11 years have gone by since the Tamil diaspora community mobilized and took our voices to the streets. We raised our voices in an effort to raise awareness on the genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka. I was 15 at the time, but I remember that day so clearly. It was Mother’s Day, and I was sitting with my family at my grandmother’s house feeling hopeless about what was happening to our people back home. My father and I quickly left to join the thousands of Tamils protesting on University Avenue. After chanting and pleading, we started marching, soon enough we ended up on the Gardiner Expressway.
The Gardiner protest was pivotal in shaping the political identity of many young Tamils. It inspired a new generation of activists and my own in continuing to demand justice for Tamils on the island while also carrying on the fight for liberation. The protest, which occurred on Mothers day, had predominately negative public perception and media coverage, evidenced through their use of language - which often carried racial undertones - and played a role in delegitimizing the protest itself. Rather than centring the story around the genocide and international intervention – the purpose behind the protests, the coverage focused on dominant narratives surrounding the Tamil community as being ‘disruptive’, an ‘inconvenience’ and ‘ungrateful’ and labelling us as ‘others’ and ‘terrorists’ while also removing women from their political agency.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s President is “exploiting the novel coronavirus pandemic to undermine the few checks and balances remaining against authoritarianism and sharpening tensions” writes J S Tissainayagam for the International Policy Digest. “The Sri Lanka president’s rhetoric and actions to contain the pandemic will destabilise Sri Lanka and make him a poster boy in the expanding list of populist-led governments that Western democracies view as a threat.” Following the coronavirus outbreak on the island, Rajapaksa “undertook three sets of actions to sow discord between Sri Lankans...
Marking 15 years since the assassination of Tamil journalist Dharmeratnam Sivaram, we have reproduced a speech delivered by former Tamil Guardian editor Vino Kanapathipillai at a commemoration for the slain journalist in 2010. This speech was delivered in London on Aril 29, 2010 at the fifth anniversary of the death of Sivaram.
Marking 15 years since the killing of Tamil journalist Dharmeratnam Sivaram, popularly known as ‘Taraki’, we have reproduced his final written piece. The article, written in Tamil for the Colombo-based Virakesari newspaper, was published on Sunday April 24, 2005 - just days before Sivaram was murdered.
Sri Lanka’s tea plantation workers “with a history of exploitation face hazards including a lack of masks and overcrowded accommodation,” despite tough lockdown measures across the island, Yasmin Gunaratnam writes for The Guardian . “A caveat on the country’s lockdown order, issued on 20 March, read: ‘Paddy farming and plantation, including work on tea small holdings and fishing activities, are permitted in any district,’” she wrote. “The Ceylon Worker’s Red Flag Union say coronavirus public health measures mean little on estates, There are no facilities to wash hands with soap during a shift...
The coronavirus pandemic has instilled a global sense of panic as the death toll continues to climb.
The current situation in Sri Lanka underlines why an international approach is often the only way of ensuring that perpetrators of war crimes are held accountable for their misconduct, writes Graham Newsome in I nternational Policy Digest.
The mother of a healthcare worker on the frontlines of Britain’s NHS writes about how it feels to be the parent of a key worker during the coronavirus pandemic.
Following the outbreak of coronavirus on the island, “Sri Lanka’s inspector general has ordered police to arrest those who ‘criticise’ officials involved in the coronavirus response, or share ‘fake’ or ‘malicious’ messages about the pandemic,” writes Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “Blanket censorship and threats of arrest for speech not only violate Sri Lanka’s obligations under international human rights law, but are counter-productive,” she added. “Sri Lankans’ concerns that their rights will be respected are particularly crucial since President...