ANURADHAPURA — Mahinda Rajapaksa raised both arms to the crowd at the Anuradhapura Municipal Council Grounds on Saturday afternoon. Several men stood close around him, steadying him as he came before supporters. He made no speech. At 80, the politician who once held some of the country’s largest rallies with hour-long addresses gave this one an appearance instead. Held in one hand, its ornate ends showing between his fingers, was the small pronged object he has carried through more than two dec

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — IndiGo will resume flights between Tiruchirappalli and Jaffna on Oct. 1, restoring an important air link between northern Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu after a suspension of more than three months. The Indian carrier will operate the route three times a week — on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays — and bookings have already opened. The service was suspended in June, but IndiGo has not publicly given a specific reason for halting the Jaffna route. The suspension came as the airli

ANURADHAPURA, Sri Lanka — Ramanathan Archchuna, a doctor-turned-member of Parliament from Jaffna whose statements have repeatedly drawn controversy, told a Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna rally in this Sinhala-majority city on Saturday that he would never again demand a separate Tamil state, and predicted that his “machan,” Namal Rajapaksa, would be elected president in 2029. Dr. Archchuna, who won a Jaffna District seat as an independent in November 2024, delivered the address in Sinhala to an aud

GENEVA — Tamil activists urged the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday to open an independent international investigation into whether Sri Lanka's treatment of Tamils during and after its civil war amounted to genocide, and to appoint a country-specific expert to monitor the island. The appeals were made during the general debate under Item 2 at the council's 63rd session, which opened in Geneva on Sept. 7, and came in the same sitting at which the Office of the U.N. High Commissione