Features

Features

Latest news from and about the homeland

Sri Lanka’s newly released preliminary census figures from 2024 illustrated how the Tamil North-East, particularly the Vanni region, remains the worst-affected part of the island in terms of population loss and stagnation. According to the “Census of Population and Housing – 2024 Preliminary Report” by Sri Lanka’s Department of Census and Statistics, the three districts that make up the core…

Canada gets tough on Sri Lankan rights abusers?

He lives on a suburban street in Ajax in a two-storey brick house with a double garage and fruit trees in the garden.

The quiet neighbourhood east of Toronto is worlds away from the civil war Raja Kasturiarachchi left behind when he moved to Canada after retiring from the Sri Lankan National Police.

But if he came to Canada to escape the past, he hasn't.

The Canada Border Services Agency says it intends to deport Mr. Kasturiarachchi because he was complicit in war crimes.

As a former Sri Lankan police chief, the CBSA says, Mr. Kasturiarachchi is to blame for “systematic” and “widespread” abuses committed by the force “on a regular ongoing basis.”

‘Disappearances and killings will continue’ – Army chief

Disappearances and killings of will continue as long as ‘anti-terrorist’ operations are continuing, Sri Lanka’s Army commander, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka said last week in a interview to British investigative reporters.
 
Asked about human rights abuses in the newly captured Eastern province, the commander replied: “This area is not a normal area.

A return to full-blooded war

With both sides in Sri Lanka's civil war increasingly committed to military means, prospects for peace have all but evaporated.

Sinhala colonisation in the east is cloaked as ‘development’

The current international focus on human rights is insufficient to capture the cold calculations and reasoning in the intentions of the Sri Lankan state’s colonisation of Tamil and Muslim areas.

Mistaking night for day in the new dawn of the east

A review of the al-Jazeera Documentaries, ‘How the East was Won’ and ‘Monks of War’

Witness to Thileepan’s fast

‘As we entered the premises of the Nallur Kandasamy temple we were confronted by a sea of people seated on the white sands under the blazing sun.’
 
Thileepan, the young Tiger leader of Jaffna, took the podium on the 14th September at the Nallur Kandasamy temple to commence his fast- unto-death as a protest against India’s failure to fulfill her pledges, and to mobilise the frustrated sentiments of the Tamils into a national mass upsurgence.
 
Thileepan’s non-violent struggle was unique and extraordinary for its commitment.

The wretched of the earth

The Sri Lankan government may hail the scorching of the east as a victory but for the civilians of the east it is hell on earth.

Mistaking night for day in the new dawn of the east

A review of the al-Jazeera Documentaries, ‘How the East was Won’ and ‘Monks of War’

Sri Lanka economy slides

"There is clear evidence that production in several sectors of the economy was affected by the prevailing security conditions and the tight money policy."

I had hoped he would carry me, now I have to carry him

Displaced since 1990, a Tamil fisherman tells a tale of fleeing one tragedy only to find another catastrophe. Aloysius Premathas, having just seen his son loose his legs in a SLAF air-raid, recounts his familiy’s woes.