Monitor Memo

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — A video appearing to show Sri Lankan soldiers delivering vegetables cultivated on military-controlled private land in Jaffna to a wholesale collection center supplying a supermarket has gone viral on social media, rekindling longstanding resentment among displaced residents of Valikamam North, where the military continues to occupy thousands of acres of privately owned land despite the end of Sri Lanka's civil war 17 years ago. The footage, circulated widely over the past se

Thirty-seven years to the day after gunmen from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam assassinated the Tamil leader Appapillai Amirthalingam, his son has accused the group of destroying not only his father but also the political cause it claimed to represent. In a Facebook post marking the anniversary, Dr. Baheerathan Amirthalingam, a physician who settled in Britain after the killing, wrote that the assassination on July 13, 1989, had "turned our family's life upside down" and that its conseque

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A retired army major and attorney who spent more than three years inside Sri Lanka's largest prison has offered a rare firsthand account of conditions in the country's overcrowded prison system, days after the deadliest prison riot in more than a decade left 28 people dead and intensified scrutiny of long-standing failures in the country's jails. Ajith Prasanna, who was released from prison earlier this year after serving a contempt-of-court sentence, published the account

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Six political parties representing Sri Lanka’s Tamil-speaking communities announced on Monday that they had agreed to establish a common platform to coordinate on issues of shared concern, including constitutional reform, long-delayed provincial council elections, and land disputes affecting minority communities. The announcement came at a joint news conference at the Renuka Hotel in Colombo's Bambalapitiya suburb, where leaders of Tamil, Muslim and Indian Tamil parties sto

MAHARAGAMA, Sri Lanka — Thousands of people attended the Japanese Bon Odori Festival 2026 in Maharagama on Saturday, celebrating Japanese culture through traditional dance, music, food, and cultural exhibitions. The event, held at the National Youth Services Council (NYSC), was attended by Sri Lanka's Deputy Minister of Youth Affairs, Dinidu Saman Hennayake, Japan's Chargé d'Affaires ad interim, Kamoshida Naoaki, and other Sri Lankan and Japanese officials. The festival featured Bon Odori danc

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Sri Lankan police have assured a Tamil journalist that officers will no longer ask reporters to disclose their confidential sources after the country's largest journalists' union raised the issue with the Inspector General of Police, the journalist said. The assurance was given on Sunday to Murukaiya Thamilselvan, a Kilinochchi-based journalist, during a meeting at the office of an Assistant Superintendent of Police in Jaffna. Officers there recorded a detailed statement fro

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka's government is reviewing tens of thousands of acres of protected land in the eastern district of Trincomalee with the aim of returning land, or providing alternative plots, to people who lived there before 1985, Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya told Parliament on Wednesday. Responding to questions from Kugathasan, an opposition lawmaker representing Trincomalee District from the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK), Ms. Amarasuriya said the initiative forms part of a permanen