Jaffna Monitor

Jaffna Monitor

Inside Aravinda de Silva’s Home: Testimonies Reveal Kapila Chandrasena’s Final Night

Inside Aravinda de Silva’s Home: Testimonies Reveal Kapila Chandrasena’s Final Night

At around 11:30 on the night of May 7, Kapila Chandrasena telephoned his domestic worker at his Barnes Place home in Colombo. He gave her a list: nightclothes, medicines, and two pairs of spectacles. Then he called again and added a fourth item — a blue cloth belt he kept beneath his sarong and used for exercise. He told her to pack everything into a bag and have it ready. Two men arrived by vehicle and took it away. The following morning, at approximately 7:35 a.m., that same room at the Pedri
JM Exclusive May 2026
Jaffna Monitor

Jaffna Monitor
As Vietnam's Leader Visits Colombo, Sri Lanka Studies the Lessons of a Marxist Economic Success

As Vietnam's Leader Visits Colombo, Sri Lanka Studies the Lessons of a Marxist Economic Success

COLOMBO — Vietnam’s President and Communist Party General Secretary Tô Lâm is set to arrive in Sri Lanka today for a two-day state visit that officials in both countries describe as the most consequential diplomatic engagement between Hanoi and Colombo since formal ties were established more than five decades ago — a visit freighted with economic ambition, ideological affinity and the careful optimism of two nations seeking to build something more durable than goodwill. His motorcade from Banda
JM Exclusive May 2026
Jaffna Monitor

Jaffna Monitor
Tamil Families Displaced Since 1990 Vow Weekly Protests Until Military-Held Lands Are Returned
A banner at the protest site read: “Even after 36 years, must our lives still remain those of refugees?”

Tamil Families Displaced Since 1990 Vow Weekly Protests Until Military-Held Lands Are Returned

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Holding faded land deeds — some preserved for more than three decades as the last legal proof of ownership — displaced Tamil residents of Valikamam North gathered Friday outside the gates of the military’s Commando bungalow in Sri Lanka’s Jaffna Peninsula, demanding the return of ancestral lands they have been barred from entering since their forced displacement in June 1990. The demonstration, organized by landowners and their families, marked the start of what participants
April 2026 Cover Story
Jaffna Monitor

Jaffna Monitor
The ‘High’ Road to Enlightenment

The ‘High’ Road to Enlightenment

Colombo — Shortly after 10 p.m. on a Saturday in late April, a Thai AirAsia jet from Bangkok touched down at Bandaranaike International Airport. Among the passengers, twenty-two young men in saffron robes filed quietly toward the arrivals hall, the way Buddhist monks in transit have moved through this airport for decades — without much notice, and almost without question. They did not get that far. By dawn on Sunday, officers of the Police Narcotics Bureau had laid out the contents of their su
April 2026 JM Exclusive
Jaffna Monitor

Jaffna Monitor
From Sinlung to Zion: The Long Journey of a Lost Tribe

From Sinlung to Zion: The Long Journey of a Lost Tribe

They came through the doors shortly after ten at night, a small procession of exhausted travellers shuffling beneath an arch of blue-and-white balloons. A red carpet had been unrolled across the polished floor of Terminal 1. In the distance, a loudspeaker played “Oseh Shalom,” the old peace song that has become a runway anthem for Israeli homecomings. The men wore knitted kippot or hats. The married women wore head coverings, as is customary in Orthodox Judaism. Many were weeping. There were m
April 2026 JM Exclusive
Jaffna Monitor

Jaffna Monitor
A Guest List, Not a Policy Signal

A Guest List, Not a Policy Signal

By: K. Selvarathnam In a recent commentary for Jaffna Monitor, the veteran Indian journalist M. R. Narayan Swamy argued that the exclusion of Douglas Devananda from India’s Vice President C. P. Radhakrishnan’s April 19 meeting with Sri Lankan Tamil leaders at the Taj Samudra was more than an oversight. It was, he suggested, a slight to the Eelam People’s Democratic Party leader and, by extension, evidence of a “gaping hole” in New Delhi’s Sri Lanka policy. With due respect to the writer, howev
April 2026 OP-ED
Jaffna Monitor

Jaffna Monitor
A Cultural Centre Without a Living Culture: Jaffna’s Silent Promise

A Cultural Centre Without a Living Culture: Jaffna’s Silent Promise

By Sidhartha Thamby This is a USD 12 million gift from the Government of India. But let us be clear about what a gift of this scale actually is: it is not merely money transmuted into concrete. It is an act of civilisational faith. India looked at Jaffna — a city that has survived what few cities in the world have been asked to survive — and said: we believe you are worth building for. The only adequate response to that faith is activation. And activation, so far, has not come. There is a part
April 2026 Guest Column
Jaffna Monitor

Jaffna Monitor
Sri Lanka’s Reform Government Struggles to Deliver on Its Promises

Sri Lanka’s Reform Government Struggles to Deliver on Its Promises

COLOMBO — Eighteen months after a landslide election victory that swept away Sri Lanka’s discredited political dynasties and promised a new era of transparent, accountable governance, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and his National People's Power government are struggling to deliver on the sweeping changes they rode to power on, according to a new report by the International Crisis Group titled “Sri Lanka’s Bumpy Road to a Political Reset.” The findings, drawn from dozens of interviews with
April 2026
Jaffna Monitor

Jaffna Monitor