Introduction: The killing of the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Velupillai Pirapaharan, has brought an end to a stage in the development of the Tamil National Liberation Struggle.…
[Authors note: Edited text of a speech at the Jaffna Hindu College Old Boys Association (UK) Social Event: (31 October 2009)] Thank you very much for inviting me as Chief Guest. This…
– UTHR (J), 18th Sept, 2009 I did not expect the Rajani commemoration to be a posthumous Nuremburg Trial for Velupillai Prabhakaran, as Dayapala Thiranagama seems to suggest ((London). Though Dayapala now…
The evening was good but perhaps Rajani deserved a bit better. She always told it like it was, named things by their name, confronted reality frontally. That quintessential spirit of Rajani, her…
Part 3 The refurbished metal “Queen of Jaffna” gracefully strode up to the platform in Medawachchiya by 10.30 am – the time I usually start to begin to consider the prospect of…
Baby Elephants- dearly beloved elders were killed before their tender eyes Baby Elephants-arms, legs, teeth shriveled with the pain of the bullet Baby Elephants- loose wrinkled skin hangs off starving, haunted frames…
The stakes of life and death, hope and despair, peace and conflict are now higher than they were when the war was declared “over”. The Tiger was declared dead, and the Lion…
Stop this struggle He pleads Of his comrades A revolutionary leader Broken in pain In State Custody They set me on the wrong path He blames, pointing to his friends A young…
In recent weeks there has been some talk about a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) as something that will allow Sri Lanka to come to terms with its troubled past and move…
(The author is formerly of the Ceylon Civil Service and Retired Senior Professional of the Asian Development Bank.) Recent developments, including the statements made by President Rajapakse and his brother Basil Rajapakse,…
The results of the elections to the Jaffna Municipality and Vavuniya Urban Council are an instructive measure of the distance to be traveled for peace, reconciliation and national unity. In both cases…
There is no getting away from it; the scale of abstention in theJaffna Municipal Council (JMC) elections has sent an unambiguous message. The people of Jaffna have rejected the UPFA controlled Sinhala…
The first post war election results generates some serious propositions regarding the future of democracy in Sri Lanka in general, in the North East –once accepted as the traditional Thamil Provinces, in…
It appears to me that the TNA and TULF might have got more of the Tamil votes than EPDP in Jaffna. Out of 13 seats for the UPFA, 4 have gone to…
Sri Lanka was once a ‘model democracy’ with a welfare state and social indicators that were the envy of the developing world. Hence, there was great optimism that life would return to…
