Waking up to migrant employment through Rizana Nafeek
Image via BBC Much is written on Rizana Nafeek’s extremely unfortunate fate in Saudi Arabia (SA). Some written with anger let loose on the government and some on licensed agencies and every…
Human Security
Howling
What shall I do, living in Peru, with this report of systemic failure in U.N. monitoring in Sri Lanka, how bureaucrats drove away from the disaster to come, buried hard- earned stats…
Restrictions and intimidation on journalists covering resettlement process in the Vanni
From After more than 11 months of the LLRC report being handed over to the President, the above recommendation remains far from reality, despite the National Action Plan to Implement Recommendations of…
“Nothing to call our own…” – The plight of the recently returned, resettled and landless IDPs in Sri Lanka’s North
Recently returned to Puthumathalan “As you drive past pile upon pile of corroding vehicles stacked one above the other, past pots, pans, sarees, slippers and plates (that once belonged to the people…
Menik Farm: The tragic end of a bitter saga, from detention to forced relocation
These were some of the questions that people who had fallen victim to the Sri Lankan Government’s latest resettlement program asked us when we visited them last Sunday 30th September 2012. The…
Putting paid to the Government’s false claims: The new IDPs in Sri Lanka
Editors note: On the day Menik Farm was officially closed, an urgent memo was circulated widely on the fate of the IDPs from Keppapilavu. The memo adds vital context to the following…
Update on the struggle to go home in post war Sri Lanka: Manthuvil in the Mullativu district
In relation to the 6 families who were staying at Our Lady of Velankanni church, original article available here. Due to insistence of the families, the Army had agreed to vacate the…
Sri Lanka’s forgotten mass graves: Google Earth and remembering the dead in Nandikadal
was the first look at the end of the war in Sri Lanka through historical satellite imagery freely accessible via Google Earth. The article was an open invitation for those using Google…
The struggle to go home in post war Sri Lanka: Manthuvil in the Mullativu district
Last Friday, 14th September, I visited friends from Manthuvil and Puthukudiruppu, both in the Mullativu district who are trying to resettle in their own houses. One friend has a lovely house in…
Who burnt houses of returning Muslim IDPs in Mannar?
“We can see how the people are suffering but who are we to tell? Nothing can be done. Who can fight against the Government? The news on the ground is that the…
The end of war in Sri Lanka, captured for posterity by Google Earth
When in early 2009, UNOSAT released satellite imagery of what later turned out to be the final weeks of Sri Lanka’s 27-year old war with the LTTE, the images were met with…
The Disappeared in Sri Lanka
Photo from HRW I am honoured to have been asked to speak at this Vigil, to Remember the Disappeared in Sri Lanka on this important occasion, of The International Day of the…
Open letter to Mark Davis, presenter of SBS Dateline on ‘Sri Lanka’s New Wave’
[Editors note: Watch SBS Dateline’s Sri Lanka’s New Wave, broadcast first in Australia on 28 August 2012, here.] Dear Mark, I am intensely troubled by the tenor of your report on Sri Lankan…
The struggle to go home in post war Sri Lanka: The story of Puthukudiruppu
Rajini (pseudonym) was amongst the ten women we met in a church in Vavuniya district about a week ago. At the time she and two of her children were living in Kadirgama…
Undocumented Sri Lankan Migration to Italy: Its Rise and Fall
Photo courtesy Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images More than ten years ago the smuggling of people out of Sri Lanka by boat was thriving. While Australia is currently the preferred destination of these smuggled migrants,…
