Writing in The Wire India, Harini Amarasuriya, highlights how Sri Lanka’s response to the coronavirus demonises minority communities and imposes a demand to submit to “the benevolent control of the majority community”.

Rising Islamophobia

May 31, 1981 marked not only the burning of the Jaffna Public Library, but the beginning of a week-long rampage of violence by Sri Lankan security forces and Sinhala mobs which devastated the peninsula.

The violence and devastation was largely ignored by the island’s mainstream press, and even in Tamil Nadu reports did not reach the media for many days, as a result of the shutdown of press throughout the North and general censorship imposed by the Sri Lankan government. Notably, the office and presses of Eelanadu, a prolific Tamil daily coming out of Jaffna since 1959, were burnt to the ground by the mobs. The famous Poobalasingam Book depot was also burnt.

Sri Lanka's Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has launched investigations into Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) which were reportedly registered without due procedure under the previous government. 

Speaking to the Daily Mirror, Raja Gunaratne, Director of the National NGO Secretariat, said that NGOs had been registered without checking their funding sources and projects. 

The NGO Secretariat, which monitors the registration and operation of NGOs, is under the purview of Sri Lanka's Ministry of Defence. 

Tamil families of the disappeared in Vavuniya marked a milestone 1,200 days of protest today, as they continue their demands for information regarding their forcibly disappeared loved ones.

Following the death of Ceylon Workers’ Congress leader Arumugan Thondaman, Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister, and war criminal, Mahinda Rajapaksa was sworn in as the Social Empowerment and Estate Infrastructure Development Cabinet Minister.

The Sri Lankan president has promoted a former military intelligence director to the rank of Major General, despite his role in a number of abuses including the reported forced confession and denial of medical treatment of a Tamil doctor who served during the massacres at Mullivaikkal in 2009.

Even before they returned to power in Sri Lanka last year, the Rajapaksas never sought to cloak their brash espousal of Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism. As defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa ran a ruthless offensive that massacred tens of thousands of Tamils, which his brother Mahinda oversaw as president, with what he called “a sense of quiet joy”. Now, more than six months have passed with the Rajapaksa siblings back in power and occupying the island’s highest offices. And whilst global attention has been focussed on controlling the coronavirus pandemic, the regime has used the crisis to unleash Sinhala supremacy with an even greater ferocity.

At midnight on May 31, 1981, the Jaffna Public Library, the crucible of Tamil literature and heritage, was set ablaze by Sri Lankan security forces and state-sponsored mobs. The burning has since been marked by Eelam Tamils as an act of genocide.

Aiyathurai Nadesan was remembered by journalists and media workers at a memorial event in Batticaloa, marking 16 years since his assassination.