“The bread was dipped in blood.” A Palestinian child mourns his mother who was killed when Israeli forces opened fire at an aid distribution point in Rafah, Gaza. More than 100 people have been killed in days of attacks at aid hubs run by the US-Israeli backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Published On 3 Jun 20253 Jun 2025
Critics, including US officials, are calling for the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s new mission to fail, with twelve volunteers, including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg on board. The flotilla is trying to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Published On 2 Jun 20252 Jun 2025
Eight people were injured in an attack on Sunday on a group of people in the United States city of Boulder, Colorado, who were campaigning for the release of captives held by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza.
Police arrested a man who allegedly threw incendiary devices towards people. The FBI said it was investigating the attack as an “act of terror”.
In a social media post, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar described the attack as an anti-Semitic act.
Here is what we know so far:
A group of people were walking in a “regularly scheduled, weekly peaceful event” aimed at galvanising support for the release of captives held in Gaza when they were attacked, according to an official news release shared by the Boulder Police Department. The police were called at 1:36pm (10:36 GMT).
The news release said that witnesses saw the attacker using a makeshift flamethrower as he lobbed incendiary devices – meant to start fires – at the gathering.
Witness videos circulating on social media showed a shirtless man appearing to hold two glass bottles, which looked like Molotov cocktails.
A Molotov cocktail is a very simple incendiary weapon. It comprises a bottle filled with a flammable liquid covered by a wick, which is lit on fire before the bottle is thrown at a target.
They are named after Vyacheslav Molotov, the foreign minister of the Soviet Union during World War II. In 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland, and the country experienced heavy bombing. Molotov insisted that the Soviet Union was not dropping bombs, only food parcels.
In response, the Finns threw handmade explosives towards Soviet tanks, sarcastically dubbing them “Molotov cocktails”.
The attack took place at the outdoor Pearl Street Mall, a pedestrian mall in downtown Boulder that stretches four blocks. It is home to retail stores, art galleries and restaurants. The mall is a two-minute drive, or 1.1km (0.7 miles), from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser released a statement on Sunday, saying that the attack was “against a group that meets weekly on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall to call for the release of the hostages in Gaza”.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a nonprofit focused on combating anti-Semitism – which was accused of double standards in January for defending a salute made by billionaire Elon Musk at an inauguration rally for US President Donald Trump – released a statement saying the event was part of an international campaign called “Run for Their Lives”.
The campaign involves weekly gatherings worldwide where Jewish community members run and walk in solidarity with the captives taken by Hamas and other Palestinian groups during their attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023.
Run for Their Lives gatherings take place in 230 locations in 24 countries, including Brazil, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and Spain. Groups in multiple US states participate in this event and there are two locations in Colorado: one in Boulder and the other one in Denver’s Washington Park.
Armed Palestinian groups took about 251 captives from Israel on October 7. While some captives were returned in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, or rescued, others have died in captivity. Some 59 captives are believed to remain in captivity, and Israel believes that 35 of them have died.
Since October 7, Israeli military bombardment and other attacks have killed more than 61,700 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.
The Boulder attack suspect has been identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 45-year-old man from El Paso County, according to the Boulder Police news release.
Soliman was also injured in the attack, though the nature of his injuries is unclear.
The release says that Soliman was medically evaluated at a hospital and then was booked in the Boulder County Jail for multiple charges. The release did not specify what exactly these charges were.
According to the news release, Soliman yelled, “Free Palestine” during the attack.
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, claimed in a post on X that the Boulder attack was carried out by an “illegal alien”.
Without naming Soliman, Miller said the suspect had overstayed a tourist visa granted to him by the government of former US President Joe Biden. “In response, the Biden Administration gave him a work permit. Suicidal migration must be fully reversed,” Miller wrote.
Al Jazeera was not able to independently verify Soliman’s immigration status in the US.
Law enforcement officials said that eight people were injured. These include four women and four men, aged between 52 and 88.
