Sumanthiran Turns Batticaloa Library Ceremony Into Call for Power-Sharing

Sumanthiran Turns Batticaloa Library Ceremony Into Call for Power-Sharing

BATTICALOA — President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Wednesday inaugurated the newly constructed three-storey public library building of the Batticaloa Municipal Council, an event that became the occasion for a pointed public reminder from former MP and ITAK General Secretary M.A. Sumanthiran that meaningful power-sharing remains an unfinished obligation of the state. The library — a modern three-storey structure funded jointly by the central government and the Eastern Provincial Council — was or


Our Reporter

Our Reporter

May 18: The Day the Clowns Come Out

May 18: The Day the Clowns Come Out

By Che Ran Every year, on May 18, Tamils remember Mullivaikkal. And every year, like clockwork, the circus arrives. From Sri Lanka, we get the professional denialists — men who look at bombed hospitals, mass graves, disappeared families, surrendered civilians who never came home, and say, with the confidence of a man selling fake Rolexes in Pettah, “No, no, no. Nothing happened.” From India, we get the bargain-bin patriots — politicians who hear “Tamil civilian massacre” and immediatel


Che Ran

Che Ran

D.C. Aravintharaj Named Jaffna Municipal Commissioner

D.C. Aravintharaj Named Jaffna Municipal Commissioner

JAFFNA — D.C. Aravintharaj, a senior Sri Lanka Administrative Service officer, was appointed Commissioner of the Jaffna Municipal Council on Tuesday during an official appointment event held at the Governor’s Secretariat here. Northern Province Governor N. Vethanayahan handed the official letter of appointment to Mr. Aravintharaj during the event, which was also attended by the Governor's Secretary, S. Sathiyaseelan, and other senior officials. Mr. Aravintharaj entered the Sri Lanka Administra


Our Reporter

Our Reporter

Seventeen Years Without Prabhakaran

Seventeen Years Without Prabhakaran

By: A. Jathindra Thiruvengadam Velupillai Prabhakaran was a man who held Eelam Tamil politics under his control for nearly three decades. There has been no other figure in history who exercised such complete dominance over Eelam Tamil politics through the force of his own personality and authority. If the Eelam Tamil people could ever have achieved their highest political aspirations, it should have been possible during the period in which he lived and led — but that did not happen. And if res


Jathindra

Jathindra

The Boy We Never Answered For

The Boy We Never Answered For

By Che Ran Sri Lanka has a strange relationship with accountability. We adore the theatre of justice. The press conference. The dramatic raid. The minister standing behind a microphone, sleeves metaphorically rolled up, promising to finally hunt down the untouchables. Every election, another government arrives carrying a moral broom the size of Adam’s Peak, vowing to sweep corruption out of the republic. And every few years, we discover the same depressing truth. The truly powerful rarely g


Che Ran

Che Ran

Letter to the Editor: Setting the Record Straight on D.B.S. Jeyaraj’s Exile

Letter to the Editor: Setting the Record Straight on D.B.S. Jeyaraj’s Exile

The Editor, Jaffna Monitor I read M.R. Narayan Swamy’s tribute to D.B.S. Jeyaraj with the respect it deserves. It was a moving remembrance of a journalist whose life and work were genuinely heroic. Precisely for that reason, it would be a disservice to his memory to allow two significant historical inaccuracies to pass without correction. On the reasons for his exile Narayan Swamy writes that LTTE extremists “forced” Jeyaraj into exile. That is not entirely accurate, and we know this because


K.S. Lakshmi

K.S. Lakshmi

Batticaloa Opens Long-Delayed Library as President Tours Eastern Province

Batticaloa Opens Long-Delayed Library as President Tours Eastern Province

BATTICALOA, Sri Lanka — President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is scheduled to visit Batticaloa on Wednesday to inaugurate what the government describes as Sri Lanka’s second-largest public library after the Colombo Public Library, before attending a series of development and administrative events across the Eastern Province. The new Batticaloa Public Library, built at a reported cost of 435 million rupees, is scheduled to open at 9:30 a.m. The facility replaces one of the country’s oldest public l


Our Reporter

Our Reporter

From Monument to Movement: Why the Thiruvalluvar Cultural Centre Needs India’s Direct Stewardship

From Monument to Movement: Why the Thiruvalluvar Cultural Centre Needs India’s Direct Stewardship

When a government builds a bridge, the measure of its generosity is not the span of the arch but the lives it connects. By that measure, the Thiruvalluvar Cultural Centre — an eleven-storey edifice standing at the waterfront of Jaffna, conceived and constructed as a government-to-government gesture of friendship between India and Sri Lanka — is among the most consequential gifts this province has ever received. This is my third submission on the subject. As Governor of the Northern Province, I


Jeevan Thiyagaraja

Jeevan Thiyagaraja