Search Results for: tamil tigers

The International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) developed a detailed reparations claim in collaboration with the Valvettithurai Citizens’ Committee to the Sri Lankan Office for Reparations, seeking USD $15 million (LKR 4.5 billion) for victims of a 1989 massacre in the Jaffna peninsula, on Friday, where at least 66 civilians were killed and 34 injured [...]

International human and civil rights groups on Monday urged the UN Human Rights Council to maintain its oversight of the situation in Sri Lanka. The appeal comes ahead of the council’s 60th session, where member states’ compliance with international human rights treaties is to be reviewed. Amnesty International, together with the Asian Forum for Human [...]

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Tuesday called upon the Sri Lankan authorities to put an immediate end to what it called the government’s harassment of photojournalist Kanapathipillai Kumanan, after a police notice obtained by the organization revealed that Kumanan had been summoned by the counter-terrorism police for questioning. The summons comes in the [...]

On July 29, 1999, Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam, a distinguished Sri Lankan Tamil constitutional lawyer, academic, and parliamentarian, was assassinated by the Tamil separatist rebel group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). His killing was in retaliation for his efforts to resolve Sri Lanka’s decades-long ethnic conflict through democratic, power-sharing constitutional reforms within a united [...]

Sri Lanka’s recently elected President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s political coalition, the National People’s Power (NPP), won an overwhelming amount of support from the majority Sinhalese community as well as the minority Tamil community, receiving a historic supermajority in the November 2024 Parliamentary elections. This broad mandate across ethnic lines presents a historic opportunity to address [...]

Edited by: Alanah Vargas | JURIST Staff, US Mark Salter, a journalist, analyst, and writer with over 25 years of professional experience in democratization, governance, and post-conflict peacebuilding, speaks to JURIST’s Senior Editor for Long-Form Content, Pitasanna Shanmugathas, about his upcoming book From Independence to Aragalaya: A Modern History of Sri Lanka. In this interview, Salter [...]

Edited by: Alanah Vargas | JURIST Staff, US Sri Lanka’s civil war (1983-2009) between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist Tamil militant and political organization fighting for an independent Tamil state, claimed 80,000-100,000 lives by UN estimates, with its legacy of displacement and land dispossession still affecting various minority [...]

The UK government imposed sanctions Monday on four individuals held responsible for serious human rights abuses during Sri Lanka’s civil war. The 26-year conflict, which ended in May 2009, claimed an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 lives according to UN figures, with an estimated 40,000 Tamil civilians killed during the final stages of the war. The [...]

Kagusthan Ariaratnam, a former child soldier turned defense analyst, speaks with JURIST about his new memoir Spy Tiger: The 05 File. The book, co-written with Michael Bramadat-Willcock, details Ariaratnam’s experiences during the Sri Lankan civil war (1983-2009). Forcibly recruited by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as a youth, Ariaratnam later became an informant [...]

Human Rights Watch reported on Sunday that Sri Lankan authorities are repressing Hindus as well as other religious minorities, calling for a renewed UN resolution in an attempt to counter the oppressive actions of the government. According to the report, authorities in Sri Lanka are denying Hindus and other religious minorities access to places of [...]