The victims were taken to hospitals in the Denver metropolitan area.
The Boulder Police Department called the FBI within minutes of the attack, the news release said. The FBI is investigating this as a terror attack.
“This act of terror is being investigated as an act of ideologically motivated violence based on the early information, the evidence, and witness accounts,” FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino wrote in an X post. “We will speak clearly on these incidents when the facts warrant it.”
FBI Director Kash Patel also wrote in an X post that his team was investigating the “targeted terror attack” and that FBI agents and law enforcement were at the scene already.
Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, wrote in an X post that the department was working on the situation with its “interagency partners”, including the FBI.
According to an update by the Boulder Police Department on X on Monday at 05:53 GMT, all roads in downtown Boulder have been reopened except for a block on Pearl Street, “which should be reopened in the next few hours”.
“We will continue to ensure that justice is pursued swiftly, support is provided to victims and their communities and preventative action is taken to protect everyone’s safety,” FBI Denver Special Agent in Charge Mark Michalek was quoted saying in the Boulder Police news release.
Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn acknowledged that many residents were scared, and had questions about the attack. “Boulder has recovered from acts of violence before and we will again recover. I urge this community to come together. Now is not the time to be divisive,” he was quoted saying in the same news release.
Israeli Foreign Minister Saar wrote on X on Monday: “Shocked by the terrible antisemitic terror attack targeting Jews in Boulder, Colorado. This is pure Antisemitism, fueled by the blood libels spread in the media.” He did not elaborate on what he meant by this.
US Senate Democratic Party Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X: “Tonight, a peaceful demonstration was targeted in a vile, antisemitic act of terror. Once again, Jews are left reeling from repeated acts of violence and terror.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X on Sunday: “We’re united in prayer for the victims of a targeted terror attack this afternoon in Boulder.”
We’re united in prayer for the victims of a targeted terror attack this afternoon in Boulder.
Terror has no place in our great country.
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) June 1, 2025
Many Democrats have released online statements condemning the attack and describing it as anti-Semitic.
Less than two weeks after the horrific antisemitic attack at the Capitol Jewish Museum in DC—and after two relentless years of surging antisemitic attacks across the country—the Jewish community is once again shattered by pain and heartbreak.
Tonight, a peaceful demonstration…
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 2, 2025
Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, wrote on X: “My thoughts are with the victims, their families, and the Jewish community that once again appears to have been targeted with hate. We all have a responsibility to stop these antisemitic acts.”
Another terrible attack, this time in Boulder, Colorado. My thoughts are with the victims, their families, and the Jewish community that once again appears to have been targeted with hate. We all have a responsibility to stop these antisemitic acts. https://t.co/KrAA3wwHPi
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 2, 2025
House Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat, released a statement on X, saying: “Our heartfelt prayers are with all of our Jewish brothers and sisters impacted by this unconscionable act of terror, and we thank law enforcement for their swift response. Antisemitism has no place in our nation or anywhere throughout the world. It must be crushed. We stand with the Jewish community today and always.”
My statement on the Antisemitic Attack in Boulder, Colorado. pic.twitter.com/EUpdnl9M6K
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) June 1, 2025
On May 22, a man named Elias Rodriguez was charged after fatally shooting two Israeli Embassy staff workers in Washington, DC. He was charged with murdering foreign officials, causing death with a firearm and discharging a firearm in a crime of violence.
Gaza Doctor Hamdi al-Najjar has died 8 days after being wounded in an Israeli strike that killed nine of his children.
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Arab states are accusing Israel of weaponising hunger in Gaza, rejecting its new aid system as illegal. “Starvation is being used as a weapon of war,” said UAE envoy Mohamed Abushahab, speaking on behalf of 22 Arab League members at the UN.
Published On 30 May 202530 May 2025
Lawyers for the six victims say ‘historic’ court decision recognises the plight of survivors who demanded justice for decades.
