Monitor Memo

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka – Hundreds of anguished Tamils staged a noisy protest outside the Jaffna District Secretariat, demanding the immediate return of their precious land, which the military seized 36 years ago to battle the Tamil Tigers. An estimated 500 men and women picketed the office complex for around three hours from 8.30 am, asking the authorities to press the military to surrender thousands of acres of land in Valikamam North area in Jaffna. A separate vigil was organised at the Palaly Ju

By M.R. Narayan Swamy Doctors are doing everything they can to keep Sri Lanka’s former intelligence chief Suresh Sallay alive, his wife said on Monday, as the man spent his ninth day in a Colombo hospital after launching an indefinite hunger strike. “He is extremely weak,” Manori Sallay told Jaffna Monitor after visiting him. “All the doctors are going all out to keep him alive.” The former head of the State Intelligence Service (SIS), who was arrested in February on charges of conspiring wit

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — The chairman of the Valikamam North Pradeshiya Sabha has written to the military demanding a halt to the construction of a hospital on privately owned land in the Vasavilan area, warning that the council will take legal action if work continues beyond June 16. In a letter dated June 9 to the Jaffna District military commander, Maj. Gen. K.J.N.M.P.K. Nawarathna, the council chairman, S. Sugirthan, said the project was proceeding without the required legal authorization and de

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Tamil residents displaced from the Valikamam North region more than three decades ago were expected to march on the Jaffna District Secretariat on Monday to demand the return of ancestral land that remains under military control, 17 years after the end of Sri Lanka's civil war. The protest, organized by the Mayiliddy Resettlement Development Committee, marks the anniversary of the displacement, which began on June 15, 1990, when residents were ordered from their homes as fig

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigation Department has refused to allow daily visits by the lawyer of Major General (Retired) Suresh Sallay, the former director of the State Intelligence Service, who is being treated in hospital after a hunger strike in detention, according to a letter from the department obtained by Jaffna Monitor. In the letter, dated June 13 and signed by Senior Superintendent of Police Shani Abeysekara, the CID director, the agency told Sallay’s wife that her husband’s

COLOMBO – More than 5,000 Bharatnatyam dancers from Sri Lanka, India, and other countries gave a scintillating, choreographed performance in Colombo on Sunday (June 14) to earn a Guinness World Record citation for the largest dance lesson in one of India’s oldest classical dance forms. The colourful and mesmerizing event was organised jointly by the Sangamam Global Academy of India and the Samgamizh Liya of Sri Lanka at the Galle Face Green promenade in the capital. After the performers, dress

JAFFNA — A faction of senior leaders within the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) has accused the party's top leadership of subverting internal democracy by delaying the organization's national convention and manipulating district-level selections to entrench themselves in power, according to statements made at a press conference held Saturday at the Jaffna Media Centre. The dissidents said the party has suffered repeated electoral losses, administrative dysfunction, and a string of co

After more than six decades of writing about life in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province, S.L.M. Hanifa’s stories are reaching an English-speaking audience around the world. The Meccan Shawl, a collection of fifteen of his short stories translated from Tamil into English, will be launched on Sunday, June 14, at 4:00 p.m. at the Olympic Auditorium Hall on Independence Avenue in Colombo 7. The book is jointly published by Jaffna Monitor and Ghazal Publications. For Jaffna Monitor, it marks a new ventur