Families in Sri Lanka yearn for answers on relatives who disappeared in civil war
Kilinochchi, Sri Lanka Reuters Arumuga Lakshmi, tormented by questions about the fate of her two children, missing for years, marched through a town in northern Sri Lanka with a group of women, many holding up photographs, black flags and burning torches. During a brutal 26-year civil war between the Sri Lankan government and a militant group, the […]
Postcards: Sri Lanka’s crisis pushes war-shattered Tamils to the brink
JEEVAN RAVINDRAN, of Reuters, reports on the ongoing struggle of Sri Lanka’s Tamils…
Sri Lankan protesters include Tamil victims in war memorial
Colombo, Sri Lanka AP Sri Lankan protesters lit flames and offered prayers Wednesday remembering thousands – including ethnic Tamil civilians – killed in the final stages of the country’s decades-long civil war, in the first-ever event where mostly majority ethnic Sinhalese openly memorialised the minority group. Protesters gathered outside the President’s office floated flowers in […]
Sri Lankan detainees tortured while in custody, rights group alleges
New Delhi, India/Colombo, Sri LankaReuters Political detainees in Sri Lanka are being tortured while in police and military custody, a human rights lawyer who wrote a report on alleged abuses said, ahead of a UN human rights summit. The International Truth and Justice Project, a rights group documenting alleged abuses in Sri Lanka, gave details […]
Songs, stories, pottery: Refugees preserve their heritage in digital archives
As World Refugee Day is marked around the globe, RINA CHANDRAN, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports on how a series of projects around the world – including among Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh – are capturing the cultural heritage of the displaced…
Sri Lanka’s leader vows action against 2019 bombing militants
Colombo, Sri LankaAP Sri Lanka’s President said Thursday that he has received the final report of an inquiry commission investigating the 2019 Easter Sunday bomb attacks and vowed he will not allow anyone responsible for the deaths of more than 260 people escape justice. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa did not disclose what’s in the report, saying […]
Ten years after war ended, Sri Lankan Tamils may never get back land
Bangkok, ThailandThomson Reuters Foundation Sri Lankan Government forces may never return swathes of land taken from ethnic Tamils during a decades-long civil war, land and human rights experts said on Friday, further impoverishing tens of thousands uprooted in the bloody conflict. Thousands of people were killed in the war, which ended in May, 2009, after […]
ESSAY: WHO ARE SRI LANKA’S CHRISTIANS?
In an article first published on The Conversation, MATHEW SCHMALZ, associate professor of religion at College of the Holy Cross in the US, looks at the history of Christianity in Sri Lanka following the Easter Sunday terror attacks in the island nation…
A decade after war ends, Sri Lankan Tamils to ‘occupy’ land held by army
Thomson Reuters Foundation More than 100 Sri Lankan Tamil families demanding the return of their land nearly 10 years after the end of a civil war, plan to occupy their former homes on Saturday if the government does not hand over the properties as agreed. Residents of Keppapulavu village in northern Mullaitivu have campaigned for […]
Promised land and homes, Sri Lankan refugees to return from India
Thomson Reuters Foundation Thousands of Sri Lankan refugees living in India are ready to return to their homeland decades after fleeing civil war, according to a rights group that said returnees will receive a plot of land and other assistance. Nearly 4,000 of more than 62,000 refugees living in camps in the south Indian state […]