
Refugees in Their Own Land: The Shared Plight of Sri Lankan Tamils and Muslims
I was 10 years old when Muslims were forced to move out of their homes in the North in October 1990. I never again saw or heard about the two Muslim students…
I was 10 years old when Muslims were forced to move out of their homes in the North in October 1990. I never again saw or heard about the two Muslim students…
On December 17, 2022, fishermen in northern Sri Lanka alerted the navy about a boat in distress adrift in the sea. On December 18, the navy rescued a group of 104 people…
Following three decades of bloody and protracted civil war between government forces and the LTTE, the group was dismantled in May 2009. As reported by the U.N. panel formed by Secretary General…
They are a small, tight knit community held together by their shared suffering and insurmountable difficulties. Ever since the start of the 1983 civil war, their lives have been marked by tragedy…
Unsalted Porridge “Where do you suppose they must be serving porridge today?” Most of their mornings dawn with this question. Waking early, standing in line, pot in hand – that steaming hot…
A common theme running through this year’s Colomboscope, entitled Language is Migrant, is the enduring consequences of Sri Lanka’s civil war as seen through the eyes of several young artists based in…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
July. Referred to as Black July to mark the pogrom against Tamils in 1983 carried out by Sinhala mobs. Pogrom is a Russian word meaning ‘to wreak havoc, to demolish violently’, that…
Photograph courtesy “Please save my family, please” was the message I received from a Pakistani friend last weekend. It was about her family of seven, including 3 children, who had fled Pakistan…
Meera Srinivasan, the Hindu correspondent in Sri Lanka, at the first press conference with Presidential candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa asked him what happened to the LTTE cadres and others who surrendered to the…
The United Nations Charter begins “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…..” Yet, the structure and decision making of the United Nations…
June 20th is World Refugee Day. In the immediate aftermath of the Easter Sunday attacks, Pakistani refugee families living in Negombo, faced intimidation and violence that forced them to leave their homes. The…