OHCHR Report on Human Rights in Sri Lanka – OHCHR report Sri Lanka 63rd session Sept 2026 Pasumai Thaayagam’s oral statement on HC’s report begins at 1:07:39 –4th Meeting – 63rd Session of Human Rights Council | UN Web TV. PEARL oral statement – https://x.com/PEARL_Action/status/2097363520773869854/video/1 *** High Commissioner Volker Turk’s Remarks to UNHRC’s Interactive Dialogue… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Politics
What It Took to Dismantle the Most Powerful Company in the World
by William Dalrymple, The New York Times, August 28, 2026 Mr. Dalrymple is the author of “The Anarchy” and other books on the history of the East India Company. At noon on Feb. 13, 1788, huge crowds gathered outside Parliament to witness members of the House of Lords process into Westminster Hall. They were there… Read more »
A Disputed, Divisive, Conditional “Amnesty Law” for the PKK
Much Ado About What? by Yavuz Baydar on Substack, August 14, 2026 Shaped by Erdoğan, Bahçeli and Öcalan, the law opens a wider debate on Turkey’s future — peace gesture or further regime consolidation? Turkey’s chronic “system crisis,” spanning over a decade and pushing the country deeper into hard‑core autocratic rule, has reached a notable… Read more »
How Turkey’s PKK Amnesty Law Entwines Kurds’ Hopes with Erdogan’s Ambitions
The first legislation to emerge from direct negotiations with Abdullah Ocalan offers a path to ending Turkey’s war with the PKK while potentially giving President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the votes he needs to remain in power for a third term. France24 report on dissolution of SDF, August 26, 2026: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/turkey-says-dissolution-of-kurdish-led-group-crucial-for-syrian-stability/vi-AA2aYnrR?ocid=socialshare by Amberin Zaman, Al-Monitor, Washington,… Read more »
Adayaalam: The Illusion of Reform
The Continuing Erosion of Civic Space in the North-East by Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research, Jaffna, August 19, 2026 Journalism, activism, political mobilization, and memorialization remain at risk in the Northern and Eastern Provinces (North-East), and civic space continues to be under threat. In 2025, the Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research (ACPR) released a report… Read more »
India Today: 582 Skeletons, Including Children, Discovered in Sri Lanka Mass Grave
The remains are believed to be of civilians who disappeared during Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war, which broke out between government forces and the ethnic Tamil rebels, who sought an independent state. by Abhishek De, India Today, August 20, 2026 Excavation at a mass grave in Sri Lanka has led to the discovery of 582… Read more »
Turkey’s Peace Process with the Kurds
History, Challenges, and the Path Forward by Washington Kurdish Institute, September 26, 2025 The Kurdish people, a distinct ethnic and linguistic group native to the Middle East, have long aspired to self-determination. In the aftermath of World War I, the victorious powers initially floated the idea of an independent Kurdistan in the 1920 Treaty of… Read more »
The New Peace Initiative and Kurdish Perspective
by A.Kadir Yildirim, Edward P. Djerejian Center for the Middle East issue brief, Baylor Institute for Public Policy, Rice University, Hoyuston, TX, June 18, 2025 Background on Kurdish Conflict In March 2025, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) embarked on a groundbreaking peace initiative in Turkey to resolve a conflict that spans over four decades and… Read more »
BTF: Chemmani Overview
by British Tamils Forum, London, July 30, 2026 BTF Chemmani Mass Graves – Overview of Forensic findings & International Legal Frameworks Chemmani Mass Graves An Interim Overview of Forensic Findings and International Legal Frameworks The forensic evidence unearthed at the Chemmani mass grave site points to potential violations across several major international legal regimes: •… Read more »
Threats to Civic Space in Sri Lanka
A perfect storm: Digitalisation, new laws, draft bills, and threats to civic space in Sri Lanka by Sanjana Hattotuwa in his blog, Colombo, August 18, 2026 Since 2023, Sri Lanka has enacted, circulated or in some way referred to at least 7 laws and draft laws that bear directly on what citizens and organisations can say,… Read more »
Why Eelam Tamils Must Read Robespierre
