N.P.P. Lawmaker Faults Northern Party Chief After Kilinochchi Meeting Collapses
N.P.P. lawmaker Rajeevan Jeyachandramoorthy, left, and Fisheries Minister Ramalingam Chandrasekar.

N.P.P. Lawmaker Faults Northern Party Chief After Kilinochchi Meeting Collapses

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — A governing-party lawmaker has publicly criticized a cabinet minister from his own coalition over the collapse of a district coordinating committee meeting in Kilinochchi, a rare public break in the National People’s Power that has drawn attention to tensions inside the governing alliance in the north. Rajeevan Jeyachandramoorthy, an N.P.P. member of Parliament from the Jaffna District, said it was wrong to remove the independent lawmaker Ramanathan Archchuna from Thursday’s


Our Reporter

Our Reporter

The Lunch That Was Never Opened
Thyagaraja Jayakrishna

The Lunch That Was Never Opened

MARUTHAMUNAI, Sri Lanka — The motorcycle was still largely intact after the accident. Hanging from its handlebar was a packet of lunch that Thyagaraja Jayakrishna’s wife had prepared for him that morning. He had left their home in Pandiruppu as he did on other working days, heading to his job at the Kaluwanchikudy Divisional Secretariat. The rice packed for his lunch was still there when people gathered at the scene of the accident. Mr. Jayakrishna never reached his office. The government off


Our Reporter

Our Reporter

Chaos Follows Archchuna to Kilinochchi as Officials Walk Out — Critics Question Government’s Role

Chaos Follows Archchuna to Kilinochchi as Officials Walk Out — Critics Question Government’s Role

KILINOCHCHI, Sri Lanka — A district coordinating committee meeting in Kilinochchi ended abruptly on Thursday after a series of heated confrontations involving lawmaker Ramanathan Archchuna, prompting elected officials and senior government administrators to walk out before police intervened. The meeting, held at the Kilinochchi District Secretariat, began at 9 a.m. under the chairmanship of Ramalingam Chandrasekar, fisheries minister and chairman of the district coordinating committee. Mr. Arc


Our Reporter

Our Reporter

JVP Minister Reads New Tamil-Muslim Platform as a Verdict on Sajith Premadasa’s Decline
Lal Kantha

JVP Minister Reads New Tamil-Muslim Platform as a Verdict on Sajith Premadasa’s Decline

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A senior government minister has welcomed a new political platform uniting six parties that represent Sri Lanka’s Tamil-speaking communities, casting it not as a minority initiative but as a judgment on the opposition leader, Sajith Premadasa. The parties — representing Sri Lankan Tamils, Muslims, and Indian Tamils — announced last week that they would work together on constitutional reform, the long-delayed provincial council elections, and land disputes affecting their co


Our Reporter

Our Reporter

Unafraid and Unbowed

Archbishop, Archbishop, why hast thou forsaken us in our hour of sorrow and slaughter?

Archbishop, Archbishop, why hast thou forsaken us in our hour of sorrow and slaughter?

"Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins." - Isaiah 58:1 His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo and chief shepherd of the Catholic flock in all of Sri Lanka, has recently marked fifty years in the sacred priesthood. As the highest-ranking prelate whose dominion spans the entire island, he now stands as a mighty voice crying for justice, calling upon the nations of the earth for interv


Kaniyan Pungundran

Kaniyan Pungundran

Jaffna Library Burning: The Day They Burned the buddha and his dhamma

Jaffna Library Burning: The Day They Burned the buddha and his dhamma

Why South Asia Reveres Books-and Fears Their Destruction Irrespective of religion, across the Indian subcontinent, books have long held an exalted status. In the indigenous spiritual traditions that emerged from this land-Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism-knowledge is not merely valued; it is venerated in the highest order. In homes, temples, and schools across the region, people treat books with profound reverence-never touching them with their feet, and if done accidentally, offering a


Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Chemmani: Where Justice Was Buried

Chemmani: Where Justice Was Buried

The dead do not speak - but the earth does A few years ago, I visited Cambodia. My original aim was to see the Angkor Wat temple complex. But, as always, my journalistic instincts led me deeper into rural Cambodia, where I found myself in quiet conversations with a few former soldiers of the Pol Pot regime, now living ordinary lives as toddy tappers, farmers, and small shop owners. One of them - a former henchman of the Khmer Rouge - opened up after a few glasses of toddy. In a hauntingly calm


Kaniyan Pungundran

Kaniyan Pungundran

Read More

Explore our archive of articles, interviews, and creative projects

Inpam and Selvam: Two Killings That Still Haunt the Birth of the PTA

Inpam and Selvam: Two Killings That Still Haunt the Birth of the PTA

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — In July 1979, as the government armed itself with sweeping new powers to confront a growing Tamil militancy in the north, two men disappeared into the custody of the security forces. Their bodies were later found near the Pannai causeway, the narrow stretch that links the islands west of Jaffna to the city. They were K. Viswaratnam and S. Selvaratnam, better known as Inpam and Selvam. Nearly half a century later, their deaths remain lodged in the political memory of the nor


Our Reporter

Our Reporter

Rights Group Accuses Sri Lanka of Obstructing Chemmani Mass Grave Investigation

Rights Group Accuses Sri Lanka of Obstructing Chemmani Mass Grave Investigation

For three decades, the state’s answer to the families of Jaffna’s disappeared has been that it does not know. A report released this week argues that it has always known — and has spent thirty years making sure that nothing could be done about it. The report, published by the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP), a London-based group that has documented Sri Lankan war crimes since 2013, lands as excavators returned to the Chemmani salt flats on Tuesday to resume a dig that has already


Our Reporter

Our Reporter

Should Sanctions Extend to a General's Memoir?

Should Sanctions Extend to a General's Memoir?

By M.R. Narayan Swamy Realising that the war for Tamil Eelam would need a constant supply of weapons, Velupillai Prabhakaran set up in 1985 Kadal Pura, a modest sea wing in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Over the years, it grew into the formidable Sea Tigers, which threatened to overwhelm Sri Lanka’s navy. Once the fourth and final Eelam War resumed in August 2006, it became payback time. The Sri Lankan Navy rapidly sank in 2007 the LTTE’s awesome warehouse ships, left and right.


M.R. Narayan Swamy

M.R. Narayan Swamy

The Missing Half of Sri Lanka's Post-War Recovery

The Missing Half of Sri Lanka's Post-War Recovery

By Jeevan Thiagarajah Seventeen years after Sri Lanka's civil war ended, the country has run one of the world's more closely studied reintegration experiments — and left another almost entirely undone. On one side, 12,196 former LTTE combatants passed through a state-run rehabilitation programme that concluded in 2021. On the other, hundreds of thousands of state security personnel — soldiers, sailors, airmen, and police who fought the same war — returned home to no equivalent programme at all.


Jeevan Thiyagaraja

Jeevan Thiyagaraja

Meet Our Authors

Be the first to know

Join our community and get notified about upcoming stories

Subscribing...
You've been subscribed!
Something went wrong