Desertification of Jaffna and Jojoba
This is in reference to Dr.Rohan Wickramasinghe’s valuable and interesting article of Tuesday 6th June. The desertification process in Jaffna has been detected and analysed for over half a century and the…
Post-War
By the Votive Candle
Machan, I wish I could give you another poem but even poetry does not console enough before the loss of a dream. You were just in Sri Lanka and visited the North….
Victory over Remembrance: A day of division
On May 18, 2009, Sri Lanka ended a decade long civil war. The day after, May 19, has traditionally been celebrated as “Victory Day” and marked with military parades. That is, until…
Sorting Bad Apples: Is Lustration the Answer to Sri Lanka’s Military Impunity?
Suspects with military links feature in a number of ongoing investigations into crimes and human rights violations committed in Sri Lanka’s post-war period. The Criminal Investigation Department’s report in Lasantha Wickramatunga’s murder…
A Thousand Unanswered Questions: The ongoing plight of families of the disappeared
The photographs are framed in a variety of ways; gilt-edged, glossy black wood, or laminated. Creased from being held and passed around. Whatever the frame, they are cradled with equal tenderness. These…
To Rebuild A Home
Over the last few months, there have been several protests across the Northern Province demanding the release of civilian land from under military occupation. While there have been no definitive responses to…
Mullikulam – Renewed struggle to regain Navy occupied village
reminisces 88-year-old village elder from Mullikulam, M. Francis Vaz, who hasn’t been home since 2007. On the 8th of September, 2007 the entire village of Mullikulam was unceremoniously evacuated by the Military…
Sellamma returns home after Army occupation
We first met 83 year old grandmother Sellamma when she was part of a protest fast outside the Puthukudiyiruppu Divisional Secretariat. At that time, her land and house across the road had…
UPDATED: Road to OMP Timeline
The 34th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) commenced on February 27 in Geneva. It was widely reported that Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera would most likely push for a…
Sellamma & her struggle to reclaim her house and land in Puthukudiyiruppu
Sellamma is 83 years old. She has a house in Puthukudiyiruppu (PTK) East, Ward no. 7, in the Mullaitivu district in the Northern Province. It’s opposite the PTK Divisional Secretariat (DS). But…
Interview: Deconstructing the CTF Report
View a short video with key quotes here, or below: Q: What do you think are the most important points that people should focus on in the recently released Consultation Task Force…
Transitional Justice in Sri Lanka: Lessons So Far and the Long Road Ahead
Photo courtesy The new year in Sri Lanka commenced with some noise around aspects of transitional justice, largely due to the release of the report by the Consultation Task Force (CTF). The…
Adventures in Print Journalism
Photo by REUTERS/Philip Brown 2016 was, among other things, a year conspicuous for illustrating the successes of several years of political rebranding, at least in the West. Over the past few years,…
The Curse of the Obstinate Patriarch
Today marks the second anniversary of the victory of Maithripala Sirisena as the President of Sri Lanka at the 8th January 2015 Sri Lankan Presidential Election. And the second anniversary of the…
Groundviews during a Cold Peace
Photography by James Morgan has continued to be a necessary space for discussing the cold peace that arrived with the conclusion of the war in May 2009. It was only in late-2009…