A top Guatemalan court has sentenced three former paramilitaries to 40 years each in prison after they were found guilty of raping six Indigenous women between 1981 and 1983, one of the bloodiest periods of the Central American nation’s civil war.
The conviction and sentencing on Friday mark another significant step towards attaining justice for the Maya Achi Indigenous women, who were sexually abused by pro-government armed groups, during a period of extreme bloodshed between the military and left-wing rebels that left as many as 200,000 dead or missing.
Former Civil Self-Defence Patrol members Pedro Sanchez, Simeon Enriquez and Felix Tum were found guilty of crimes against humanity for sexually assaulting six members of the Maya Achi group, Judge Maria Eugenia Castellanos said.
“The women recognised the perpetrators, they recognised the places where the events took place. They were victims of crimes against humanity,” she said, praising the women’s bravery in coming to court to testify on repeated occasions.
“They are crimes of solitude that stigmatise the woman. It is not easy to speak of them,” the judge said.
Indigenous lawyer Haydee Valey, who represented the women, said the sentence was “historic” because it finally recognised the struggle of civil war survivors who had demanded justice for decades.
Several Maya Achi women in the courtroom applauded at the end of the trial, where some dressed in traditional attire and others listened to the verdict through an interpreter.
One of the victims, a 62-year-old woman, told the AFP news agency she was “very happy” with the verdict.
Pedro Sanchez, one of the three men convicted, told the court before the sentencing, “I am innocent of what they are accusing me of.”
But Judge Marling Mayela Gonzalez Arrivillaga, another member of the all-women, three-panel court, said there was no doubt about the women’s testimony against the suspects.
The convictions were second in the Maya Achi women’s case against former military personnel and paramilitaries. The first trial, which took place in January 2022, saw five former paramilitaries sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Advocacy group Impunity Watch said the case “highlights how the Guatemalan army used sexual violence as a weapon of war against Indigenous women” during the civil conflict.
In 2016, a Guatemalan court sentenced two former military officers for holding 15 women from the Q’eqchi community, who are also of Maya origin, as sex slaves. Both officers were sentenced to a combined 360 years in prison.
Opapo, Kenya – Perched in the grass alongside the Rongo-Homa Bay Road in Kenya’s Migori County, a rusted sign announces the Melkio St Joseph Missions of Messiah Church in Africa. Beyond it, a sandy path meets big blue and purple gates that barricade the now-deserted grounds from view.
Just more than a month ago, the church in Opapo village was thrust into the spotlight when reports of secret burials and “cult-like” practices emerged.
On April 21, local police stormed the grounds and discovered two bodies buried within the fenced compound – including that of a police officer who was also a church member – as well as dozens of other worshippers who had been living there.
During the raid, 57 people were rescued and taken into custody. In the weeks since, most have been released, but police have banned them from returning to the church and sealed off the compound.
For Kenyans, the incident has unearthed the memory of other controversial churches steeped in allegations of abuse, like the 2023 case where more than 400 people linked to a church-cult starved to death in the Shakahola Forest.
In Opapo village, residents are troubled by the deaths and the decades-long secrecy surrounding the church. Many want to see the permanent closure of the compound and the exhumation and return of the bodies buried there.
Brian Juma, 27, has lived directly beside the church all his life. He told Al Jazeera locals believe it was started by a man who fashioned himself as a sort-of god figure, and who the followers of the church prayed to.
Juma claims that when the church leader died 10 years ago, followers did not immediately bury him but prayed for three days in the hope that he would rise.
Pauline Auma, a 53-year-old mother of six who also lives near the church, said the congregation was set up in their area in the early 1990s, although she could not recall the exact year.
“When it came, we thought it was a normal church like any other. I remember my sister even attended a service there, thinking it was like other churches, only to come and tell us things that were not normal were taking place. For example, she said the Father there claimed to be God himself,” Auma recounted.
In the years that followed, the church recruited members from different locations across the country. Juma said congregants were not from around the area, spoke different languages, and never left the compound to go to their own homes.
According to Caren Kiarie, a human rights activist from neighbouring Kisumu County, the church has several branches across the Kenyan Nyanza region, and sends members from one location to the other.
Many people came to worship and live within the church full time, Opapo villagers remember.
“They were very friendly people who did business around the Opapo area and interacted well with the people here,” Juma said. “But they would never live outside the church, as they all went back inside in the evening. Within the church compound, they had cattle, sheep, poultry and planted crops for their food.”
Though the worshippers could interact with outsiders, locals say the children living there – some with their parents and others who neighbours said were taken in alone – never attended school, while members were barred from seeking medical care if they were sick.
On the day of the police raid and rescue, many of the worshippers looked weak and ill, said Juma, who over the years befriended some young people whose parents belonged to the church. “They were sickly, as they were never allowed to go to the hospital or even take pain medication,” he said, quoting what his neighbours had told him. Auma believes those who were rescued that day were the sickly ones, as the others had escaped.
The 57 initially refused to leave the compound at all, insisting the church was their only “home”. But police took them to the nearby Rongo Sub-county Hospital to be treated. They again refused medical care and instead began singing Christian praise songs in the Dholuo language. Auma said the songs were chants asking God to save them and take them home to heaven.
Disturbed by the commotion, health workers recommended that they be moved from the hospital because they were making other patients uncomfortable. That’s when they were taken into police custody. According to the assistant county commissioner, Josphat Kingoku, the worshippers were released from police custody two weeks ago, but he did not know their whereabouts.
In Kwoyo in Homa Bay County, Linet Achieng worries about her 71-year-old mother, who left home to join the Migori church 11 years ago and never returned.
Her mother was introduced to the church by a neighbour who was originally from Migori, Achieng said.
“Initially, she had gone to seek healing from a backache that had troubled her for years,” said the 43-year-old, explaining that the church offered promises of health.
The family initially kept in touch with their mother, asking when she would come home after being healed. She kept making promises to return, but never did. Achieng tried to convince her mother to leave the place, she said, but her attempts were in vain.
“At some point, she stopped talking to us, and when my younger brother and I went to inquire how she was doing, we were sent away from the church and told that unless we were willing to join the church, we were not welcome in there,” she said.
After the raid last month, Achieng learned her mother was among those rescued but says she does not want anything to do with her family.
While many worshipers’ families wait to hear about their relatives, one family knows for sure they will never see their loved one again.
Dan Ayoo Obura – a police constable – was one of those who died at the church compound, reportedly on March 27, according to local media reports.
He had been introduced to the church by his wife, who was a leader there, his relatives said.
Obura had left his workplace at the General Service Unit police headquarters in Nairobi in February before travelling home to Kisumu County on sick leave, according to his uncle Dickson Otieno.
He was taken to a hospital in the area, but after a week at the facility, “he disappeared”, Otieno told Al Jazeera.
“We reported to the police and started looking for him everywhere, panicked that we might never see him again. Later, we had information from some neighbours that he is in Migori at a church. That’s when we went there to ask the church leaders where he was. They told us he was not at the church and had not seen him.
“About a month later, they called us to say that the person we were looking for had died the previous night and that they had buried him that day.”
The family then informed the police and human rights activists like Kiarie, and travelled to Opapo to try and locate his body.
Kiarie, who is a rights defender and paralegal at the Nyando Social Justice Centre, accompanied the family to Opapo in March.
“We’ve not been given the body,” she told Al Jazeera, explaining that she interviewed residents and church members while in Opapo and heard concerning reports about what was happening at the compound.
No one was allowed to have an intimate relationship at the church, she said, while husbands and wives were required to separate after joining. These practices were echoed by the compound’s neighbours in Migori.
“There are also serious claims of sexual violence at the church where the male leaders were having sex with the girls and women there,” Kiarie said. “That was why they did not want any man inside to touch the women because they belonged to them,” she alleged.
