The current frontrunner in Sri Lanka’s presidential polls Anura Kumara Dissanayake, leader of Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and National People’s Power (NPP) coalition, was invited to visit Delhi earlier this month, where he engaged in a series of high-level talks. The move was seen as recognition from the Indian government that Dissanayake is a serious contender in elections which are set to take place later this year. It also seemed to mark a significant shift in the militantly Marxist JVP, a movement that was once violently anti-Indian but now seemingly open to engagement with Delhi. As Dissanayake’s visit demonstrates, however, the veneer of anti-imperialist politics within the Sinhala left has always been thin. It is not necessarily Indian interests they oppose, simply Tamil ones.
There has been much consternation in recent weeks as the Sri Lankan government passed the Online Safety Bill, a new piece of legislation that essentially allows the state to police and prosecute what individuals and organisations post online. There have been remarks from the United Nations human rights office, diplomats from various Western countries and a host of NGOs – all of whom have expressed concern over the risks to freedom of expression on the island. In the Tamil North-East, however, those concerns have long been a reality. Left unabated and unchallenged by the international community for years, that climate of repression has solidified and is now being rolled out across the island.
The ‘Himalaya Declaration’, a supposed path forward for the island that had the blessings of the Sri Lankan state, contained little substance. Instead, it sought to give a regime that is facing increasing global pressure a cheap veneer of progress, obfuscating more than 15 years of calls for international accountability and whitewashing decades of struggle for self-determination. Those who champion justice for the Tamil genocide will be rightly outraged.
Today tens of thousands of Tamils, from all ages and backgrounds, will gather across the homeland to pay tribute to those who laid down their lives in the armed struggle. The lighting of candles and silent bowing of heads comes despite another year of repeated intimidation and harassment from the Sri Lankan state. Regardless, the nation continues to gather en masse to honour the men and women who fought for it. In paying tribute to the sacrifice of their heroes, the resilience of the nation and its unbowed resistance to destruction is reaffirmed. It cannot be broken.
The former British prime minister has been given another chance to rectify his legacy - this time as foreign minister. Following through on his previous pledges on accountability and justice in Sri Lanka would be the best place to start.
This year marks four decades since the genocidal violence of Black July. With the backing of the Sinhala Buddhist State, Sinhala mobs, armed with electoral rolls and transported by government-owned vehicles, unleashed a torrent of bloodshed killing over 3,000 Tamils, burning down thousands of Tamil homes and businesses, and displacing an estimated 150,000.
Last week, thousands of Tamils, from the political strongholds in Jaffna, the militarised heartlands of the Vanni, to the allegedly contested territories of Amparai, lit up destroyed LTTE cemeteries to pay tribute to those who laid down their lives in the armed struggle. Since 2016, when Tamils reclaimed the Kanagapuram Thuyilum Illam in Kilinochchi to hold Maaveerar Naal publicly for the first time since 2012, when Tamil students were beaten by the Sri Lankan army for attempting to mark the day, the commemorations have been growing in scale each year, disrupted only by the lockdowns of the global pandemic. This year was the largest yet, with events reported in at least thirty locations across the eight districts of the North-East.
Illustration by Keera Ratnam / waves of colour This month in the northern city of Kopay and the eastern city of Mullaitivu, plain-clothed Sri Lankan officers photograph Tamil civilians clearing their desecrated memorials for the LTTE. This surveillance has become routine. It is often followed in rapid succession with threats, intimidation, arbitrary detention, and abuse – a pattern all too familiar for Eelam Tamils. In the most militarised regions of the island, Tamils are prohibited from remembering the sacrifices of their loved ones for a free homeland. Under the threat of Sri Lanka’s...
The latest draft United Nations Human Rights Council resolution on accountability for massacres in Sri Lanka shows yet again the ineptitude of the international system to deliver justice for crimes committed more than 13 years ago. Following years of growing militarisation, crackdowns on civil society actors, and ongoing human rights violations, the latest resolution asks victims and survivors to place their faith in the Sri Lankan state. This is the same Sri Lankan state that the former UN High Commissioner acknowledges has actively reversed progress on accountability by appointing war criminals to head government ministries. The latest draft falls far short of what has been needed for years.
As the 51st session of the UN Human Rights Council nears, Sri Lanka’s Sinhala leaders scramble to present the country as on the verge of a democratic breakthrough. Plans to reform Sri Lanka’s draconian counter-terrorism legislation, decriminalise same-sex relations, and delist select Tamil diaspora organisations have been met with broad scepticism across the island. An illusion of a liberal bastion is impossible to maintain amidst a brutal crackdown on peaceful demonstrators. Such gestures are nothing but a desperate smokescreen. In the past, Sri Lanka managed to stave off international...