Remembrance

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the Easter Sunday attacks, in which eight IS terrorists senselessly murdered 269 Catholic and Christian worshippers and tourists, shattering our collective sense of unity and togetherness. Families celebrating Christianity’s holiest day and tourists visiting our beautiful shores were massacred by those who claimed Islam only in name. Joe lost […]

(National Peace Council, 26 May 2018) The political space opened up by the government over the past three years has enabled political parties and civil society to engage in public activities without restriction.  The National Peace Council is concerned that this political space is being utilized most fully by ethnic nationalists.   This has increased the divisions in […]

Image from @vikalpavoices. Travelling back to the final theatre of battle nine years later, where tens of thousands of civilians were trapped in the fighting, an activist reflects on the horrors of the final days of the war in 2009 and the inability of Sri Lankans in the north and south to connect to each other’s […]

(HRW)The images are vivid. Soldiers standing over the body of the brutal leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) separatist insurgency, who was for so long considered invincible. Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was president at that time, kissing the ground in gratitude for the end of a 27-year-long war that resulted in hundreds of […]

Image: Eastern Uni students observed Mullivaaikaal commemoration inside campus premises on 18th May. @garikaalan. (NPC) The court injunction against a commemoration in Mullivaikkal in the North of those who lost their loved ones in the last battle of the war on May 18 highlights a problem that needs resolution. In the South the government commemorated the […]

By Father Elil Rajendram. Organising a religious service to commemorate 18 May 2009 was like experiencing a horror story, full of fear and suspense, with an uncertain end. Until the last moment I was not sure if anybody would dare to turn up for the event – the first of its kind in the six […]

Several remembrances events were held across the North and East in Sri Lanka on 18th May 2015 (the day the war ended in Sri Lanka in 2009) by Tamils to remember those killed during the war[1]. They were organized by Tamil politicians, religious clergy, civil society and women’s groups. Many were religious events. Most appear […]

(Wigneswaran in Mullivaikkal;Photo: Tamil Guardian/Twitter) Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran took part an event at Mullivaikkal this morning, to remember those who died during the Eelam War. Others who took part in the event at Mullivaikkal NPC Member Ananthi Sasitharan and TELO leader Selvam Adaikkalanathan, reports said. Meanwhile, several other events were held […]

Former Sri  Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who hopes to romp back to power in the coming parliamentary elections on a Sinhalese-nationalist wave, will be celebrating May 18,  the day on which LTTE Supremo Prabhakaran was killed, as “War Heroes’ Day.” Rajapaksa’s rally to be held at Colombo’s Viharamahadevi Park is noteworthy in the context of […]

Several members of the Northern Provincial Council marked the deaths tens of thousands of Tamils, in the run up to May 18, the day the armed conflict between Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Tigers ended. Declaring the days between May 12 and 18 as remembrance week, NPC members on Tuesday travelled to […]