Writers Under Siege
Photo courtesy of Centre for American Progress (A briefer version of this article was published in the UK Guardian on March 4.) In the thrall of an increasingly authoritarian presidency, Sri Lanka needs courageous…
Photo courtesy of Twitter Today is the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists October was a bleak month for freedom of expression with four cases of assault against five…
Featured image courtesy VikalpaSL Flickr. In 2016, Sri Lanka was removed from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Impunity Index. Each year, CPJ reviews countries for a 10-year period. If there are five…
Stop this struggle He pleads Of his comrades A revolutionary leader Broken in pain In State Custody They set me on the wrong path He blames, pointing to his friends A young…
What beauty in camps? I sit in my favourite chair listening to Beethoven’s last sonata, slient breezes in time. to the music. My world creates a sonata The other shatters all possibility…
You claimed to liberate hostages, to conduct the largest rescue operation in history. In other countries people robbed of freedoms, rescued, are treated by doctors, then sent home to be greeted usually…
The island belongs to centipede, rat, butterfly, lots of species each with their own habitats, and supervising all arable and fallow land the president king. Minorities may enjoy clean living in freshly…
Refugees are sometimes active have agency they Leave, Flee, Sneak Flow over boundary lines unchecked like rivers they Escape, Hide Cross territories they Flood places like unnatural disasters are associated with Asylum…
[Editors note: These poems respond to Indran Amirthanayagam’s poems here, here and here. They are both part of the Writers Under Siege collection on Groundviews.] 1 i am not a writer i…
Six boys from Hindu College will enter the scene from Stage Left, an equal number of girls from Muslim Ladies Stage Right. They will shake their bodies, slide and writhe, and be…
Citizens of Killinochchi and Mullaitivu fled before our liberators arrived. They live for the moment in nearby jungle under a canopy punctured by shells. Some moved to a safe zone demarcated by…
The town is full of stray dogs, cows, ghosts, buildings pockmarked, unhinged, open to wind and rain. Soldiers patrol on foot. Trucks and tanks rumble through the center. Rebels took all the…
