Posts Categorized: Military

Inside Camps, Outside Battlefields

Security and Survival for Tamil Women by Nimmi Gowrinathan, St Antony’s International Review, 9, no. 1 (2013): 11-32, Oxford, UK Gowrinathan Inside Camps Outside Battlefields 2013 Abstract In May of 2009, images of displaced Tamil people trapped behind the barbed wireof internment camps flashed across the world. “Everybody wanted to get out of those camps, but they… Read more »

Myanmar’s Ethnic Divisions Soften After Coup

‘Now We Are United’ Very much wishful thinking going on in this article!! — Editor by Hannah Beech, The New York Times, April 30, 2021 Amid the resistance to military rule, some are saying that democracy can’t flourish without respecting the minorities that have been persecuted for decades. The Myanmar military’s disinformation was crude but effective…. Read more »

Can the Sri Lanka Army be Described as a Counterinsurgency Force?

by Rob Pinney, Small Wars Journal, Virginia, USA, June 23, 2014 SL military counterinsurgency force or not As potentially the ‘first counterinsurgency victory of the twenty-first century’, the Sri Lankan experienceturns much of this conventional wisdom on its head.  The ‘Sri Lankan model’, as it has become known,demonstrated a new way of conducting counterinsurgency operations – one… Read more »

P2P Demands & Pledge

by North East Civil Society Forum, February 7, 2021 P2P Demands and Pledge Pottuvil to Polikandy (P2P) – Demands and Pledge 1) We Tamils have been fighting for over seventy years for self Determination. We are a nation of people living in the merged North and East in the island of Ceylon. We have our… Read more »

The Valvettithurai Massacre

Remembering India’s crimes against Tamils by People for Equality & Relief in Lanka, August 2, 2019 The information on this page was largely compiled from information put together by Nadarajah Anantharajah, the then-secretary of the Citizen Committee Valvettithurai and a survivor of the IPKF massacre. He was detained for two days and severely beaten by… Read more »

India’s My Lai

Published by Hind Mazdoor Kissan Panchayat, 204, Rajaram Roy Road, Bombay 400 004, India. (Courtesy TamilNation.org, accessed 04/19/21) “The IPKF were given strict instructions not to use tactics or weapons that could cause major casualties among the civilian population of Jaffna, who were hostages to the LTTE. The Indian Army have carried out these instructions… Read more »

Evident Truths

American women at war by Nimmi Gowrinathan, Los Angeles Review of Books, April 2, 2021 IN ONE OF CHINUA ACHEBE’s lesser-known short stories, “Girls at War,” an elder government official, Mr. Nwankwo, is shocked when he’s stopped at a checkpoint by Gladys, a young Nigerian woman holding an AK-47. “He simply could not sneer at the girls… Read more »

Arrest Of Jaffna Mayor Manivannan

Attorney At Law by  C.V. Wigneswaran, Colombo Telegraph, April 10, 2021 – C.V. Wigneswaran The arrest of Mayor Viswalingam Manivannan gives food for thought. Few days ago a “B” Report is said to have been filed in the Chief Magistrate’s Court against me. I still do not know what the contents of the B report are. An arrest… Read more »

When War Criminals Run the Government

Not Too Late for the International Community to Vet Sri Lankan Officials by Sondra Anton & Tyler Giannini, JustSecurity, March 16, 2021 (Editor’s Note: This is the latest in a series on the spotlight placed on allegations of war crimes and other abuses in Sri Lanka during the February 22 to March 23, 2021, session… Read more »

ITJP: Death Toll in Sri Lanka’s 2009 War

by International Truth & Justice Project, South Africa, February, 2021 ITJP Death Toll in Sri Lanka‘s 2009 War NOT INCLUDING THE REPORTED DEATHS OF TENS OF THOUSANDS OF SOLDIERS, LTTE CADRES AND CIVILIANS BEFORE 2009 Tamil https://itjpsl.com/assets/press/Tamil-translation-of-ITJP_death_toll-Amended.pdf Sinhala https://itjpsl.com/assets/press/Sinhala_translation_of_ITJP_death_toll.pdf

A Bloodied Accord

After 16 days of bloody battle, IPKF finally captures LTTE stronghold Jaffna After 16 days of bloody battle, the Indians finally captured Jaffna, the stronghold of the Tigers. But the losses have been heavy and could mount further. A report on the conflict and its implications plus exclusive eyewitness account and action pictures from Jaffna…. Read more »

In the Tiger’s Den

‘Any one of our Tiger cubs can take on the IPKF in man-to-man combat and defeat them’ India Today’s Shyam Tekwani was the only photographer present in the combat zone at the height of the battle for Jaffna. Having been taken into Jaffna, skirting the advancing IPKF columns, by the LTTE, Tekwani was witness to… Read more »

There are Constraints

Our immediate stress is on relief, renovation, and rehabilitation: Lt Gen Depinder Singh The overall commander of the IPKF in Sri Lanka is Lt-General Depinder Singh, 58, Masterminding Operation Pawan between Madras and Palaly, the General has so far avoided the press. by S.H. Venkatramani, India Today, November 15, 1987 UPDATED: December 13, 2013 16:29… Read more »

Sri Lanka: A Nation Disintegrates

by Steven R. Weisman, The New York Times, December 13, 1987 IN AN ISLAND in a pristine lake near Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, gunmen guard the sleek new Parliament building, which a terrorist bomb ripped through last August, wounding the Prime Minister and barely missing the President. Downtown, the scattered vacant lots and… Read more »

ITJP & JDS: Dossier on Rear Admiral (Rtd.) Sarath Weerasekara

by Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka & International Truth & Justice Project, Europe & South Africa, November 2020 rear-admiral-sarath-weerasekera August 2020: State Minister of Provincial Councils and Local Government Affairs November 2020: Appointed as Minister of Public Security1 (with control over the Police department, Civil Security department, Police Training College and the Multi-Purpose Development… Read more »

Rajapaksa Lied to ‘Powerful Ambassador’

Over evacuation of Tamils in 2009 – Sri Lankan MP by Tamil Guardian, London, November 24, 2020 File photograph: Mahinda Rajapaksa meets with former US Ambassador Robert O’Blake A Sri Lankan parliamentarian revealed how Mahinda Rajapaksa lied to “an ambassador of the most powerful country” about the evacuation of trapped Tamil civilians in 2009, in… Read more »

Sri Lanka’s Post-War Defence Budget

A systematic review by Kamanthi Wickramasinghe, Daily Mirror, Colombo, February 5, 2020 A systematic review of Sri Lanka’s post-war defence budget reveals that Sri Lanka spends too much on defence and the defence budget is spent inefficiently. The study done by Daniel Alphonsus, who had served as an advisor to Sri Lanka’s finance minister with… Read more »

Sinhalization of the North-East: Kankesanthurai (KKS)

by People for Equality & Relief in Lanka (PEARL), October 26, 2020 Sinhalization of the North-East: Kankesanthurai – People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (pearlaction.org) Kankesanthurai (KKS) is a historic port suburb located in the Northern Province of the island of Sri Lanka. Formerly known as Gayathurai, the region is encompassed by a natural… Read more »