Monitor Memo

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The leader of the Tamil Progressive Alliance, Mano Ganesan, told Japan’s ambassador to Sri Lanka on Tuesday that the country’s Malaiyaha Tamil community — nearly 1.5 million people living across the plantation districts of the central highlands — should no longer be viewed solely as a labour force and must be included more directly in international development efforts. “We are no longer merely a labour community,” Mr. Ganesan said during a meeting with Japan’s ambassador, I

CHENNAI, India — A Sri Lankan Tamil refugee who served as chairman of a rehabilitation camp management committee in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu was hacked to death recently in an attack police say may have stemmed from internal disputes within the camp. The victim, Sivakumar, also known as Kanna, 42, was originally from Murungan in Mannar district in northern Sri Lanka. Police said he was attacked by a group of assailants while walking near the Sri Lankan Tamils Rehabilitation Camp in

UNITED NATIONS — Marking International Women’s Day, the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, issued a stark warning about the global state of women’s rights, describing gender inequality as “the greatest human rights challenge of our time” and urging governments to take concrete steps to close the gap between men and women. In an opinion essay released ahead of the March 8 observance, Mr. Guterres outlined eight actions he said governments, businesses, and international instituti

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka’s Parliament became the scene of a pointed constitutional challenge on Friday when Faiszer Musthapha, an opposition member of Parliament, pressed the government to justify maintaining emergency regulations three months after Cyclone Ditwah, warning that the legal framework now in place mirrors the decrees used to suppress protests during the 2022 Aragalaya uprising. “Today, the government claims that while the Ditwah crisis is over, emergency regulations are still required t

COLOMBO — March 3, 2026 — G. L. Peiris, Sri Lanka’s former foreign minister, on Monday called on President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to publicly articulate the government’s position on the escalating crisis in the Middle East, warning that the fallout could quickly destabilize key pillars of the island’s still-recovering economy. In a letter dated March 3, reviewed by Jaffna Monitor, and addressed to the President at the Presidential Secretariat, Professor Peiris said the “volatile situation” in

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s state-run petroleum corporation said it had distributed 370,000 liters of petrol across the Jaffna Peninsula over the past two days, responding to what officials described as a surge in purchasing driven by public anxiety over escalating tensions in the Middle East. The distribution covered 43 fuel stations across the peninsula, according to the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation. Under normal circumstances, Jaffna District consumes approximately 100,000 liters of pet

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — M.A. Sumanthiran, the acting general secretary of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK), said that President Anura Kumara Dissanayake had asked him to accept the post of Minister of Justice after assuming office — an offer he said he declined, citing his party’s political position and principles. Mr. Sumanthiran made the disclosure on Sunday at a memorial event in Colombo marking the first death anniversary of the Tamil journalist Rajanayagam Bharathi. He was responding to