As part of a series marking the atrocities of Mullivaikkal, we invited activists, journalists, and writers from around the world to share their experiences and reflections a decade on.

As part of a series marking the atrocities of Mullivaikkal, we invited activists, journalists, and writers from around the world to share their experiences and reflections a decade on.

The Mullivaikal Remembrance Public Forum, the collective responsible for organising remembrance activities in the North-East on the tenth anniversary of the Tamil genocide made a declaration on May 18, calling for the continued unity of the Tamil nation to struggle for justice and self-determination.

Sri Lanka, the country that the Lonely Planet declared as the top destination of 2019, is a “holiday paradise is polluted by torture and lies,” wrote Freedom from Torture's policy and advocacy director Steve Crawshaw in The Independent last week.

“This failure to confront, let alone prosecute, past crimes provides the climate in which torture and other abuses continue today,” said Crawshaw. “Torture survivors who have received rehabilitation treatment from Freedom from Torture tell us repeatedly of the importance of seeing those who have committed torture brought to account.”

The history of the Tamil people in the island of Sri Lanka after Western colonisation is a history of oppression by the chauvinist Sinhala-Buddhist state. Because of strength and resilience, the Tamil people acted against this oppression with resistance. This goes from peaceful protest for equal rights to a militant fight for a separate state. Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians and combatants lost their lives throughout the armed conflict.

^{Photograph: A UK mercenary pictured training Sri Lankan soldiers in the 1980s. JDS Lanka}

Britain’s Foreign Office plans to shred dozens more files about its relationship with Sri Lanka, in addition to the hundreds of diplomatic it has already destroyed, writes Phil Miller in JDS Lanka this week.

“I found, from British air force files that had survived the shredder, that a senior British intelligence officer made two visits to Sri Lanka in 1979 to advise how to deal with the Tamil militancy,” writes Miller. “In 1980, a British special forces training team visited Sri Lanka to help set up an army commando unit.”

India appears to have adopted a “waiting game” approach to Sri Lanka, said the Hindustan Times in an editorial today, but warned “the wait for the crisis to play out to some sort of conclusion could be a long one”.

The paper stated the crisis in Colombo comes amid calls in Sri Lanka for an “inclusive system that takes care of the interests of all sections of society, including the minority Tamils, who have a considerable impact on domestic politics in Tamil Nadu”.

Despite Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court judgement on Thursday, Maithripala Sirisena’s opponents may not yet be able to write him off, warned The Economist today.

“As unusual as it was, the court’s slap to the country’s head of state came as no surprise,” said the paper. “Mr Sirisena has been testing the limits of his powers ever since October 26th.”

“But Mr Sirisena’s opponents may not be able to write the president off so easily,” it warned.