Jaffna Monitor - Unafraid and Unbowed

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

Jul 15, 2026 — 6 min read

ITAK Challenges Government to Prove Archaeology Department Is Free of Ethnic Bias

JULY 2026 Monitor Memo

Our Reporter

Jul 14, 2026 — 2 min read

Land, the PTA and a Postponed Vote: Europe's Ambassadors on the North's Unfinished Business

Exclusive Interview JULY 2026

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Jul 14, 2026 — 24 min read

The Fighters the Tamil Diaspora Left Behind

Guest Column JULY 2026

M.R. Narayan Swamy

Jul 7, 2026 — 6 min read

The Real Battle for Credibility

This month, I was invited to speak at the second Sri Lanka–India Media Friendship Association (SLIMFA) Media Fest in Colombo, on the theme “Trust, Truth and the Battle for Credibility.” Illness prevented me from attending. I have chosen instead to publish the thoughts I had prepared as this month’s editorial, because the issues they address extend far beyond a conference hall. Where I Stand I come from Northern Sri Lanka, a region devastated by nearly three decades of civil war. My entire chi

Editorial JULY 2026

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Jul 15, 2026 — 7 min read

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.

Guest Column JULY 2026

M.R. Narayan Swamy

Jul 15, 2026 — 4 min read

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.

Guest Column JULY 2026

Jeevan Thiyagaraja

Jul 14, 2026 — 8 min read

One library that began a story

By: Shankari Chandran Editor's Note: As Australian High Commissioner Matthew Duckworth presents the complete collection of Shankari Chandran's novels to the Jaffna Public Library today, Jaffna Monitor republishes this essay by the Miles Franklin Award-winning Sri Lankan Tamil author, who reflects on the burning of the library, its enduring place in Tamil memory, and the lasting power of stories against erasure. My footsteps slow when I pass a library. Any library. I am pulled inwards, to i

Guest Column JULY 2026

Jaffna Monitor

Jul 14, 2026 — 5 min read

Unafraid and Unbowed

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

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

Editorial June 2025

Kaniyan Pungundran

Jun 16, 2025 — 7 min read

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Video of Military-Harvested Vegetables Fuels Anger Over Jaffna Land Occupation

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — A video appearing to show Sri Lankan soldiers delivering vegetables cultivated on military-controlled private land in Jaffna to a wholesale collection center supplying a supermarket has gone viral on social media, rekindling longstanding resentment among displaced residents of Valikamam North, where the military continues to occupy thousands of acres of privately owned land despite the end of Sri Lanka's civil war 17 years ago. The footage, circulated widely over the past se

JULY 2026 Monitor Memo

Our Reporter

Jul 14, 2026 — 2 min read

Amirthalingam Knew Death Was Coming. He Wasn't Afraid.

By M.R. Narayan Swamy About a month before his assassination, Appapillai Amirthalingam was told by his elder son in London about a strong rumour in the UK that he had been killed. “This is what some people expect to happen,” the Tamil political stalwart responded. “If that happens, I wouldn’t mind.” What was rumoured did indeed happen on the evening of Thursday, July 13, 1989. Tamil Tiger assassins shot dead an unsuspecting Amirthalingam, 61, and his colleague, V. Yogeswaran, 55, at their Colo

JM Exclusive JULY 2026

M.R. Narayan Swamy

Jul 14, 2026 — 5 min read

Amirthalingam’s Son Says the Tigers Destroyed the Cause They Claimed to Defend

Thirty-seven years to the day after gunmen from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam assassinated the Tamil leader Appapillai Amirthalingam, his son has accused the group of destroying not only his father but also the political cause it claimed to represent. In a Facebook post marking the anniversary, Dr. Baheerathan Amirthalingam, a physician who settled in Britain after the killing, wrote that the assassination on July 13, 1989, had "turned our family's life upside down" and that its conseque

JULY 2026 Monitor Memo

Our Reporter

Jul 13, 2026 — 3 min read

Ex-Army Major's Prison Account Renews Focus on Sri Lanka's Overcrowded Jails After Deadly Riot

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A retired army major and attorney who spent more than three years inside Sri Lanka's largest prison has offered a rare firsthand account of conditions in the country's overcrowded prison system, days after the deadliest prison riot in more than a decade left 28 people dead and intensified scrutiny of long-standing failures in the country's jails. Ajith Prasanna, who was released from prison earlier this year after serving a contempt-of-court sentence, published the account

JULY 2026 Monitor Memo

Our Reporter

Jul 13, 2026 — 4 min read