Writing in response to the appointment of Ranil Wickremesinghe as Sri Lanka's Prime Minister, Mario Arulthas, an advisor to People for Equality and Relief in Sri Lanka (PEARL), stresses that "without a fundamental restructuring of the state, Sri Lanka will simply repeat the past mistakes that got it there". Arulthas explains that the current crisis Sri Lanka finds itself in follows an open embrace of "Sinhala-Buddhist supremacy" by the vast majority of Sinhalese voting in the Rajapaksa's during the 2019 Presidential election and granting them a two-thirds majority in the subsequent 2020...
Responding to the crisis which has engulfed Sri Lanka, Mario Arulthas, an advisor to People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), stresses that for a “more just stable and prosperous island”, it is not the President that needs to go but the deeply entrenched ethnocratic state. His opinion piece in Al Jazeera comes as there are widespread protests across Sri Lanka denouncing the President for the current economic crisis which has left the country with a severe shortage in food, fuel and medicines. However, Arulthas notes that while these demonstrations are harshly critical of the President...
Writing in the Diplomat, Madura Rasaratnam and Mario Arulthas, maintain that the current policy of appeasement, and of soft-pedalling on demands for "accountability and political reform", adopted by the US and India "comes with considerable costs and uncertain gains". Instead of attempts to outbid China, they argue that it is necessary to use "soft" leverage to "give Sinhala leaders a reality check and push for measures that are crucial to securing stability and preventing conflict recurrence". "The United States and India do have tools at their disposal that can be used to advance strategic...
Writing in Middle East Eye, Strategic Advisor to People for Equality and Relief in Sri Lanka (PEARL), Mario Arulthas highlights the deterioration of Tamil and Muslim rights in Sri Lanka as President Rajapaksa appears “committed to seizing any opportunity to hurt non-Sinhalese communities”. In his piece, he draws particular attention to Islamophobic legislation proposed to ban Islamic face coverings and close over 1,000 Islamic schools, under “national security” concerns. These moves he notes follow a long history in which the Sri Lankan state has “used laws to marginalise vulnerable...
Writing in the Daily FT, Mario Arulthas, strategic advisor for People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) and PhD student at SOAS University, reflects on the legacy of the P2P marches and notes that “the fundamental spirit […] echoes that of the first significant post-independence mass-mobilisation in 1956”. The P2P protests which began on 3 February 2021, mobilised thousands of Tamils and Muslims in the North-East as they peacefully marched from Pottuvil in Amparai to Polikandy in Jaffna, two points delineating the furthest ends of the traditional Tamil homeland, in defiance of numerous...
A few weeks ago, Tamil news cycles were dominated by coverage of an interview given by the Tamil National Alliance Spokesperson M.A. Sumanthiran to a Sinhala media site. During the course of the interview, he made several comments which created controversy and outrage amongst Tamils. The resulting conversation in Sri Lanka’s English-language spaces however failed to discern the actual issues. Instead, commentators opposed to the idea of Tamil nationalism, both Tamil and Sinhala, focused on the “traitorisation” phenomenon in Tamil politics, which predates the war and resulted in the killing of Tamil “moderates” by the LTTE and others. One writer, a relative of Sumanthiran, even spuriously claimed “traitorisation is running amok again,” comparing the current verbal attacks to a time when so-called “traitors” were hung from lamp-posts and assassinated. The trivialisation of this “traitorisation” issue by many throws doubt on whether they were made due to a genuine desire for Tamil introspection about these issues. Rather the intention appeared to be to use it to attack Tamil nationalism and to paint Sumanthiran as a victim of these “Tamil extremists”.
The election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as President of Sri Lanka “sent shockwaves across the Tamil-dominated northeast - where memories of his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa's brutal presidency, marked by mass atrocities and enforced disappearances, remain fresh,” writes Mario Arulthas, Advocacy Director at People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), in a piece for Al Jazeera this week. “Tamils and Tamil-speaking Muslims went to the polls in large numbers, with the vast majority of the northeastern vote going to Premadasa. But it was not enough for his victory. His opponent, Gota, swept the...
Writing in Al Jazeera , the Advocacy Director for the Washington DC-based People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), and a Human Rights Fellow at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, Mario Arulthas, urged the international community to take urgent action to protect Tamils in Sri Lanka following the former president's return to power last week. "The Rajapaksa brothers have been plotting for a political comeback since their downfall in 2015. Tamil activists, who say they always knew Rajapaksas would one day return, are now revisiting their safety protocols, switching to secure messaging apps and sharing emergency contact details," Arulthas writes. Read full article here .
As Sri Lanka continues to go back on its promises to investigate and prosecute atrocity crimes, alternative avenues for justice must be found, writes People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) Advocacy Director, Mario Arulthas. “Nearly 10 years after the end of the conflict, reconciliation and a sustainable peace are far off – contrary to what President Sirisena claimed in his speech at the UNGA,” wrote Arulthas in The Diplomat this week. “Sri Lanka has repeatedly gone back on its promises to investigate and prosecute atrocity crimes,” he said, adding “the international community cannot...
Four suspects in the killing of a former member of the Tamil Eelam Police Department were found innocent and freed by a judge in Mannar, reported the Uthayan . A total of seven suspects were arrested after the murder of 34 year old Naguleshwaran Krishnasuwamy, who was killed in his own backyard by unidentified gunmen in November. His wife, Kavitha, said her husband had received threats in the days prior to the assassination.