Kiarie said since the police raid, the compound’s neighbours have also reported there may be more than just two bodies buried inside – which she said could be what is delaying Obura’s exhumation. “They’re still waiting because they said the issue has been picked up by the national government, and they [the national authorities] want to exhume the other bodies [that may be there],” she said.
Kiarie feels the Migori church may prove to be another case like the Shakahola cult “massacre” if it is found that more people indeed died and were buried there without their families’ knowledge.
The events in Migori have opened wounds for many survivors and relatives of the 429 people who were starved to death in Kilifi County’s Shakahola, in 2023.
Led by Pastor Paul McKenzie, the congregants there also left their families and abandoned property, seeking to go to heaven and meet their messiah. But news reports said that at the church, they were radicalised and brainwashed, convinced that if they stopped eating they would die peacefully, go to heaven and meet their god.
Both Grace Kazungu’s parents and two of her siblings perished in the Shakhola church cult, says the 32-year-old mother of three from Kilifi.
Whenever she and her brother tried to question the church’s teachings, the others would not hear a word against it, she told Al Jazeera.
“They would argue that we were ‘anti-Christ’ and that their church was the only sacred and holy way to heaven,” she said.
“Months later, I heard from my brother that they had sold the family’s property and were going to live inside the church after ditching earthly possessions.
“We tried to reach them but were blocked by their leader. My husband broke the news to me one morning after a year that they had been found inside the forest and they were dead and buried.”
After their deaths, they were buried in mass graves within the Shakahola Forest where the church was located. Upon discovery, following a tip from the local media, the police launched an operation to cordon off the area so they could exhume the bodies, test for DNA, and return the deceased to their relatives for proper burial.
They later arrested the church leader, McKenzie, and charged him with the murder of 191 people, child torture, and “terrorism”. He and several other co-accused remain in police custody, pending sentencing.
Unlike Shakahola, the Migori church allowed its followers to work, eat and run businesses in the nearby Opapo and Rongo towns. But like Shakahola, it also kept them living apart from the rest of society, barred them from accessing school, marriage and medical care, and severely punished supposed transgressions, according to locals who heard and witnessed violent beatings and fights inside the compound.
In many societies, religious leaders are widely respected and trusted, and they often influence beliefs and actions in the private and public spheres, explained Fathima Azmiya Badurdee, a postdoctoral researcher in the faculty of Religion, Culture and Society at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
“People are in search of ‘hope’ in the daily issues they confront. Religious leaders are pivotal in this role in providing hope to sustain their futures … or even in life after death,” she explained.
Still, “awareness among religious communities on opportunistic leadership and cult dynamics is needed,” she said, referring to the Opapo and Shakahola forest cases.
“Many people blindly trust religious leaders without questioning them. Words and opinions of religious leaders are taken as the gospel truth. The lack of questioning, critical thinking skills, or even the lack of religious literacy often influences individuals to believe in any extreme forms propagated by these leaders,” she added.
Most of the 57 Migori worshippers are now back in society once more. However, police extended the detention of four key suspects while investigations and autopsies continued this month.
Assistant county commissioner Kingoku declined to provide details to Al Jazeera about any charges against the worshippers, saying they did not appear in court.
Meanwhile, the Kenya National Police Service spokesperson Michael Muchiri told Al Jazeera: “All individuals found culpable will be taken through the prosecution process as guided by the law.”
Investigations are ongoing into Obura’s cause of death, verification of additional burials alleged by residents, and a probe into whether the church operated as an unregistered “company” rather than a licensed religious organisation.
According to the county commissioner, Mutua Kisilu, the church had been irregularly registered as a company. After the raid last month, Nyanza regional commissioner, Florence Mworoa, announced a region-wide crackdown on unregistered churches.
Muchiri said the government regulates religious outfits in the country and will bring to book all those found to have broken the law.
