Jaffna Monitor - Unafraid and Unbowed

Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict Was Not an Elite Invention, and It Will Not Wait for Trust

By Aruliniyan Mahalingam In the second week of July 1983, about thirty members of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna's Central Committee met at a house in Vitharandeniya, outside Tangalle. The agenda had one item. For a decade the party had accepted the Tamil people's right to decide their own political future. The party had written the position into its policy declaration in a prison cell, and its leader, Rohana Wijeweera, had defended it on public platforms, including in Jaffna. Then came the pre

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Nov 2, 2026 — 10 min read

“All LTTE Activities Will Go Through Us,” Says Ex-Combatant Reviving Tigers’ Party

November 2026

Our Reporter

Nov 2, 2026 — 6 min read

India-Funded KKS Port Deal Nears Signing as Palaly Airport Expansion Stalls

JM Exclusive October 2026

Our Reporter

Nov 1, 2026 — 4 min read

One Thousand Years of Belonging – One Mad Command of Exile

Cover Story

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Oct 30, 2026 — 17 min read

Sri Lanka's Terrorism Police Summon Tamil Party Organiser Over Facebook Photo

BATTICALOA, Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka's Terrorism Investigation Division has ordered Tharmalingam Suresh, the national organiser of the Tamil National People's Front, to come to Colombo for questioning about a photograph posted on his Facebook account. Officers from the division went to Mr. Suresh's home in Batticaloa at about 12:45 p.m. on Sunday and handed the summons to family members who were there, according to the party. The order is handwritten in Tamil on a standard Sri Lanka Police message

November 2026

Our Reporter

Nov 2, 2026 — 2 min read

Five Dead in Four Separate Incidents in Jaffna’s Valikamam North

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Five people died in four separate incidents in Valikamam North on Sunday evening, including two motorcycle riders who were killed when a wall collapsed on them following a crash, according to reports from the area. The fatal crash occurred at Alukkai Junction in Alaveddy, where a motorcycle carrying three people struck a wall. The impact caused the wall to collapse onto two of the riders, killing them at the scene. The victims were identified as Pratheep Sanjay, 17, and Raj

November 2026

Our Reporter

Nov 2, 2026 — 1 min read

Palaly Land Protest Reaches 20th Week as Government Deadline Passes

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Nov. 1 — Displaced residents of Valikamam North gathered at Palaly Junction on Sunday for the 20th week in a row to demand that the Sri Lankan military return land it has held since they were driven from their homes 36 years ago. The protesters, many of them elderly, said the army was using their land for farming and for shops and other businesses, while their own families had spent more than three decades without houses or land. They called on President Anura Kumara Dissanay

November 2026

Our Reporter

Nov 1, 2026 — 4 min read

Lal Wijenayake, Who Defied His Own Party to Defend Judicial Independence, Dies at 85

Lal Wijenayake, a Kandy lawyer and six-decade veteran of Sri Lanka’s left who in his final months went to the Supreme Court to oppose a constitutional amendment introduced by his own party, the governing National People’s Power, died on Saturday evening at a private hospital in Kandy. He was 85. At his death, Mr. Wijenayake sat on three of the N.P.P.'s senior bodies: its Leadership Council, its Executive Committee and its National Operations Committee. He came to the coalition, which is built a

Obituary November 2026

Our Reporter

Nov 1, 2026 — 7 min read

UNAFRAID AND UNBOWED

The Long Warning: Inside the Intelligence Trail That Preceded Easter Bombings

By Aruliniyan Mahalingam JAFFNA — On the evening of April 20, 2019, a man at his home in Puthukudiyiruppu took a WhatsApp call from an Indian police officer. The call came sometime between 5:15 and 5:45 p.m. The officer asked him an odd question: where were Sri Lanka's major churches? The man named the ones that came to mind. The Madhu shrine. St. Anthony's at Kochchikade in Colombo. The Tewatta church at Ragama. Then the officer told him that Zahran Hashim's group was preparing to strike Cat

JM Exclusive September 2026

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Sep 8, 2026 — 22 min read

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

Editorial July 2025

Kaniyan Pungundran

Jul 14, 2025 — 12 min read

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

Cover Story June 2025

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Jun 16, 2025 — 14 min read

Explore our archive of articles, interviews, and creative projects

Thirty-Four Dead Behind Negombo's Walls

By Jeevan Thiagarajah At about one o'clock on Sunday, 5 July 2026, two detainees in Ward 2 of Negombo Prison got into a quarrel. Within thirty hours, ten officers of the Prison Emergency Response Tactical Force and twenty-two detainees were dead. Two more detainees died the following night after they were transferred to other prisons. More than a hundred people were injured. The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka published its findings on 27 October. The 98-page report draws on statements fr

Guest Column OP-ED

Jeevan Thiyagaraja

Nov 1, 2026 — 8 min read

Teachers’ Union Accuses Northern Governor of Fraud. The Audits Tell a More Complicated Story.

JAFFNA, Nov. 1: The Ceylon Teachers’ Union on Friday asked Sri Lanka’s anti-corruption commission to investigate Nagalingam Vethanayahan, Governor of the Northern Province. The complaint concerns two development projects carried out while he was Government Agent and District Secretary of Jaffna, the district’s most senior civil servant, from March 2015 to February 2020. The complaint accuses him of fraud and of buying machinery to collect commissions. As evidence, the union attached two interna

October 2026

Our Reporter

Nov 1, 2026 — 6 min read

Forty Years Ago, a Bullet Struck a Jaffna Schoolboy Who Was Protecting His Classmates

JAFFNA, October 31: On the morning of October 30, 1986, gunfire broke out while classes were under way at Jaffna Central College. In a classroom on the second floor, a prefect named Ponnampalam Vipulananthan told the students to stay quiet and stay where they were. Then he went and stood near the wall. Seconds later, a bullet hit him in the left side of his back. “He cried out ‘Amma, Amma,’ held his back with his hand and fell, writhing,” a classmate, P. Ramanan, told a magistrate’s inquest the

October 2026

Our Reporter

Oct 31, 2026 — 4 min read

36 Years After Their Expulsion, Jaffna’s Muslims Gather Where It Began

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — On the morning of Oct. 30, 1990, fighters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam went door to door through the Muslim neighborhoods of Jaffna. Loudspeakers ordered every Muslim man to report to the grounds of Osmania College. There, rebel officials told the community it had two hours to leave the city. By the end of the day, nearly 22,000 people were gone. On Friday, 36 years to the day later, Muslim residents and community leaders gathered in the auditorium of the same sch

October 2026

Our Reporter

Oct 30, 2026 — 4 min read