May 2026

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,

By M.R. Narayan Swamy S. Krishna (assumed name) is a deeply frustrated doctor in Jaffna. He feels cheated that the Sri Lankan military is refusing to give up land belonging to his family, seized in the name of a war that ended way back in 2009. The specialist doctor, like so many Tamils, had high hopes when Marxist Anura Dissanayake became president in 2024, promising to address many of the historical wrongs, including the continued occupation of land belonging to Tamil civilians, predom

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Former Sri Lankan cricket captain Aravinda de Silva told a Colombo magistrate on Tuesday that he personally arranged bail guarantors and sent Rs. 500,000 in cash to secure the release of Kapila Chandrasena, the former SriLankan Airlines chief executive found dead at his Kollupitiya residence last week, and that he repeatedly tried to reassure Mr. Chandrasena in the final hours of his life that a fresh arrest warrant was "a small matter" that could be resolved. Mr. de Silva

A May Day speech in which President Dissanayake told supporters they would be able to applaud a pending court ruling has triggered a formal international complaint — and exposed a constitutional provision that criminalises executive interference in judicial proceedings. COLOMBO — Twenty-four Sri Lankan opposition members of parliament have filed a formal complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Council's Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, alleging that President