Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam is a Sri Lankan journalist and author from Jaffna, known for incisive reporting on conflict, culture, and geopolitics across South and Southeast Asia.

Sri Lanka
“The Window Is Narrowing”: Former JVP General Secretary Lionel Bopage Warns NPP on Tamil Question

“The Window Is Narrowing”: Former JVP General Secretary Lionel Bopage Warns NPP on Tamil Question

By Aruliniyan Mahalingam Lionel Bopage was General Secretary of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) from 1978 to February 1984. After the failed insurrection of April 1971, he was the second accused in the main trial before the Criminal Justice Commission, and he spent much of the next seven years in Welikada prison alongside the party's founder, Rohana Wijeweera. Together they drafted the JVP's policy declaration. The sections dealing with the Tamil-speaking people of the north, the east and t
Exclusive Interview Special Interview
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
Navi Pillay, Jurist of Tamil Descent Who Pressed Sri Lanka on War Crimes, Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Navi Pillay, Jurist of Tamil Descent Who Pressed Sri Lanka on War Crimes, Wins Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO — Navanethem Pillay, the South African jurist whose demands for an international investigation into the final months of Sri Lanka’s civil war made her a defining figure for war-affected Tamils and a target of the Rajapaksa government, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it was honoring Ms. Pillay, 85, known as Navi, for her work to advance “a more comprehensive global legal order” and to ensure that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocid
JM Exclusive October 2026
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
President Says Prison Rules Did Not Foresee Jailed Monks. The British Were Jailing Them in 1816.
An illustration of Wariyapola Sri Sumangala Thero, who defied British colonial rule and was imprisoned in Jaffna for treason in 1818, nearly six decades before Ceylon enacted its Prisons Ordinance.

President Says Prison Rules Did Not Foresee Jailed Monks. The British Were Jailing Them in 1816.

By Aruliniyan Mahalingam The president told senior clergy that the drafters of Sri Lanka’s prison regulations may not have expected monks to be imprisoned. Colonial records show monks tried for treason, jailed in Jaffna and Kandy, and executed in their robes before the law was written. A court ruled on a monk stripped of his robes in prison more than a century ago. JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — More than 120 years ago, a Buddhist monk walked out of a colonial prison in Ceylon without his robes. The pris
JM Exclusive October 2026
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
Two Bills, One Machine: Sri Lanka's New Architecture of State Power

Two Bills, One Machine: Sri Lanka's New Architecture of State Power

By Aruliniyan Mahalingam JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Oct. 7, 2026 On Tuesday, Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara presented the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill to Parliament. It would repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1979, a law successive governments promised to abolish and kept using. The same day, the Government Printer released a second bill under his name, the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill, which the government says will give effect to the United Nations Convention aga
JM Exclusive October 2026
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
Sri Lanka Tables Bill to Scrap PTA. Critics Say Its Replacement Retains Abusive Powers

Sri Lanka Tables Bill to Scrap PTA. Critics Say Its Replacement Retains Abusive Powers

By Aruliniyan Mahalingam COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka's government on Tuesday introduced legislation to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the 47-year-old security law that Tamils, Muslims and critics of successive governments have long associated with arbitrary detention and torture. Human rights groups, lawyers and the country's own Human Rights Commission say the replacement keeps many of the old law's worst features and adds new ones. The bill sets out a broad definition of terroris
JM Exclusive October 2026
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
What the Court Found: How 15 Men Helped Pave the Way for Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday Bombings
Mohamed Sariboo Adam Lebbe, known as Gafoor Mama, raises his index finger as he is escorted from the Colombo High Court complex after being sentenced in the Easter Sunday bombings case. The gesture, associated with tawhid, the Islamic belief in the oneness of God, became closely associated in Sri Lanka with Zahran Hashim, the preacher who led the 2019 attacks.

What the Court Found: How 15 Men Helped Pave the Way for Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday Bombings

By Aruliniyan Mahalingam When a special three-judge High Court in Colombo convicted 15 men on Sept. 22 over the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, the indictment before it contained 23,270 counts. The judgment describes how the convicted men trained recruits in weapons and religious ideology, collected explosives and rented houses that were later found to hold bomb-making materials. Two of them, the court found, admitted a man injured in a test explosion to a Colombo hospital under a false name in Au
JM Exclusive September 2026
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
Vasudeva Nanayakkara Finds a New Government to Defend
Vasudeva Nanayakkara with Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya at the launch of Rathuwevi Mihimadala, a book based on his life, at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute in Colombo on Aug. 28, 2026.

Vasudeva Nanayakkara Finds a New Government to Defend

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka —Vasudeva Nanayakkara, a former cabinet minister who spent nearly two decades defending the Rajapaksas, has now rallied to the defence of Sri Lanka’s National People’s Power government, pledging to protect it against an alleged conspiracy by wealthy and “reactionary” forces angered by its crackdown on crime and the illegal flight of money overseas. "We will take every necessary step to defeat the conspiracies being carried out against the National People's Power government an
Special Article September 2026
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
After the Easter Verdict, Two Raised Fingers Stir an Old Fear
Mohamed Sariboo Adam Lebbe, known as Gafoor Mama, raises his index finger, a gesture closely associated with Islamist extremist groups, as he is escorted from the Colombo High Court complex after being sentenced in the Easter Sunday attacks case.

After the Easter Verdict, Two Raised Fingers Stir an Old Fear

By Aruliniyan Mahalingam JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — The sentences had just been read: up to 260 years in prison. As they were led out of the Colombo High Court complex, two men convicted over the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings raised their index fingers toward the sky. In Sri Lanka, that gesture is tied to one man, Zahran Hashim, the preacher who led the attacks. One of the two was Mohamed Sariboo Adam Lebbe, known as Gafoor Mama. Investigators say he led the killing of two police constables five month
JM Exclusive September 2026
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam