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[TamilNet, Thursday, 05 March 2026, 18:16 GMT]
Intensifying rivalries between major powers are reshaping global geopolitics and elevating the strategic importance of the Indian Ocean. As the unipolar dominance of the United States faces increasing challenges from Russia and China, emerging fractures within the Western alliance system and expanding military confrontations across several regions are drawing renewed attention to the island of Sri Lanka. Situated at a critical maritime crossroads, the island is becoming increasingly significant within the evolving strategic calculations of competing global powers.
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[TamilNet, Sunday, 11 January 2026, 15:02 GMT]
The federal framework advanced by the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), rooted in the 2016 Tamil People’s Council (TPC) proposals, is presented in that section as preserving Tamil sovereignty and self-determination, while retaining the possibility of a referendum. A closer constitutional reading reveals the opposite. While employing the language of pre-constitutional agreement, inalienable self-determination, sovereignty, homeland, and claims of popular legitimacy through referendum, the framework systematically contracts each of these claims through clause design and enforcement logic. What emerges is not transition, but neutralisation by design.
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[TamilNet, Saturday, 21 September 2024, 16:12 GMT]
 The JVP has recently lent itself to US efforts to consolidate the unitary state and realise its long-held ambition to capture state power in Colombo. In this regard, they have also engaged with a range of actors, from the IMF, Washington, and New Delhi, as well as attempted to woo Eezham Tamils and other Tamil-speaking people to opt for the NPP in the 2024 SL Presidential Elections. Norway-based Eezham Tamil anthropology scholar Dr Athithan Jayapalan writes that the NPP and Lionel Bopage speak of equality without addressing the right of an oppressed nation to secession in the face of national oppression and genocide. Instead, the NPP, aligned with the US position, vows to neutralise the Eezham Tamil political struggle for self-determination.
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[TamilNet, Wednesday, 18 September 2024, 21:30 GMT]
Russian revolutionary leader and theoretician Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) was highly critical of the interpretation of the Right of Self-Determination by his contemporary Marxist thinker Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919). While Luxemburg argued that national self-determination was a dangerous distraction from the desired system change towards a socialist state, Lenin defended the right to self-determination, including secession. Most Sinhala leftists have been opportunists who peddle Marxism like a pimp, especially concerning the national question. They are divergent from Lenin’s extremely well-articulated definition and clarification of the national right of self-determination.
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[TamilNet, Tuesday, 20 August 2024, 17:59 GMT]
When I went to work on a project with Viraj Mendis in Germany, I recognised him at the Bremen airport from a video: a tall man with white hair and beard. He was interesting and special in my view then as he was Sinhalese and passionate about ending the conflict of Tamil Eelam's occupation by Sri Lanka. I wanted to know how it came to be. I failed to understand that the opportunity of working with him was so precious; I should meticulously document everything he said in videos, at least just for myself. Just like after my parents passed away, I had regrets, I feel the same for Viraj and wish I could talk to him again. As he has said in a video, the realisation comes after a tragedy.
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[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 August 2024, 21:23 GMT]
 Comrade Viraj Mendis, arrived in the U.K in 1973 as a student and were there until he was forcefully deported by the British government to Sri Lanka in 1989. During the course of these years, Viraj developed ties with revolutionary movements in the U.K and advocated solidarity towards the liberation struggle of the Eelam-Tamils. Likewise, he spent his one year of deportation in Sri Lanka to work towards building solidarity for the LTTE and the Eelam-Tamils amongst the Sinhalese. His efforts created the conditions for the emergence of a small number of Sinhala revolutionaries who would follow his path towards embracing the Eelam-Tamil liberation struggle. These Sinhala revolutionaries would also over the course of the years be forced into exile and have since worked alongside Viraj.
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[TamilNet, Sunday, 18 August 2024, 16:47 GMT]
 The “radicalness” observable in Eelam Tamil Nationalist struggle ranges from centre-right all the way to radical left. It was only the launch of armed struggle that saw radical-left politics entering the Tamil Nationalist struggle. Prior to that Tamil radical politics was led by the Communist party centred on anti-caste movement. Armed struggle was partially successful in absorbing the anti-caste struggle but there were many elements in the anti-caste struggle that stood apart and watched the armed struggle with a very critical eye.
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[TamilNet, Sunday, 21 March 2021, 13:34 GMT]
 The manifestation of a “pre-existing strategy” using archaeology and historic preservation as guises for political or religious agendas has been observed by the UN Special Rapporteurs visiting Sri Lanka in recent years. Today’s international law has not provided universal human right to land. However, SL State’s violations of the land rights of “marginalised communities” could be addressed under the normative framework of international law, said Dr Navanetham Pillay. She mentioned the violation of the Right of Self-Determination. Pillay appeared as a keynote speaker at a conference titled “Loss of the Tamil Homeland,” which was convened by Justice C.V. Wigneswaran on Saturday. She was confronting TamilNet’s questions over her failure to call for investigations on Tamil genocide, which includes examining the “pre-existing strategy” for all the crimes committed against Tamils in the past.
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[TamilNet, Friday, 26 February 2021, 11:53 GMT]
SL President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ‘balancing act’ has tightly pitted the US-UK-India axis of bandwagoning strategic partners against the China-Russia-Pakistan formation at Geneva. US Ambassador Ms Alaina Teplitz in Colombo was making a North trip as Pakistan’s prime minister visited Colombo. Simultaneously, the politics of human rights was unfolding in Geneva at the Interactive Dialogue on Thursday after Ms Michelle Bachelet, the UN Human Rights High Commissioner and the former president of Chile, presented her report on Wednesday. As usual, the UN High Commissioner’s Report was strongly worded than what one could expect from a resolution being tabled by parties with a vested interest. Eelam Tamils, who demand specific referral to the main crime of genocide from the UN High Commissioner and the UNHRC Resolution, have to confront a false dichotomy once again.
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[TamilNet, Friday, 19 February 2021, 14:02 GMT]
The South Asia Department of the Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office of the UK has stated that it still believed that the UNHRC framework is “the best way” to establish the truth and achieve justice and lasting reconciliation for “all communities in Sri Lanka”. The Tamil organisations demanded both ICC referral and investigations on genocide in their letters to the British Foreign Secretary. However, the FCO was dodging any reference to genocide in its reply. On the ICC option, it said: “The ICC could only exercise jurisdiction if the situation is referred to it by a UN Security Council Resolution, or if Sri Lanka accepts the Court’s jurisdiction. Our assessment is that this step would not have the support of the required Security Council members and that it would not advance the cause of accountability for an ICC referral to fail to win Security Council support or to be vetoed.”
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