Rights groups and activists have long complained that social media platforms are taking down content that is integral for human rights activism around the world. This has ranged from deleting evidence of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, to suspending some accounts linked to the farmer’s protest in India, and, just this week, removing content highlighting the violence in Sheikh Jarrah. Some of these removals seem to be happening by accident and are reinstated shortly after, while others are driven by mass reporting by digital activists working for various authoritarian governments.
Writing in Jacobin this week, Eelam Tamil filmmaker and member of the Tamil Refugee Council, Baranthan Vidhyapathy, said the Australian government has whitewashed the atrocities committed by Sri Lanka against Tamils and "helped equip Sri Lanka’s state security forces." Earlier this year, the Australian government supplied Sri Lankan police with five aerial drones despite supporting a United Nations resolution just months before, which warned of the deteriorating human rights situation on the island. "The drones were previously owned by the Operation Sovereign Borders Joint Agency Task Force,...
As India grapples with a wave of coronavirus infections, Sri Lanka’s cases continue to hit daily highs, sparking fears of deadly infections being met with an intensified authoritarian response from the state.
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 Just Security, Professor Kate Cronin-Furman details how the recently passed UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution displays the inability and unwillingness of the UNHRC to impose an accountability model on Sri Lanka but also highlights “a genuine desire to grapple with persistent impunity and the worsening human rights situation”. She notes that whilst the “anaemic actions it proposes, highlights the profound limitations on the Human Rights Council”; “read optimistically, the new resolution opens the possibility that the mandated 18 months of enhanced scrutiny and evidence-...
This week the Sri Lankan government issued a gazette announcing the proscription of hundreds of Tamils and several diaspora organisations, in a move that has generated shock and outrage across the world. The announcement, which renews and broadens a previous 2014 gazette is designed to criminalise, intimidate and terrorise. It must be immediately condemned.
Writing in The Tribune this week, Tamil Guardian Staff Writer Bharati Selvakumar commented on Britain’s historic and current support of Sri Lanka and “whether Britain will live up to its responsibilities and hold Sri Lanka accountable – or if the government will continue to whitewash this genocidal history”. Selvakumar described Britain’s “lip service” to the idea of accountability but repeated failures to take any meaningful action. Instead, Selvakumar notes how “ behind closed doors, the British government has continued arms sales, the training of Sri Lanka’s security forces, and has even...
An editorial by the New Straits Times raises concern over the discriminatory legislation adopted by the Sri Lankan government, warning that the burqa ban and closure of over a thousand madrasahs, highlight that Sri Lanka “races to be another genocidal Myanmar”. In their piece, they highlight how Muslim and Christians launched legal challenges against the government’s draconian policy of forced cremations which violated religious liberty and noted the Supreme Court’s dismissal without calling for evidence. The piece further criticises the ban on the burqa, highlight criticism from human rights...
“I studied Tamil ma’am.” This seemingly innocuous statement poleaxed my new history teacher. I had just completed Class 10 (the Indian equivalent of GCSE) and recently joined the Kendriya Vidyalaya, a system of schools run by the central Ministry of Education, for the final two years of my schooling. My history tutor was shocked because the school did not offer the language I said I studied until the previous year. And it was compulsory to do a language in addition to English in order to be eligible to sit the final exams (A Levels). One might presume that I’d have moved out of Tamil Nadu for high school. I kid you not, I still lived in the heart of Chennai, the capital of the only Tamil-speaking state in the Indian union!
Writing in The Wire this week, Tamil Guardian features editor Thusiyan Nandakumar said the Indian government must “do more than pay lip service to Tamil concerns”. Describing escalating tensions between India and Sri Lanka, Nandakumar said it “follows a long history of Sri Lankan ‘Indo-phobia’, driven by a protectionist, Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism that has been central to the island’s politics since independence”. In India, as elections loom in Tamil Nadu, “outrage over Sri Lanka’s actions has been growing,” he added. “These are sentiments that Modi will be acutely aware of, having raised them himself during a trip to Tamil Nadu’s capital earlier this month. In an address where he lauded the southern state, he took care to mention the plight of Indian fishermen arrested by Sri Lankan security forces and reaffirmed his commitment to “the welfare and aspirations of our Tamil brothers and sisters in Sri Lanka”. “We are always committed to ensuring that they live with equality, justice, peace and dignity,” he said.”