COLOMBO Regardless of the decisive change in Sri Lanka’s national politics — with the election of Anura Kumara Dissanayake in September this year — the country’s Tamil people will need strong representation in Parliament to assert their rights and long-neglected demands, according to prominent Tamil politician M.A. If the new dispensation brings in far reaching changes in governance structure, the …
For most of its two decade-existence, Sri Lanka’s Tamil National Alliance has been engaged in talks with the southern Sinhalese leadership, to negotiate a durable solution to the island nation’s lingering national question. “We can’t despair, we can’t abandon things,” Mr. Sampanthan told The Hindu in 2018, when the Alliance joined a Constitution drafting process initiated by the President Maithripala …
Reaching out to Sri Lanka’s Tamil parties in Parliament on November 10, President Ranil Wickremesinghe invited them for a discussion this week, and pledged to resolve their pending issues before the island nation’s 75th Independence Day falling on February 4, 2023. Sumanthiran said despite known differences among Tamil parties, the TNA invited them for a discussion this week, “as we …
Commemorations for Tamil Tiger rebels killed in Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war were banned on Friday after court petitions by the government of strongman President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Sri Lanka’s 37-year conflict began in 1972 when Tamil Tigers waged a bloody war against government troops in a campaign for a separate homeland for their ethnic minority group. His government petitioned courts …
Sri Lanka’s main Tamil party on Tuesday urged President Gotabaya Rajapaksa not to “regress into naked majoritarianism”, that in the past gave rise to a conflict, resulting in armed hostilities spanning over three decades. Referring to the Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948, “a rank majoritarian act” that denied Indian origin Tamils citizenship, the Sinhala only Act of 1956, and the …
In Sri Lanka’s presidential poll in 2015, the Tamil National Alliance, representing Tamils of the north and east, led its constituency in a crucial protest vote against then President Mahinda Rajapaksa. He has even gone to Jaffna — he was the first Prime Minister of India to ever visit Jaffna — and has assured us that India’s policy towards Sri …
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