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 »
Posts Categorized: International
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
TG: Transitional Justice Cannot Exist Without Truth
Sri Lanka and the continuing erasure of the Eelam Tamil genocide by Simhanjana Gopikrishna Sumathi, Tamil Guardian, London, June 29, 2026 “It happened; therefore, it can happen again…it can happen everywhere.” — Primo Michele Levi, Jewish Holocaust survivor Seventeen years after Mullivaikkal, Sri Lanka continues to stand as one of the starkest examples of… Read more »
Urgent Concerns Regarding the Imminent Deployment of Sri Lankan Forces to Haiti
by International Peace & Justice Project Sri Lanka & 14 other organizations, June 25, 2026 Final Joint Statement Sri Lanka Haiti Deployment_logos_included NGO STATEMENT URGENT CONCERNS REGARDING THE IMMINENT DEPLOYMENT OF SRI LANKAN FORCES TO HAITI 25 June 2026 International human rights and victims’ groups call on the United Nations, the Government of Haiti, and… Read more »
SLC & BTF: No Sri Lankan Military Deployment to Haiti
Until there is credible accountability, independent vetting and justice for victims by Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace & Justice & British Tamils Forum joint statement, London, May 6, 2026 The Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace & Justice (SLC) and the British Tamils Forum (BTF) are deeply alarmed by reports that Sri Lanka may once again… Read more »
Digital Rights Foundation’s Sri Lanka Chapter
Fragments, not architecture: how a Digital Rights Foundation report’s Sri Lanka chapter misreads a pervasive surveillance state …The authors Prihesh Ratnayake and Omar Rajarathnam mention Tamils and Muslims without treating unequal exposure as the central analytical problem, which is where it belongs, since Sri Lanka’s security state has never distributed suspicion evenly and surveillance lands hardest… Read more »
UNHRC 62: Sri Lanka Core Group Statement
by UK Ambassador Eleanor Sanders on behalf of Sri Lanka Core Group, Geneva, June 16, 2026 Thank you Mr President. This statement is by the Sri Lanka Core Group comprising Canada, Malawi, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and the United Kingdom. High Commissioner, we thank your Office for its continued work on Sri Lanka. We acknowledge government… Read more »
Action Against Hunger Calls for a New Investigation
Twenty Years On, the Killing of 17 Humanitarian Workers Remains Unpunished by Action Contre le Faim, Paris, June 15, 2026 Twenty years ago, on August 4, 2006, 17 staff members of Action Against Hunger, engaged in delivering humanitarian aid, were executed in our office in Muttur, Sri Lanka. They were wearing T-shirts and vests clearly… Read more »
Prabhakaran, Tamil identity and TVK
Is Vijay building a neo-Dravidian project? by Ajmal Abbas in New Delhi, India Today, May 20, 2026 Repeatedly invoking the memory of Prabhakaran and the emotional legacy of the Tamil cause, Vijay appears to be crafting a new ideological synthesis of the welfare-driven legacy of Dravidianism with cultural assertiveness of Tamil nationalism. In 2008, at… Read more »