Aruliniyan Mahalingam

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

By Aruliniyan Mahalingam JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Sinhala nationalist Facebook pages in Sri Lanka mounted a campaign to drive down the IMDb rating of "Best of the Best," a new Netflix film starring the Canadian actor Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, according to posts reviewed by Jaffna Monitor. The pages instructed followers to rate the film one star, branded the actor a supporter of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and in one case supplied a prompt for artificial intelligence tools to write reviews att

KALMUNAI, Sri Lanka — Sivarasa Anojan was serving a five-year prison sentence in Saudi Arabia over a Facebook comment about the Prophet Muhammad. His family was told that an appeal could result in a reduced sentence, and they agreed to pursue one. But when the appeal was decided on Thursday, the court instead sentenced him to death, according to the lawyer who attended the hearing. Documents reviewed by Jaffna Monitor show that Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry helped facilitate the appeal even afte

By Aruliniyan Mahalingam The Supreme Court declared on 10 September that the presidential pardon granted to Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero was null and void. The judgment runs to 58 pages, and its findings reach well beyond the monk who benefited from the pardon. Justice Janak De Silva wrote it. Justices Sobhitha Rajakaruna and Sampath B. Abayakoon agreed. The two petitions were filed in 2019 by the Centre for Policy Alternatives and its executive director, Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, and sepa