JM Exclusive

Sri Lanka Tables Bill to Scrap PTA. Critics Say Its Replacement Retains Abusive Powers

Sri Lanka Tables Bill to Scrap PTA. Critics Say Its Replacement Retains Abusive Powers

By Aruliniyan Mahalingam COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka's government on Tuesday introduced legislation to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the 47-year-old security law that Tamils, Muslims and critics of successive governments have long associated with arbitrary detention and torture. Human rights groups, lawyers and the country's own Human Rights Commission say the replacement keeps many of the old law's worst features and adds new ones. The bill sets out a broad definition of terroris
JM Exclusive October 2026
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
Oncologist Wants Health Officials Prosecuted After RTI Order Goes Unheeded

Oncologist Wants Health Officials Prosecuted After RTI Order Goes Unheeded

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka: A consultant oncologist has asked Sri Lanka's Right to Information Commission to take legal action against the Ministry of Health and Mass Media after the ministry failed to comply with the commission's order to give him copies of two complaint letters held in a ministry inquiry file, according to people familiar with the matter. Dr. Nadarajah Jeyakumaran, a consultant clinical oncologist at the National Cancer Institute in Maharagama, had not received the documents as of Oc
JM Exclusive October 2026
Jaffna Monitor

Jaffna Monitor
Gnanasara Returns to Prison as Court Hears Why He Went Silent

Gnanasara Returns to Prison as Court Hears Why He Went Silent

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A lawyer for Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero, the Buddhist nationalist monk arrested over the weekend after Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court invalidated his presidential pardon, told the Court of Appeal on Monday that the monk had been unable to contact his legal team because of a weak telephone signal at the meditation hermitage where he was staying. The explanation came in response to a question from Justice Lakmali Karunanayake, who asked why, if the monk had not been evading t
JM COURTS October 2026
Our Reporter

Our Reporter
Pazha Nedumaran's Son, Who Became a Buddhist Monk, Dies in Melbourne at 57

Pazha Nedumaran's Son, Who Became a Buddhist Monk, Dies in Melbourne at 57

MELBOURNE, Australia — Manickam Nedumaran, the younger son of Pazha Nedumaran, the veteran Tamil nationalist leader and longtime supporter of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, died in Melbourne on Thursday after treatment for cancer, according to people close to the family. He was 57. Mr. Manickam had lived and worked in Melbourne for several years. He had converted to Buddhism and was living as a monk. He died at about 8:45 a.m. Indian time on Oct. 1, after about a month of treatment. His
JM Exclusive Obituary
Our Reporter

Our Reporter
What the Court Found: How 15 Men Helped Pave the Way for Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday Bombings
Mohamed Sariboo Adam Lebbe, known as Gafoor Mama, raises his index finger as he is escorted from the Colombo High Court complex after being sentenced in the Easter Sunday bombings case. The gesture, associated with tawhid, the Islamic belief in the oneness of God, became closely associated in Sri Lanka with Zahran Hashim, the preacher who led the 2019 attacks.

What the Court Found: How 15 Men Helped Pave the Way for Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday Bombings

By Aruliniyan Mahalingam When a special three-judge High Court in Colombo convicted 15 men on Sept. 22 over the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, the indictment before it contained 23,270 counts. The judgment describes how the convicted men trained recruits in weapons and religious ideology, collected explosives and rented houses that were later found to hold bomb-making materials. Two of them, the court found, admitted a man injured in a test explosion to a Colombo hospital under a false name in Au
JM Exclusive September 2026
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
Sri Lankan Tamil Refugee Sent by Britain to Eswatini Dies in Apparent First-of-Its-Kind Resettlement
Inside the fenced camp on Diego Garcia where K.P. and dozens of other Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers were held by British authorities. Photo: The New Humanitarian.

Sri Lankan Tamil Refugee Sent by Britain to Eswatini Dies in Apparent First-of-Its-Kind Resettlement

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka —  A Sri Lankan Tamil man who spent nearly five years in British custody on Diego Garcia, a remote island in the Indian Ocean, died in Eswatini on Sept. 13 in an apparent suicide, according to local news reports and his family. Britain had sent him there months earlier under an agreement with the Eswatini government that provided for him to live in the country permanently — in what appears to have been the first documented case of a person granted international protection by a
JM Exclusive September 2026
Our Reporter

Our Reporter
After the Easter Verdict, Two Raised Fingers Stir an Old Fear
Mohamed Sariboo Adam Lebbe, known as Gafoor Mama, raises his index finger, a gesture closely associated with Islamist extremist groups, as he is escorted from the Colombo High Court complex after being sentenced in the Easter Sunday attacks case.

After the Easter Verdict, Two Raised Fingers Stir an Old Fear

By Aruliniyan Mahalingam JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — The sentences had just been read: up to 260 years in prison. As they were led out of the Colombo High Court complex, two men convicted over the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings raised their index fingers toward the sky. In Sri Lanka, that gesture is tied to one man, Zahran Hashim, the preacher who led the attacks. One of the two was Mohamed Sariboo Adam Lebbe, known as Gafoor Mama. Investigators say he led the killing of two police constables five month
JM Exclusive September 2026
Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam
Navy Women Guarded and Abused Detainees at Secret Trincomalee Site, Witnesses Tell Police
Gun Site, the secret detention facility inside the Trincomalee Naval Base.

Navy Women Guarded and Abused Detainees at Secret Trincomalee Site, Witnesses Tell Police

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Former detainees at a secret underground facility inside the Trincomalee Naval Base told investigators that two women sailors helped guard and question prisoners there, and that one of them ordered a detainee to strip and masturbate while she watched, according to police reports filed in a Sri Lankan court. The two women, retired petty officers Kodagoda Hewa Vitharana Deepika Sandamali and Aruni Dinusha Kaus, were arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department on Sept. 20
JM Exclusive September 2026
Our Reporter

Our Reporter