From Seeing Her Son to Surrendering Him (Video)
On 18 May 2009, this mother traveled to the army-controlled area via Mullivaikkal Vattuvakal. There she handed over her 33-year-old son to the army. He had refused to come with her, afraid…
On 18 May 2009, this mother traveled to the army-controlled area via Mullivaikkal Vattuvakal. There she handed over her 33-year-old son to the army. He had refused to come with her, afraid…
It was a dramatic moment: a tall, well-built young man dressed in white with a black band tied across his forehead pushed his way through the closed gates of the church premises…
“I am the luckiest mother in Sri Lanka. I got my son’s body back. There are thousands of mothers who never get their children’s bodies back.” Dr. Manorani Saravanamuttu was speaking after…
Until recently, the Office on Missing Persons (OMP) was housed in a magnificent colonial building in a leafy Colombo suburb that used to house members of parliament; now it has been relegated…
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…
I was a PhD student in London when the carnage of July 1983 erupted and thank God for the bravery and foresight of my mother and sister, my family was saved from…
In July 1995 the St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Navaly, Jaffna, was filled with displaced Tamils seeking refuge and safety from the war. People in Navaly, including members of the…
The Catholic Church in the tiny village of Iranapalei in the Mullaitheevu district was lit up with 1000 lamps yesterday, 18th May. The thousand lamps were to remember the tens of thousands,…
Book Review – Phil Miller, Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who got away with War Crimes, (Pluto Press, 2020) Eleven years ago, in May 2009, the Sri Lankan security forces decisively defeated…
Although the war ended a decade ago, the ethno-political and social fractures from violent conflict endure. On no other day are they more apparent than on May 18. Often, what we see,…
Although the war ended a decade ago, the ethno-political and social fractures from conflict endure. On no other day are they more apparent than on May 18. Often, what we see, read…
Photo courtesy In the aftermath of the 2019 Presidential Elections which concluded another era of the Sri Lankan political journey, it is necessary to delve into the fragility of the Sri Lankan…
The International Day of the Disappeared is on August 30, and I was in Mannar when a group of mothers were preparing to show their collective resistance at Omanthai in the North…
These are the stories of people whose daily struggles come from witnessing and being trapped in the middle of a war that lasted three decades, who think that it would have been…