TELO Dissidents Allege Power Grab Ahead of National Convention

TELO Dissidents Allege Power Grab Ahead of National Convention

JAFFNA — A faction of senior leaders within the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) has accused the party's top leadership of subverting internal democracy by delaying the organization's national convention and manipulating district-level selections to entrench themselves in power, according to statements made at a press conference held Saturday at the Jaffna Media Centre. The dissidents said the party has suffered repeated electoral losses, administrative dysfunction, and a string of co


Our Reporter

Our Reporter

Aid without accountability: Why fragile states remain fragile
Nobel laureate Angus Deaton.

Aid without accountability: Why fragile states remain fragile

By: Prof Mahesh Nirmalan MD, FRCA, PhD, FFICM University of Manchester. The dependence on the unimpeded flow of overseas ‘aid’ runs firmly through many countries in the global south. Grants, concessionary loans, and development assistance have been presented as honourable lifelines and viewed as the ‘magic wand for poverty alleviation’. But it is a dogma that deserves closer scrutiny in a world that treats ‘Aid’ as an extension of foreign policy. The Nobel prize winning and centre-left leani


Prof. Mahesh Nirmalan

Prof. Mahesh Nirmalan

"Land Was the One Issue Raised Everywhere I Went" — Australian High Commissioner Matthew Duckworth
Australian High Commissioner Matthew Duckworth, dressed in traditional Tamil attire, participates in Pongal celebrations in Jaffna

"Land Was the One Issue Raised Everywhere I Went" — Australian High Commissioner Matthew Duckworth

Matthew Duckworth assumed office as Australia’s High Commissioner to Sri Lanka in the latter part of 2025. Within his first six months in the role, he visited the Northern Province twice — first during Thai Pongal in January and again in May — travelling through Jaffna, Mullaitivu and other parts of the North. In a wide-ranging interview with Jaffna Monitor, he reflected on Australia’s development engagement in the North and East, land return and the military presence, transitional justice, the


Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

The Suresh Sallay Affair, Explained

The Suresh Sallay Affair, Explained

By M.R. Narayan Swamy If the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) government is to be believed, it has uncovered a treacherous Kim Philby, the Cold War's most infamous double agent, in Sri Lanka, who committed a bloody horror against the country and its people. No, Suresh Sallay did not send trained agents behind the now routed Tamil Tiger lines to die; far worse, he colluded with the Islamic State to orchestrate a string of bomb attacks that killed around 260 people on Easter Day in 2019. Some of


M.R. Narayan Swamy

M.R. Narayan Swamy

The Meccan Shawl: S.L.M. Hanifa’s Stories Reach the World as Jaffna Monitor Enters Publishing

The Meccan Shawl: S.L.M. Hanifa’s Stories Reach the World as Jaffna Monitor Enters Publishing

After more than six decades of writing about life in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province, S.L.M. Hanifa’s stories are reaching an English-speaking audience around the world. The Meccan Shawl, a collection of fifteen of his short stories translated from Tamil into English, will be launched on Sunday, June 14, at 4:00 p.m. at the Olympic Auditorium Hall on Independence Avenue in Colombo 7. The book is jointly published by Jaffna Monitor and Ghazal Publications. For Jaffna Monitor, it marks a new ventur


Jaffna Monitor

Jaffna Monitor

The Spymaster Has Discovered the PTA Is Evil. He Is Forty-Seven Years Late — but He Is Right.

The Spymaster Has Discovered the PTA Is Evil. He Is Forty-Seven Years Late — but He Is Right.

A few weeks before the arrest of former spy chief Suresh Sallay, an article arrived at Jaffna Monitor for review. It argued that a country needs sweeping laws such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) to tackle terrorism. I did not publish it. It was, to put it plainly, bloody one-sided. As a Tamil born and raised amidst the war, I know what the PTA is. I know what it has done to people. In this issue of Jaffna Monitor, our Consulting Editor, M.R. Narayan Swamy, pens the agony of a pastor,


Kaniyan Pungundran

Kaniyan Pungundran

Sallay Tells Court Easter Bombing Investigators Were Faulted by Official Inquiries
Suresh Sallay

Sallay Tells Court Easter Bombing Investigators Were Faulted by Official Inquiries

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Lawyers for Maj. Gen. Suresh Sallay, the former head of Sri Lanka's State Intelligence Service, told the Court of Appeal on Thursday that the senior police officers investigating him over the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings had themselves been faulted by official inquiries for failing to prevent the attacks. The argument was made during a hearing on a writ petition filed by General Sallay, who is challenging the legality of his arrest and subsequent detention under the Preventi


Our Reporter

Our Reporter

How PTA Destroyed a Tamil Pastor’s Life
Edward (Sam) Sivalingam

How PTA Destroyed a Tamil Pastor’s Life

By M.R. Narayan Swamy A Tamil pastor arrested in 2006 at age 30 in Sri Lanka spent over 16 agonizing years in prisons undergoing such severe torture that even today he walks with a distinct limp and suffers from multiple body pains, presiding over a family which is physically and mentally broken both by the war and his imprisonment. Edward (Sam) Sivalingam was no Tamil Tiger sympathizer and led a mundane life far removed from a brutal war that raged between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam


M.R. Narayan Swamy

M.R. Narayan Swamy