The Vortex of Virtue and Lessons of Revolution by Krishna Ambalavanar, Ezhugai Magazine, July 28, 2026 The French Revolution of 1789, which erupted at the end of the eighteenth century, remains a monumental watershed moment that permanently altered the course of global history. . Maximilien Robespierre emerged as the most central, influential, and intensely debated leader… Read more »
Contemporary Dimension of the Vaddukoddai Resolution
A Progressive Leftist Critical Review by Krishna Ambalavanar, Elugai News and in his blog, August 11, 2026 Introduction: History and Contemporary Relevance The Vaddukoddai Resolution, adopted on May 14, 1976, near Jaffna, remains one of the most defining milestones in the political history of the Tamil national struggle in Sri Lanka. Convened under the leadership… Read more »
ACF: The Muttur Massacre
Justice Delayed is Justice Denied by Action Contre le Faim, Groundviews, Colombo, August 4, 2026 2026 ACF report: ACF rapport-muttur-2026-en-web-compressed_74178155e0 Photo courtesy of ACF (from 2018) “For Muttur, and for humanitarians everywhere, we will never forget, and we will never give up.” Perrine Benoist, Action Against Hunger Co-Director General. “Just after the murders I went to… Read more »
SLCPJ: 43 Years Since Black July: The Accountability Gap Revisited
by Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace & Justice, London, July 20, 2026 Black July remains one of the darkest chapters in Sri Lanka’s post-independence history. Every year, SLC commemorates July 1983, when the Sri Lankan state committed a 7-day anti-Tamil pogrom, killing around 3,000 Tamil civilians and injuring, raping, and forcibly displacing thousands more. In… Read more »
Minority Representation in a New Political Era
Who gets heard? by Aingkaran Kugathasan, The Sunday Observer, Colombo, July 19, 2026 * For decades, minority politics in Sri Lanka has been shaped by a fundamental question: who speaks for communities that often feel unheard within the State? The political changes of 2024 appeared to offer a different answer, that a national political movement… Read more »
Whose Self-Determination?
Tamil Guardian editorial, July 17, 2026 When Argentina’s players unfurled a banner reading “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” after their World Cup semifinal victory over England this week, the British state required no time for reflection. Within a day, Downing Street had urged FIFA to investigate, ministers had denounced the gesture, and the Prime Minister’s spokesperson… Read more »
How Palestinians Are Building a Digital Archive That Can’t Be Erased
Distributed backups, cyber resilience, and a half-million records are preserving Palestinian history beyond any single building or border. by Wired, San Francisco, July 6, 2026 Palestinian culture has been looted, destroyed, and displaced for decades. Since October 2023, however, the destruction of Gaza’s cultural institutions has accelerated, prompting a team in the occupied West Bank to build something they hope cannot… Read more »
Gaza and the Problem of Moral Stupidity
Articulating the Tamil experience — Editor: Entering the Western public square required that you suppress your own grief and fury. Palestinian suffering was admissible only when abstracted from its own content – drained of the names of villages, the mechanics of land seizure, the grammar of permit and curfew and demolition order – and repackaged… Read more »
ITJP: Sri Lanka’s Office of Missing Persons (OMP)
Architecture of Denial by International Truth & Justice Project, Sri Lanka, South Africa, July 16, 2026 ITJP ENG_ARCHITECTURE-OF-DENIAL-SRI-LANKA-S-OFFICE-ON-MISSING-PERSONS Summary Sri Lanka’s first permanent disappearance commission, the Office on Missing Persons (OMP), mandated in August 2016,1 has spectacularly failed to deliver truth, accountability or meaningful redress over the last decade. The OMP in Sri Lanka has… Read more »
Hindu: Sri Lanka’s Minority Parties Launch Common Platform
For Shared Concerns by Meera Sirinivasan, The Hindu, Chennai, July 13, 2026 Prominent political parties representing Sri Lanka’s Tamil-speaking ethnic minorities have launched a platform to voice shared concerns around the pending political solution to the island’s national question and the persisting challenges to their communities’ land rights. Addressing a press conference in Colombo on Monday (July 13, 2026), leaders from political parties and alliances —… Read more »