02/01/2012
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Caravan Magazine
***EDITOR'S PICK*** ON THE AFTERNOON OF 19 MAY 2009, at around 1:20 pm, a ration shop accountant named Sivarajan ran to the front of the winding lunch queue in the Anandakumaraswami Zone 3 refugee camp to serve rice and sodhi, a watery concoction of chillies and coconut milk. Swarna, a former militant, sat in her tent nearby, yelling at her mother for having told an
army man from the morning shift that their family belonged to Mullaitivu, on the northeastern coast, where the war between the Sri Lankan Army and the separatists—“Tigers,” she called them—was still raging.
At that moment, they got a text message on their mobile phones from the government’s information department. Addressed to all Sri Lankans, it proclaimed, in Sinhala—a language neither Sivarajan nor Swarna could read—that Velupillai Prabhakaran, the man who led a 26-year-long separatist battle for a Tamil Eelam (state), had been killed by the army in a lagoon just a two hours drive north of where they were. So when the news was announced in Tamil over a loudspeaker that evening, they did not believe it. When it finally sank in, they realised—neither with remorse nor relief, but mere wonder at its very possibility—that in an instant the war they had been born into had left their lives.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
08/29/2011
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Al Jazeera
The civil war is over in Sri Lanka, but many men suspected of being Tamil Tiger fighters continue to be detained.
08/19/2011
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Al Jazeera
Sri Lanka's long-running conflict was brutal for its women.
More than 80,000 are said to have been widowed in war-affected areas of the island nation.
The peace that came with the end of the civil war has brought little discernible improvement to their lives.
The situation is especially bad for young women, who told Al Jazeera about rapes and sexual exploitation - in some cases by government officials and the military.
Steve Chao was granted special permission to report in the still sensitive area of northern Sri Lanka.
08/10/2011
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Associated Press
The roadblocks have been dismantled, the sandbags removed, and Sri Lanka is again a palm-fringed tourist paradise, the government says. But for ethnic Tamils living in the former war zone, it is still a hell of haunted memories, military occupation and missing loved ones.
08/05/2011
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Le Temps
Sri Lanka’s government likes to proclaim that the country has put its bloody civil war behind it. But a visit to the Tamil stronghold reveals open scars everywhere.
08/02/2011
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National Fisheries Solidarity Movement
young boy has taken the burden of feeding ten membered family in a village of Jaffna district. 17 year old Muththaiya Dharshan work as construction worker and live in temporary shelter built in some one else's land. The family from Valikamauam North, have been shifted to vanni during war in 90s, after the end of war they have reach to home town hoping to resettle in their own land, but the land still inside the high security zone barbwires (HSZ).
07/26/2011
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Kafila
In the event of the Sri Lankan Government appearing before the CEDAW committee, we would like to bring to your notice the extensive report put together by the Coalition of Muslims and Tamils for Peace and Co-existence posted earlier on kafila. We stand by all aspects of the report put together by activists, yet again, in severely adverse circumstances. Through rigorous, grassroot-level work in a sustained manner, this report has been put together in a situation where the government is actively impeding any work by humanitarian agencies and civil society organisations across the country, especially in the north and east.
We address you from our vantage point as women’s rights organisations and feminists based in India who are deeply concerned about the role of the Indian and Sri Lankan governments in Sri Lanka today, especially concerns affecting women who often bear the brunt of oppressions caused due to war meted out to them by state and non-state actors. We would like to completely support our colleagues in Sri Lanka who are often silenced by real dangers of harm to their person on a daily basis and activists working on Sri Lanka based elsewhere. We strongly urge both governments to act upon the following demands:
07/16/2011
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COALITION OF MUSLIMS AND TAMILS FOR PEACE AND COEXISTENCE, Kafila
Women in the north and the east of Sri Lanka have undergone severe hardships during the war, including the loss of loved ones, family’s support structures, livelihoods, houses and also a loss of life and dignity. While there have been numerous changes announced by the Government the situation for women on ground, however, has continued to be challenging. It is sad since the end of the brutal war women’s lives have not seen a dramatic transformation over the last two years and they have continued to face the basic challenges of safety, shelter and basic facilities. It in this light that we wish to put forward a few issues that these women have been facing within the broader context of life in the north and east for the communities living there. We have chosen to highlight these issues because of their gravity, the State’s involvement in the same and the inability of women to seek justice in such cases owing to the lack of an effective civilian administration, security threats and the lack of a concrete remedy within the local legal system. While we write of the issues relating to women, they raise broader concerns impacting the families and communities. The incidents and the report cover only the Northern and Eastern Province of Sri Lanka.
05/13/2011
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IRIN
JAFFNA, 13 May 2011 (IRIN) - Peace dividends have yet to reach thousands of unemployed graduates returning to Sri Lanka's northernmost, conflict-affected Jaffna District.
05/13/2011
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TamilNet
Even the small section of the former members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who have been released so far in batches, following prolonged harassments, find themselves further harassed and mentally tortured now by the occupying Sri Lankan military in Jaffna and Vanni. Medical sources in Jaffna say that the inhuman treatment meted out on the former Tiger members by the occupying military and the psychological harassment drives many of them to depression.