The deafening din of explosions; chaotic coughs through the black smoke; mechanical murmurs of invading tanks, as the international community looks away. The indigenous civilians of the land - retreating in tears. Forced to leave their homes without the remains of loved ones, for family members and martyrs are not distinct. Through their pain, they strive to survive clutching to the dream, that the homeland they loved was not lost. As they navigate the forced disorder, they maintain the belief that the oasis they had built will not be drained. Does this tragedy sound familiar?

In an article for the Jacobin, former Australian senator Lee Rhiannon, draws upon Ben Hiller's new book "Losing Santhia: Life and Loss in the Struggle for Tamil Eelam", and argues the need to stand in solidarity Tamils who have faced genocide by the "exclusivist, chauvinist Sinhala-Buddhist state".

Sinhalese majoritarianism remains a problem in Sri Lanka, said anthropologist Syed Mohammad Ali, calling on it to be “rolled back” to achieve reconciliation on the island.

Writing in The Express Tribune, an English-language daily based in Pakistan, he compared the history of the island to that of Rwanda, stating that...

The spectre of the LTTE is “is always raised by the Sinhala-majority political parties, ahead of an election” notes R.K. Radhakrishnan in Frontline magazine on Tuesday, after a former Tamil fighter was arrested in Kilinochchi this week.

"Although there has been no terror incident involving the Tamils in Sri Lanka since the conclusion of the war between the Sri Lankan state and the Tamil Tigers in 2009, the LTTE bogey is always raised by the Sinhala-majority political parties, ahead of an election,” he writes. “It is no different for the presidential election to be held on November 16.”

Sri Lanka’s former defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa may evade accountability for war crimes if he wins next month’s presidential elections, warned Beth Van Schaack, stating that plaintiffs pursuing cases against him in the USA are “racing against time”.

Van Schaack, the former Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor of Human Rights at Stanford Law School and former Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the Office of Global Criminal Justice at the US State Department, went on to state,

Chris Slee, a refugee rights activist in Melbourne and a founding member of the Tamil Refugee Council, wrote on how Sri Lanka continues to be an island where Tamils are under threat as the Australian government looks to deport a family of four this week.

See extracts reproduced below. Read the full piece on Green Left here.

On September 18 the Federal Court will hear an appeal by a Tamil family against their impending deportation from Australia to Sri Lanka.

This year marks 36 years since the Black July pogroms. The brutal state-sponsored violence by Sinhala mobs lasted a week and saw the death of at least 3,000 Tamils, destruction of 5,000 shops, and displacement of over 150,000 Tamils. At least 500 Tamil women were raped and many families were burned alive. It also prompted the first large exodus of Tamils: 500,000 fled the island, giving seed to a global Tamil diaspora. 

Twenty-nine years ago, Vellupillai Viyazhamma’s son, V. Ranjan, was forcibly disappeared. Viyazhamma appeared before multiple commissions and inquiries over the years, refreshing her trauma each time in a desperate attempt to find answers to her endless question — what happened to my son? Last week, Viyazhamma passed away in Keppapilavu. At least twenty-one mothers, including Viyazhamma, have died in their pursuit to learn the truth about their disappeared loved ones.