Braving torrential rain, displaced Tamil residents of Valikamam North gathered for the fourth consecutive Friday outside the gates of the Sri Lanka Army’s Commando bungalow in Jaffna, demanding the return of approximately 651 acres of ancestral land from which they were forcibly displaced in June 1990 and to which they have been denied access for 34 years. The demonstration, which began on April 24 as a weekly series, is being carried out by landowners belonging to Grama Sevaka divisions 248, 2

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

Sri Lanka's Cabinet last Monday approved the establishment of a trust fund to manage the Jaffna Thiruvalluvar Cultural Centre, an 11-storey landmark built with approximately $12 million in Indian grant assistance — a move critics say effectively places a centre intended for Tamil cultural life under the influence of a Colombo ministry responsible for Buddhist, religious and cultural affairs, while marginalising the elected local authority on whose land the facility stands. The Cabinet decision,