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
A Treasury Breached, a Witness Dead
Ranga Nishantha Rajapaksa

A Treasury Breached, a Witness Dead

KULIYAPITIYA, Sri Lanka — On the afternoon of April 30, the daughter of Abeysinghe Mudiyanselage Ranga Nishantha Rajapaksa noticed her father walking toward the back of their house. He carried a knife. His wife, a schoolteacher, was at work. Sometime between that moment and 2:00 p.m., she found him near a banana tree, bleeding from severed veins in both legs and his left hand. A blood-stained knife lay nearby. By nightfall, Sri Lanka was confronting a new and deeply disturbing chapter in an alr
April 2026 JM Exclusive
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
Mother of Singapore’s President, With Roots in Jaffna, Dies at 99

Mother of Singapore’s President, With Roots in Jaffna, Dies at 99

Sarvambikai Shanmugaratnam, daughter of a Jaffna physician and wife of Singapore’s “father of pathology,” is remembered as a quiet iconoclast who chose her own path. JAFFNA — Sarvambikai Shanmugaratnam — known to her family as Ambikai, and to the Singaporean public as the mother of President Tharman Shanmugaratnam — died on Sunday afternoon at her home in Singapore. She was 99. Though she was born in Kuala Lumpur and never lived in Sri Lanka, her roots were firmly in Jaffna, and, according to
April 2026 Monitor Memo
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
The Business of Hope: How IMHO Helped Rebuild Lives in Sri Lanka

The Business of Hope: How IMHO Helped Rebuild Lives in Sri Lanka

Two decades ago, a small group of Tamil professionals in the United States asked a simple question: instead of meeting and eating, why not do something for our people? What grew from that conversation has transformed hospitals, restored sight, saved hearts, and quietly rewritten the story of a community that war nearly erased.  By: Aruliniyan Mahalingam I have no formal connection to the medical profession. Yet, in a way that feels almost inevitable, I have always found myself surrounded by do
JM Exclusive March 2026
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
Patience, Policy Consistency and Inclusive Growth Drive Viet Nam’s Success, Envoy Tells Jaffna Monitor

Patience, Policy Consistency and Inclusive Growth Drive Viet Nam’s Success, Envoy Tells Jaffna Monitor

Viet Nam—a country that endured one of the most devastating wars of the 20th century and one of the heaviest aerial bombardments in modern history, its cities reduced to rubble and its society fractured by ideology and superpower rivalry—today stands among the fastest-growing economies in the world. The war left behind not only physical destruction but also enduring human images, none more searing than that of nine-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc, captured running in agony after a napalm attack. Nea
Exclusive Interview JM Exclusive
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
“The Diaspora Must Move Beyond Remittances to Structured Investment,” Says Ana Pararajasingham
Ana Pararajasingham

“The Diaspora Must Move Beyond Remittances to Structured Investment,” Says Ana Pararajasingham

Ana Pararajasingham, the author of Uprooted — a work that documents the journeys and successes of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora across the world — is an independent researcher and writer based in Australia. His work has long engaged with questions of justice, displacement and identity. His earlier publication, Sri Lanka: A Victor’s Peace (2019), brought together a series of essays originally published in international journals and newspapers, offering a critical perspective on post-war Sri Lank
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
“Tamil Elites May Call the NPP ‘Old Sinhala Nationalism in Disguise,’ but Ordinary Tamils See a Progressive Force” — Jayadeva Uyangoda

“Tamil Elites May Call the NPP ‘Old Sinhala Nationalism in Disguise,’ but Ordinary Tamils See a Progressive Force” — Jayadeva Uyangoda

Jayadeva Uyangoda, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Colombo, is one of Sri Lanka’s leading scholars on ethnic conflict, peace processes, nationalism, democracy, and leftist politics. Before becoming one of the country’s most influential political scientists, Uyangoda had been briefly involved with the early Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) movement founded by Rohana Wijeweera and was imprisoned after the 1971 uprising. A former activist with a Ph.D. from Colombo, he h
Exclusive Interview March 2026
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
Invited, Then Turned Away: The 11-Hour Wait That Preceded IRIS Dena’s Sinking.

Invited, Then Turned Away: The 11-Hour Wait That Preceded IRIS Dena’s Sinking.

COLOMBO, March 6 — In the final days before it was destroyed by a United States submarine in the Indian Ocean, the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena was sailing toward Sri Lanka in response to what sources say was a diplomatic invitation extended weeks earlier by Sri Lankan authorities during a multinational naval gathering in India. The IRIS Dena, a domestically built Moudge-class frigate commissioned into the Iranian Navy in 2021, was part of the country’s Southern Fleet. The vessel was torpedoed so
Exclusive March 2026
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
How They Killed Him

How They Killed Him

TEHRAN — March 2, 2026 He moved rarely and unpredictably. His offices and residence in central Tehran — known collectively as the Beit Rahbari, or Leader’s House — were protected by hardened construction, reinforced underground chambers, and multiple layers of physical and electronic security. Former Iranian officials have said the descent from the surface to his deepest bunker could take several minutes by a secured elevator. His communications were routed through tightly controlled channels d
Exclusive March 2026
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam