JM Exclusive

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s justice minister pledged Tuesday that the government would pursue the truth about the fate of people who disappeared during decades of conflict and political violence, telling a government-organized commemoration here that answers for the families of the missing were a matter of right, not politics. “A family’s right to know what happened to its loved one is not a political demand,” said Harshana Nanayakkara, the minister of justice and national integration, at t

By M.R. Narayan Swamy Jeyavanitha Kasipillai was crouched in the crowded camp for war-hit civilians at Omanthai when some Sri Lankan soldiers showed up and rudely snatched away her eldest daughter, Jeromi. Jeyavanitha still remembers screaming her head off as she desperately tried to ward off the armed intruders to save and retain the 16-year-old girl, who too was shouting and wailing. One of the heartless soldiers told the distraught mother in half Sinhala, half Tamil: “We believe your daugh

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka is considering barring anyone under the age of 40 from entering the three-wheeler passenger transport trade, a deputy minister said Sunday, reviving a proposal that a previous government abandoned as unlawful and unfair. Nalin Hewage, the deputy minister of vocational education, said the measure was intended to stop school-leavers from going directly into tuk-tuk driving and push them toward further study and skills training. “We expect to increase the age for entering the

By: Sidhartha Thamby Part I: The Phenomenon of Disappearances What Counts as a Disappearance The legal meaning of "enforced disappearance" is narrower than everyday usage. The main treaty — the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance — applies only when the state is involved: an arrest, detention, or kidnapping by state agents or with state approval. Disappearances by non-state groups like the LTTE or JVP fall outside this legal definition, tho

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — At least 157 people, including 55 children, have been treated at Jaffna Teaching Hospital after developing painful eye problems following a Hindu temple festival, prompting police to seize high-powered lamps used at the event as investigators seek to determine whether the lighting caused the injuries. The patients had attended a festival at a Murugan temple in the Piranpatru area of Jaffna, where powerful electric lamps had been installed around the temple grounds. Dr. T. S

KILINOCHCHI, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka's Defence Ministry has refused to return a state-owned property in Kilinochchi that housed a press club before the end of the civil war and has been under military control since, telling journalists only that security concerns made its release impossible. The decision was conveyed in an Aug. 12 letter from the Presidential Secretariat to the Kilinochchi Media Forum, nearly three months after the organisation appealed directly to President Anura Kumara Dissanay

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Shortly before midnight on Tuesday, one of the most widely followed voices on weather in northern Sri Lanka posted an alert in Tamil that spread quickly across the peninsula. Prof. N. Piratheeparajah, a professor of geography at the University of Jaffna and dean of its Faculty of Arts, wrote that a closely watched Indian Ocean climate index had fallen unexpectedly, that a powerful El Niño was responsible, and that the rains the North depends on in October and November could

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka’s government has decided to replace Dr. Ganesanathan Geathiswaran, the country’s Deputy High Commissioner for Southern India in Chennai, after losing confidence in his conduct in one of Sri Lanka’s most sensitive diplomatic postings, senior government and Foreign Ministry sources told Jaffna Monitor. Dr. Ganesanathan Geathiswaran, a political appointee who is not a career diplomat, is expected to be removed once Colombo identifies a successor, sources said. A government mini