Jaffna Monitor - Unafraid and Unbowed

Former LTTE guerrillas battle hardships, trauma and taunts.

By M.R. Narayan Swamy With a weather-beaten face, SR looks older than his years. By his own admission, he is a ‘coolie’ near Paranthan in northern Sri Lanka — a life of drudgery far removed from the time when he was a Tamil Tiger, fighting a protracted and determined war to carve out an independent Tamil homeland. Ever since he surrendered to the military in 2009, along with thousands of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) guerrillas, SR has led a difficult life, struggling to adjust to

M.R. Narayan Swamy

Apr 4, 2026 — 11 min read

Jaffna Student Dies Days After Securing Three A’s in A/L Examination

April 2026 Monitor Memo

Our Reporter

Apr 4, 2026 — 2 min read

From Kilinochchi to Kattankudy, A/L Toppers Emerge Across the North and East

April 2026 JM Exclusive

Our Special Correspondent

Apr 1, 2026 — 5 min read

The Business of Hope: How IMHO Helped Rebuild Lives in Sri Lanka

JM Exclusive March 2026

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Mar 31, 2026 — 24 min read

Lavan Akshayan Cremated as Jaffna Mourns a Top-Performing Student

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — April 5, 2026 — Lavan Akshayan, 19, one of the top-performing Advanced Level students whose death after a sudden illness stirred grief across northern Sri Lanka, was cremated on Sunday at the Thavadi Hindu Cemetery in Jaffna, as thousands gathered to pay their respects. Mourners — classmates, schoolmates, teachers, neighbours and villagers, along with many who had come to know him only through his story — filled his home and later the cremation ground and surrounding streets

April 2026 Monitor Memo

Our Reporter

Apr 5, 2026 — 3 min read

Sri Lanka’s Indian Ocean Reckoning

By Abbi Kanthasamy Sri Lanka’s real strategic question is not whether it can become “the next Singapore” or a miniature Dubai. It is whether it can finally learn the harder lesson those two city-states teach: that financial centres are not created by tax gimmicks, real-estate spectacle, or patriotic rhetoric. They are built by states that become credible before they become glamorous. In 2026, that distinction is even more important than it was a generation ago. The old haven model—low tax, ligh

April 2026 Guest Column

Abbi Kanthasamy

Apr 5, 2026 — 6 min read

For 359 Days, Easter Claims. In Court, None — The Pillayan Case

Sri Lanka's government spent a year telling its people one story. When it appeared before a court, it told another. On April 8, 2025, the Criminal Investigation Department arrested Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan — widely known as Pillayan — at the TMVP headquarters in Batticaloa. Within two days, Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala stood in Parliament and declared that significant information had emerged linking Pillayan to the Easter Sunday bombings of April 21, 2019 — the worst terrorist

April 2026 OP-ED

Our Reporter

Apr 5, 2026 — 5 min read

The Shepherd's Flock: Protecting the Human Rights of the Public Servant

By: Jeevan Thiagarajah At the heart of a functioning democracy lies a profound paradox: the public servant is both an instrument of the state and a citizen entitled to the full protection of the Constitution. Their service conditions — carefully stipulated by the Public Service Commission and relevant regulations — are not mere administrative guidelines. They are guarantees of dignity. Courts and tribunals have repeatedly reinforced this principle: a person does not surrender their fundamental

April 2026 Guest Column

Jeevan Thiyagaraja

Apr 5, 2026 — 6 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

Kaniyan Pungundran

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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When machines think: Reframing the ethics of Artificial Intelligence in the global south

Mahesh Nirmalan MD, FRCA, PhD, FFICM and Roshan Ragel PhD Professor Mahesh Nirmalan is Associate Vice President for Responsible Research Practice at the University of Manchester, UK and Professor Roshan Ragel is Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka How we choose to conceptualise Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the cornerstones of the current debate on the ethics of AI. In this context, do we see AI as a tool that has been developed by humans

April 2026 Guest Column

Prof. Mahesh Nirmalan

Apr 4, 2026 — 8 min read

Tamil Leaders Raise Plantation Inequality in Talks With Canada

For generations, the Tamil communities of Sri Lanka’s central highlands have done much of the physical labour that keeps one of the country’s most prized export industries alive. They pick the tea. They tend the estates. And yet, by nearly every measure of human welfare — housing, land ownership, mortality — they remain among the most marginalised people in the country. That contradiction was the animating argument when Mano Ganesan, the leader of the Tamil Progressive Alliance and a member of

April 2026 Monitor Memo

Our Reporter

Apr 1, 2026 — 4 min read

Exclusive: Iran’s Ambassador Sets Out Tehran’s Position on the Strait of Hormuz

By: Dr. Alireza Delkhosh, Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Sri Lanka On 28 February 2026, the United States and the Zionist regime, through an unlawful act of aggression contrary to the fundamental principles of international law, acted against the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In response, and within the framework of the inherent right of self-defense pursuant to Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, the Government of th

Guest Column JM Exclusive

Dr. Alireza Delkhosh

Mar 31, 2026 — 4 min read

Appointed, Then Abandoned: The Betrayal of Northern Health Volunteers

By: Jeevan Thiagarajah A Travesty of Justice in the Northern Province In the annals of public service recruitment, few stories are as harrowing or as indicative of systemic failure as the plight of the Health Services Volunteers in the Northern Province. This is a saga marked by a cruel travesty of justice, where the hopes of the most vulnerable were raised and dashed by the very system designed to protect them. The most damning aspect of this tragedy is that letters of appointment to gove

March 2026 OP-ED

Jeevan Thiyagaraja

Mar 30, 2026 — 5 min read