Sallay Tells Court Easter Bombing Investigators Were Faulted by Official Inquiries
Suresh Sallay

Sallay Tells Court Easter Bombing Investigators Were Faulted by Official Inquiries

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Lawyers for Maj. Gen. Suresh Sallay, the former head of Sri Lanka's State Intelligence Service, told the Court of Appeal on Thursday that the senior police officers investigating him over the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings had themselves been faulted by official inquiries for failing to prevent the attacks. The argument was made during a hearing on a writ petition filed by General Sallay, who is challenging the legality of his arrest and subsequent detention under the Preventi


Our Reporter

Our Reporter

How PTA Destroyed a Tamil Pastor’s Life
Edward (Sam) Sivalingam

How PTA Destroyed a Tamil Pastor’s Life

By M.R. Narayan Swamy A Tamil pastor arrested in 2006 at age 30 in Sri Lanka spent over 16 agonizing years in prisons undergoing such severe torture that even today he walks with a distinct limp and suffers from multiple body pains, presiding over a family which is physically and mentally broken both by the war and his imprisonment. Edward (Sam) Sivalingam was no Tamil Tiger sympathizer and led a mundane life far removed from a brutal war that raged between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam


M.R. Narayan Swamy

M.R. Narayan Swamy

Sri Lanka's Easter Inquiry and the Limits of Parliamentary Allegations

Sri Lanka's Easter Inquiry and the Limits of Parliamentary Allegations

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka’s public security minister accused the country’s detained former intelligence chief on Wednesday of trying to bury evidence in the Easter Sunday bombing investigation, telling Parliament that retired Maj. Gen. Suresh Sallay had refused to surrender the passwords to an iPhone and a laptop seized by investigators. In a special statement to Parliament, the minister, Ananda Wijepala, said investigators had confiscated a “modern Apple mobile phone” from Mr. Sallay at the time of


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Our Reporter

Japan Funds Debris Removal and Service Restoration After Sri Lanka Cyclone

Japan Funds Debris Removal and Service Restoration After Sri Lanka Cyclone

COLOMBO — Japan and the United Nations Development Programme signed an agreement with the Sri Lankan government on Wednesday to fund disaster waste clearance and the rehabilitation of community facilities in areas devastated by Cyclone Ditwah, which struck the island in late November and affected an estimated 1.7 million people. The project will focus on the Central Province — the districts of Kandy, Matale, and Nuwara Eliya — where the cyclone caused some of the worst damage to infrastructure,


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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

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Justice Minister Says Protest Aims to Shield Easter Bombing ‘Mastermind’

Justice Minister Says Protest Aims to Shield Easter Bombing ‘Mastermind’

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The opposition figures staging a sit-in for a detained former intelligence chief are not defending him out of concern for his welfare but are trying to halt the investigation into the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings before it reaches the people who planned them, Sri Lanka’s justice minister told Parliament on Tuesday. Harshana Nanayakkara, the minister of justice and national integration, said the campaign on behalf of Suresh Sallay, a retired major general and former head of t


Our Reporter

Our Reporter

One Month of Vijay: Tamil Nadu's Post-Dravidian Experiment Gets Its First Report Card

One Month of Vijay: Tamil Nadu's Post-Dravidian Experiment Gets Its First Report Card

By M.R. Narayan Swamy “One month is too short a time to be disappointed!” The comment from a middle-aged Chennai resident, who voted for cinema star-turned-politician Vijay and remains one of his loyal supporters, neatly sums up the mood on the ground as Tamil Nadu’s first coalition government in decades completes its first month in office. As Chief Minister, C Joseph Vijay retains much of his personal popularity that propelled millions in Tamil Nadu to vote for his two-year-old Tamilaga Vett


M.R. Narayan Swamy

M.R. Narayan Swamy

THE EASTER SUNDAY FILES Part One: What the FBI Found

THE EASTER SUNDAY FILES Part One: What the FBI Found

Colombo — More than seven years after eight suicide bombers tore through three churches and three hotels, killing more than 260 people, Sri Lanka is still arguing about what really happened on Easter Sunday. The country’s search for answers has produced thousands of pages of testimony, evidence, and analysis spread across seven major investigations. Yet those inquiries did not always pursue the same questions, nor did they always reach the same conclusions. The debate has now burst back into p


Jaffna Monitor

Jaffna Monitor

With E.U. Backing, Sri Lanka Moves to Operationalise Green Finance Taxonomy

With E.U. Backing, Sri Lanka Moves to Operationalise Green Finance Taxonomy

COLOMBO — More than 200 officials from Sri Lanka's central bank, licensed financial institutions, corporate entities, and public sector bodies have completed training in applying the country's Green Finance Taxonomy, part of a European Union-funded effort to direct more financing toward environmentally sustainable projects. The taxonomy, developed by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka and published in May 2022, sets out a framework for classifying which economic activities count as environmentally s


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