Female headed households in Jaffna faced added insecurity to their livelihoods due to the pervasive Sri Lankan military presence in the North-East, said Jaffna residents at a Sri Lankan government consultation on the mechanisms for accountability, truth, reparations and non-recurrence earlier this month. Women who head households, due to the large number of men who have been abducted or killed, in the Vadamaradchi East also made representations during the meeting, stating that the overwhelming military presence creates an atmosphere of fear across the region. Residents told the consultation...
Tamil fishermen in Vadamaradchi East alleged that hundreds of Sinhalese fishermen from the south have been allowed by the Sri Lankan military to fish in restricted areas, as tensions between the groups heighten. The Sinhalese fishermen have also been cutting the nets of the Tamil fishermen, they said at a meeting at the Divisional Secretariat in Marudhankeni earlier this month. Some 700 boats belonging to the Sinhalese can now be seen along the Vadamaradchi East coastal region they added. With Sri Lankan military assistance, the fishermen have been in waters that remains off limits to the...
The newly-built Buddhist temple at Ilankaithurai - re-named Lanka Patuna by the government. A bridge is being constructed to improve access to the site for the increasing number of Sinhala visitors. Tamil Guardian co-editor and PEARL Advocacy Director Mario Arulthas travelled to Trincomalee last month to report on how Tamils in the region are struggling with the Sri Lankan state's spread of Buddhism across the North-East.
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) told the Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg on Sunday that a new consitution in Sri Lanka must resolve the national question, the FT.lk reported. Highlighting the difficulties facing Tamils in the North-East, the leader of the TNA, R Sampanthan stressed that much more needed to be done regarding the release of land by the military back to the civilians. See more here .
Sri Lankan army soldiers protested in Battaramulla against the government's passing of the Office of Missing Persons bill last week. Five joint opposition MPs were also present.
Sri Lanka's Terrorism Investigation Division have called in the disappearance campaigner, Balandran Jeyakumary for a further inquiry in Colombo at the second floor of the TID's office.
In a statement opening a Tamil People's Council meeting earlier this month in Jaffna, Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister, C.V. Wigneswaran, raised issues of accountability and a North-East merger. The Chief Minister emphasised that a North-East merger would be key to the interests of Tamil people in those areas. Otherwise he said there was a "danger of minority communities losing their identities in the long run," which the majority community appeared to want. He added that any process to erase the identities and culture of those communities is genocide. He noted that Muslim Tamil-...
The Sri Lankan police this week launched an investigation over a T-shirt found in a textile shop in Kandy, depicting a Tamil Eelam map, Tamil Eelam flag symbol and photograph of the leader of the Liberation Times of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), V Prabhakaran, and with the words 'L'aspiration des Tamouls est un Tamil Eelam libre' and 'Free Tamil Eelam' printed over it.
Sri Lanka’s anti-LGBTI laws further abuse that transgender people and others that do not conform to social expectations face on the island, reports Human Rights Watch. With the release of a new 63-page report , the human rights organisation found that Sri Lankan laws left transgender and intersex people unprotected, whilst abuse and arbitrary detention continued with impunity. Yuvraj Joshi, Gruber fellow in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights program at Human Rights Watch and author of the report said , “While the government has begun to address these issues, it should urgently...
A Tamil man has been killed in Jaffna after a landmine explosion in the Kilali region, reports Adaderana . The man, who had gone to collect timber on Friday, was sought after by his family who had registered him as missing at the local Sri Lankan police station. A subsequent search of the area where he was last seen uncovered his body, which is currently being kept at Jaffna Hospital pending a post-mortem. Landmines continue to plague the war torn Tamil North-East, with serval deaths reported in recent years, despite the end of the armed conflict in 2009.