Picture courtesy of The Australian, 29th October 2009 The above picture was published in the satirical Nicholson cartoon gallery which features in The Australian. The issue of refugees has been covered extensively in both…
Updates received by in the evening today from the field suggest that heavy rain, as it did in August, is again causing havoc in Menik Farm. We were able to confirm heavy…
“Nearly 20,000 escape from IDP centres was the headline of an English language broadsheet yesterday. The strap line read –“Most believed to be LTTE cadres”. The article quotes the SSP for Kandy…
[Editors note: Two short testimonies on the plight of IDPs released from Menik Camp sent to highlight significant challenges facing reconciliation and resettlement in post-war Sri Lanka and the urgent need for…
Dayan Jayatilaka begins his article with the words, “I am proud of my country, Sri Lanka.” To demonstrate the differences in our points of view I would like to begin by stating…
[Editors note: An edited copy of this article appears in the of 27th September 2009. This is the full version.] It was a relief to hear that the government was at last…
The widespread indifference to the continuing misery of 280,000 interned IDPs, most of them already unlawfully detained for about four months without any charges, is a sad reflection on the moral values…
“On my instructions, due to the priority given to the policy of zero civilian casualties the security forces are limiting themselves to rescue operations of the entrapped civilians held hostage as a…
Part 2 Weeks before coming to Sri Lanka, I shared with some friends; a desire to help war affected Sri Lankans in whatever capacity possible while I am home. I had a…
Part 1 The strap of my bag unbuckled under the strain as I squeezed out of the bus in Kurunegala. The clock tower read an unrushed 6.40 am on its weary face….
Through Bearing Witness, seeks to engender critical citizen journalism on two vital issues confronting polity and society in post-war Sri Lanka. The ground conditions in Menik Farm, worsened by recent flooding, are a…
The ‘divide and rule policy’ of the British colonial administration in Sri Lanka covertly took advantage of the country’s ethnic profile to appoint better educated Tamils in key government positions  to act…
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…
The floods that affected significant swathes of the expansive Menik Farm a week ago generated interesting responses from government. One of the most revealing was the deafening silence of the usually loquacious…
This is an interview in English secured by Vikalpa with a Sri Lankan Tamil who had visited his family at the “Ramanathan Transitional Relief Village” in May. His family is amongst 260,000+…
