When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney acknowledged that the global order is in a state of “rupture” last month, he gave voice to what many across the world have already felt for some time. The old certainties of the West are collapsing and longstanding alliances are being recalibrated. The world is changing. Where does that leave Eelam Tamils and the ongoing struggle for liberation? 

The unavoidable conclusion is that the government has chosen not to act when it comes to Tamil rights. The NPP has lied, and it continues to lie, to the Tamil people.

It has been a deeply painful week. As tens of thousands of Eelam Tamils gathered to mark Maaveerar Naal, or Great Heroes’ Day, Cyclone Ditwah tore across the island. It was a tragedy that could have, and should have, been mitigated. 

For years in the Tamil homeland, Maaveerar Naal commemorations were forced underground. Lamps were lit behind closed doors, portraits of the fallen hidden from the state and gatherings broken apart by armed soldiers. Not today.

The events unfolding in Trincomalee over the past week have laid bare an uncomfortable truth that many in the Tamil homeland have long understood, but some around the world chose to hope against. The ruling National People’s Power (NPP) government is not the rupture from Sinhala Buddhist majoritarianism it promised to be.

This week across the Tamil homeland preparations have begun as the nation readies itself to mark Maaveerar Naal – Great Heroes Day. For Eelam Tamils this is more than just a day of remembrance. It is a moment that brings together a nation that has suffered war, destruction, and occupation, yet continues to endure. For decades, the Sri Lankan state has tried to stifle it. Sixteen years since the death of the last Tamil liberation fighter, such repression must end. 

Sri Lanka’s Deputy Minister of Defence made an audacious claim last week, stating over 700 acres of land in the North and East have been “returned to the public”. It only takes a cursory glance to see the painfully clear reality in the North-East. The occupation continues.

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed a resolution on Sri Lanka last week, extending the mandate of the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) for a further two years. This extension will allow the OHCHR to continue gathering and preserving evidence that can be used in future war crime trials. When those trials will be, however, is the question that no one is able to answer. More than 16 years after the genocide at Mullivaikkal, impunity still reigns in Sri Lanka. And the UN has just given Colombo another carte blanche.

At the United Nations General Assembly last week, Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake called for a ceasefire in Gaza. Despite the rhetoric, Dissanayake pointedly avoided naming the state responsible for those atrocities: Israel. This was not an oversight, but a calculated choice.

An unprecedented number of events took place across the North-East last week. Hunger strikes were staged. Flames were lit and garlands laid. The elderly and children gathered together. A kavadi even procession took place, with hooks piercing the flesh of a devotee in a symbolic act of devotion. All to remember the LTTE’s Lt. Col. Thileepan – a young man who undertook a hunger strike until death thirty-eight years ago, demanding justice for his people.