Refusing a Neoliberal Peace in The Incomplete Thombu
Today Sri Lanka faces its worst economic crisis since independence. In the coming months, people’s hardships will only worsen as more austerity is forced on them. The present crisis is a result…
Jaffna
Who Will Punish the Perpetrators?
The images are stark and compelling. The STF men are stoic and menacing. They stand unmoving, machine guns clasped tightly to their chests, their faces obscured by motorcycle helmets. The women are…
The Brother Who Never Came Back: 15 Years Since the Disappearance of Subramaniam Ramachandran
“Even today I believe he will return but if he doesn’t, let him remain missing. If you want to report that he disappeared on the 15th, you can do that. We would…
Water Pumps and Chickens: Rhetoric vs Reality in the North
December 19, 2021. Jaffna town. 6 am. Three motorcycles parked one behind the other at an angle with headlights on. Two armed military personnel, clad in black, on each motorcycle. Women headed…
Tracing the Roots of Drug Addiction in the North
Drug abuse is a menace that many societies are attempting to come to grips with. There has been a global rise in the number of drug users while accessing the substances has…
The Gradual Renaissance of Arts and Crafts in the North
A destructive civil war, social upheaval, market forces and plastic have all played a part in the gradual erosion of Jaffna’s rich legacy of arts and crafts. A major dyeing and weaving…
Braving Harsh Repression, Human Rights Defenders in the North Soldier On
The sentiments are unanimous. Under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency and government, Sri Lanka’s human rights defenders in the north are being threatened, harassed and intimidated on a scale never experienced before. Interviews…
Evoking the Undead Tiger, the Eternal Bogeyman: The Consequences of Forgetting the Past
“An alleged former combatant who was “rehabilitated”. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is the armed group that the Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa government claim they defeated in May 2009.…
We Will Not Forget
We will not forget Mullivaikkal, the shot, the strafed, the scissored, and the cluster-bombed. We will not forget holes in roofs, holes in water tanks, holes in heads. We will not…
A Review: Arumuga Navalar and ‘Heritage History’ Deconstructed
Ratnajeevan Hoole, 2020, London: Thesam Publications, i-xxvii, 327 pages. Professor Ratnajeevan H. Hoole’s book on Jaffna Heritage Histories is a fascinating critique of several strands of invented recent histories of Sri Lanka’s…
Thirty Years On: Pain of the Northern Muslims is Forgotten
“And home isn’t here and home isn’t there” – Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour Every story of ethnic cleansing is heart breaking. Some of them have been almost forgotten, overlooked in…
Black October: 30 Years Since, Where Are We?
In October 1990, some 75,000 Muslims in the Northern Province (about five percent of the province’s total) were forcibly expelled from their homeland by the LTTE. In some places the rebels gave…
Disappearances in Sri Lanka: Struggles by Families and Reprisals
In different parts of Sri Lanka, families of the disappeared came together to hold events to commemorate the UN Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on August 30. In Digana (Central province), families held…
Senthooran: Black July Through the Eyes of a Survivor
It has been 37 years since the anti-Tamil pogrom of July 1983, a riot that set the country ablaze and sparked a 30-year long and bloody war. But even after nearly four…
Navaly Church Bombing – 25 Years On
In July 1995 the St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Navaly, Jaffna, was filled with displaced Tamils seeking refuge and safety from the war. People in Navaly, including members of the…