Juwairiya Mohideen: A Portrait in Courage
Thirty years ago, Juwairiya Mohideen was one of the 75,000 Muslims driven out of the North by the LTTE. She and her family were forced to settle as refugees in Puttalam, where…
Puttalam
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…
The ecology of an issue: ‘Save Wilpattu’ on Facebook and Twitter
When over the weekend, senior journalist Amantha Perera sent a link to a post on Facebook asking if it was one that was popular, the answer took me into a brief study…
The Waiting Earth: Communities and cultivators affected by Sri Lanka’s drought
At the time of writing, 488,277 families and 1,665,961 individuals are affected by the on-going drought in Sri Lanka. The country’s rice harvest has been halved, the worst on record in 40…
Paradise Lost: The hidden costs of tourism development in Sri Lanka
August 27 is World Tourism Day. This year, the theme is “promoting universal accessibility.” decided to focus on sustainable tourism – and specifically, on how tourism development has impacted local communities. Tourism is…
#icanChangeSL & #wecanChangeSL: Shaping a new Sri Lanka
Engage with this campaign in Tamil (புதிய இலங்கையை வடிவமைப்போம்…) or Sinhala (ශ්රී ලංකාවේ අනාගතය හැඩගැස්වීම සදහා…) too! ### The Presidential poll of 8 January 2015 inspired the largest number of voters in Sri Lanka’s…
30 Years Ago – The Next Page
To remember Black July, brought together leading documentary filmmakers, photographers, activists, theorists and designers, in Sri Lanka and abroad, to focus on just how deeply the anti-Tamil pogrom in 1983 shaped our imagination, lives,…
Muslims and the Eastern Provincial Council Elections in Sri Lanka: Kingmakers or Pawns?
Photo via As the campaigning for the Eastern Provincial Council (EPC) election concludes, there are only a few absolute certainties as to the outcome – most notably that there will be no…
Who Killed Razeek? And Why? Unanswered Questions Two Years After His Abduction
: The report below is a follow-up from the last update about Mr. Pattani Razeek’s case, which was published on 17th August 2011 and can be read here.) 1. Background and key…
Who Killed Razeek?
Mr. Pattani Razeek’s case is a rare instance where the body of a disappeared person has been found, based on information given by arrested suspects. The arrest of key suspects is itself…
Resource book for historians, researchers and media: A year of tweeting from Groundviews
Visualisation of our Twitter followers. See larger version here. We used the web service Tweet Book to capture all our tweets over the past year in a single PDF. We’ve tweeted thousands of…
21 Years of Hopeless Existence
Image credit PaperMag June 20th was World Refugee Day. For many it is about remembering the plights of many people the world over, who today are without rights, a state and an…
Old Mannar Road and IDPs Access
Photo of Mannar-Puttalam road, courtesy Panoramio Environmentalists have gone to courts demanding that the road connecting Mannar and Puttalam that runs through the Wilpattu National Park be permanently closed. The opening of…
Content digest: Full coverage of the 18th Amendment, 1 – 9 September 2010
was read well over 22,000 times from 1 – 9 September, when content and debates around the 18th Amendment to the constitution reached their peak. Over 170 comments were featured in the…