Booker Prize–winning author Arundhati Roy has drawn parallels between the ongoing genocide in Gaza and Sri Lanka’s mass atrocities against Tamils, warning that world leaders are “watching what Netanyahu can get away with” and setting a new “bar” for state violence.
In an interview with journalist Mehdi Hasan for Zeteo, Roy described the situation in Gaza as “a genocide unfolding before us, in a way which human beings have never seen before.”
“What is worrying, is that all of these big great leaders are watching what Netanyahu can get away with in Gaza, and that is the bar that is being set. I mean, at one point it was what happened in Sri Lanka. Now, it’s Gaza.”
Roy’s remarks reference the Mullivaikkal genocide, during which Sri Lanka’s military massacred tens of thousands of Tamil civilians in 2009. The United Nations and multiple international investigations have since documented indiscriminate shelling of hospitals, starvation sieges, and the execution of surrendering Tamils.
A long-time critic of state power
Arundhati Roy, best known for The God of Small Things, which won the 1997 Booker Prize, has been an outspoken critic of authoritarianism in India and beyond. She has consistently highlighted the impunity surrounding the Sri Lankan state’s crimes and expressed solidarity with Tamil victims.
Writing in The Guardian in 2009, Roy condemned India’s silence on what she described as “a racist war on Tamils.” She has since characterised the final stages of Sri Lanka’s war as “a planned extermination” of the Tamil population, urging international accountability and warning that any domestic process would serve only to “whitewash” the atrocities.
Parallels between Israel and Sri Lanka
A Kfir jet emblazoned with a lion sits in a Sri Lankan hangar. (Courtesy: Chamal Pathirana)
Roy’s comparison reflects growing awareness of the parallels between the two states’ military tactics. Both governments have faced accusations of using starvation as a weapon of war, indiscriminate aerial bombardment, and disinformation campaigns to justify mass civilian deaths.
Sri Lanka procured significant Israeli military technology, including the IAI Kfir fighter jets that became central to its bombing campaigns across the Tamil homeland. Between the 1990s and 2000s, Colombo purchased at least sixteen Kfirs, used extensively in attacks on civilian areas.
Israel’s current siege tactics in Gaza — cutting off food, water, and medicine — mirror those employed by Sri Lankan forces in 2009, when humanitarian convoys were blocked and hospitals targeted. Human rights groups have warned that the global failure to hold Sri Lanka accountable set a precedent now being replicated in Palestine.
A global pattern of impunity
Roy’s warning underscores fears that international silence over genocidal violence emboldens other states. “What happened in Sri Lanka” has become, as she put it, a grim benchmark - now replaced by Gaza. Her comments arrive amid mounting global outrage over Israel’s bombardment, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
