before agreeing to a ceasefire. It is… Read more »
SLC: Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day 2025
Memory, Mourning and the Long Struggle for Justice by Sri Lanka Campaign, London, May 16, 2025 Sixteen years after the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, Tamil survivors and families of the disappeared are still fighting for one of the fundamental human rights: the right to mourn. Every May 18, Mullivaikkal Day serves as both… Read more »
What’s Legally Allowed in War
How U.S. military lawyers see Israel’s invasion of Gaza—and the public’s reaction to it—as a dress rehearsal for a potential conflict with a foreign power like China. by Colin Jones, The New Yorker, April 25, 2025 This past July, Geoffrey Corn, a law professor at Texas Tech and a former judge advocate general in the… Read more »
Richard Armitage Obituary
Richard Armitage has notoriety among Tamils for arming one side – the Sri Lankan government – which fatally destabilized the 2002 ceasefire between the LTTE & the government. – ED Richard L. Armitage, 79, Dies; State Department Official in a Turbulent Era While serving as Colin Powell’s deputy during the Iraq war, he found himself… Read more »
What is the Batalanda Report?
by Tamil Guardian, London, March 11, 2025 Following a disastrous interview with Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan by former Sri Lankan president Ranil Wickremesinghe, the Batalanda report and his role in facilitating torture has come into the spotlight. We take a look at the report and at Wickremesinghe’s alleged role. What is the Batalanda Report? Established… Read more »
ITJP: Dossiers
by International Truth & Justice Project Sri Lanka, South Africa, ongoing ITJP dossiers Sisira Mendis ITJP The-case-against-Sisira-Mendis-final 2016 Major General (ret.) Jagath Dias ITJP_Jagath_Dias_dossier-final_210816_120919 2017 General (ret.) Jagath Jayasuriya Profile & Command Responsibility ITJP_JJ_fact_sheet_1_v8.1 Joseph Camp Role ITJP_JJ_fact_sheet_2_v5 Attacks on Hospitals 2009 ITJP_JJ_fact_sheet_3_v6 Executions & Disappearances ITJP_JJ_fact_sheet_4_v4 Conflict Timeline & Map ITJP_JJ_fact_sheet_5_v5 August 2017 Major General… Read more »
TG: Sri Lanka’s Budget: Funding Occupation
Tamil Guardian editorial, February 22, 2025 Sri Lanka’s new president unveiled a much awaited budget this week, his first since taking up office. The self-proclaimed Marxist leader pledged spending that largely aligned with conditions set out in a $2.9 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout. But, as commentators have pointed out, the budget demonstrates several… Read more »
Discovery of Skeletal Remains in Chemmani Reignites Fears of Mass Graves in Jaffna
The discovery of human skeletal remains near Chemmani, Jaffna, has once again raised fears and painful memories among Tamil residents by Tamil Guardian, London, February 17, 2025 The discovery of human skeletal remains near Chemmani, Jaffna, has once again raised fears and painful memories among Tamil residents, recalling the Chemmani mass graves that were uncovered… Read more »
ITJP: Gamini Silva Dossier
by International Truth & Justice Project Sri Lanka, South Africa, February 17, 2025 Gamini-Silva-Public-Dossier_final ITJP Dossiers Gamini Silva [Full legal name: Palliyaguruge Sarath Gamini Silva (a.k.a. Gamini de Silva)] Date of Birth: September 3, 1953 Career: • Member of the National Police Commission (May 2023 – April 2024);1 [Retired from police force in December 2013];2… Read more »
NESoHR: Massacres of Tamils 1956 – 2008
by North East Secretariat for Human Rights, Vanni, 2010 This Book is dedicated to the thousands of Eelam Tamils who lost their life at the hands of the Sri Lankan and Indian State Armed Forces. NESoHR Massacres-of-Tamils-1956-2008 Originally posted on Sangam at Massacres of Tamil 1956 – 2008 Documented by North East Secretariat for Human… 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 »
TGTE: Thaiyiddy Buddhist Temple, Symbol of Sinhala Occupation, Should be Removed
Tamil Cultural Genocide for Assimilation into Sinhala Buddhism by Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, February 11, 2025 Following the 2009 Mullivaikkal genocide of the Tamils, the Sri Lankan State capitalized on Eelam Tamils’ relatively weak position domestically to brazenly engage in cultural and heritage genocide—forcing the assimilation (“Sinhalization”) of the Tamils and Muslims into the… Read more »
NESoHR Archives
by NorthEast Secretariat for Human Rights, Kilinochchi, Vanni 2004-2017 NESoHR-Compilation-of Human Rights Reports With-Page-Numbers 2005 to 2009 NESoHR Massacres-of-Tamils-1956-2008 English Originally posted: Massacres of Tamil 1956 – 2008 Documented by North East Secretariat for Human Rights Manitham January 2010 NESoHR’s Publication about Massacres on Tamils in German 2004 Opening of NESoHR July 9 2004 TamilNet… Read more »
Tamil Survivors of Sri Lanka’s Brutal Civil War Live in Fear
— and disempowerment, 15 years on by Krishnan Francis, Associated Press, New York, May 31, 2024 MULLAITIVU, Sri Lanka (AP) — At the site of a bloody battlefield that marked the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, Singaram Soosaimuthu fishes every day with his son, casting nets and reeling them in. It is a skill… Read more »
Locating Sri Lanka in Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy 2023
by Aditya Gowdara Shivamurthy, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, August 14, 2023 Introduction Since the establishment of their diplomatic relations in 1948,[1] Sri Lanka and the United States (US) have had a tumultuous relationship broadly spanning the following phases: From the 1950s to 1970s, the US viewed Sri Lanka through the lens of the Cold War;… Read more »
A Magic Wand
by Tisaranee Gunasekara, Colombo Telegraph, November 17, 2024 “Wishes come true, Not free.” Stephen Sondheim – In to the Woods The Grimm version is known wider but the Turkish one cuts deeper. In both tales, the boy goes in search of fear and finds a crown. In the Grimm version, fear comes when a pail of cold… Read more »
The Will to Freedom
An Inside View of Tamil Resistance by Adele Balasingham, London, October 6, 2001 Front Cover Maps Photos Introduction 1 New Horizons 2 Inside The Tigers’ Den 3 Turbulent Times in India 4 The Indo LTTE War 5 Hunted By The Indian Army 6 Premadasa – LTTE Talks 7 Living amid War in Jaffna 8 Tribulations in Vanni Post Script Annexure Abbreviations Back Cover… Read more »
Washington’s Mixed Messages
Tamil Guardian editorial, October 12, 2024 It has been a week of mixed messaging from Washington on Sri Lanka. In Geneva on Wednesday, the United States as a leading member of the Core Group, successfully led a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution on accountability for war crimes and called for an end to impunity… Read more »