“Any illegally operating organisation – the government has been clear about it – is quickly shut down. Prosecution, like in the Migori case, follows. Identification of such ‘cult-like’ illegal religious entities is through the local intelligence and security teams and information from the local people,” Muchiri said.
In the meantime in Homa Bay, Achieng finally heard from her mother one last time after the worshippers were released from custody. She told her daughter that she had found a new home and that her family were “worldly” people who she should never associate with again.
“I thought of going to get her from police custody and secure her release, but I [was] worried that she will not agree to go home with me,” Achieng told Al Jazeera. She believes her mother will never return home. “I fear she might die [at the church].”
Meanwhile in Kisumu, Obura’s family continues to mourn him as they work with Kiarie’s organisation and the police to try and secure a court order allowing them to exhume his remains.
All they want, they say, is to transfer him from the church to his ancestral home to bury him according to Luo culture and traditions.
“We are not interested in a lot of things,” Otieno said. “We just want the body of our son so we can bury him here at home. Just that.”
Residents of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank retrieve their belongings from their homes before they’re demolished by the Israeli military. Tens of thousands have already been forced out. This comes as Israel approves 22 illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, the largest expansion in decades.
Published On 29 May 202529 May 2025
An Israeli air strike on the home of pediatrician Dr Alaa al-Najjar killed nine of her 10 children in Khan Younis, while she was at work in Gaza’s Nasser Hospital. Her husband and only surviving child are in critical condition.
Published On 25 May 202525 May 2025
Mullivaikkal, Sri Lanka – On a beach in northeastern Sri Lanka, Krishnan Anjan Jeevarani laid out some of her family’s favourite food items on a banana leaf. She placed a samosa, lollipops and a large bottle of Pepsi next to flowers and incense sticks in front of a framed photo.
Jeevarani was one of thousands of Tamils who gathered on May 18 to mark 16 years since the end of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war in Mullivaikkal, the site of the final battle between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist group that fought for a Tamil homeland.
As on previous anniversaries, Tamils this year lit candles in remembrance of their loved ones and held a moment of silence. Dressed in black, people paid their respects before a memorial fire and ate kanji, the gruel consumed by civilians when they were trapped in Mullivaikkal amid acute food shortages.
This year’s commemorations were the first to take place under the new government helmed by leftist Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who was elected president in September and has prompted hopes of possible justice and answers for the Tamil community.
The Tamil community alleges that a genocide of civilians took place during the war’s final stages, estimating that nearly 170,000 people were killed by government forces. UN estimates put the figure at 40,000.
Dissanayake, the leader of the Marxist party Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which itself led violent uprisings against the Sri Lankan government in the 1970s and 1980s, has emphasised “national unity” and its aim to wipe out racism. He made several promises to Tamil voters before the elections last year, including the withdrawal from military-occupied territory in Tamil heartlands and the release of political prisoners.
But eight months after he was elected, those commitments are now being tested – and while it’s still early days for his administration, many in the Tamil community say what they’ve seen so far is mixed, with some progress, but also disappointments.
In March 2009, Jeevarani lost several members of her family, including her parents, her sister and three-year-old daughter when Sri Lankan forces shelled the tents in which they were sheltering, near Mullivaikkal.
“We had just cooked and eaten and we were happy,” she said. “When the shell fell it was like we had woken up from a dream.”
Jeevarani, now 36, buried all her family members in a bunker and left the area, her movements dictated by shelling until she reached Mullivaikkal. In May 2009, she and the surviving members of her family entered army-controlled territory.
Now, 16 years later, as she and other Sri Lankan Tamils commemorated their lost family members, most said their memorials had gone largely unobstructed, although there were reports of police disrupting one event in the eastern part of the country.
This was a contrast from previous years of state crackdowns on such commemorative events.
“There isn’t that climate of fear which existed during the two Rajapaksa regimes,” said Ambika Satkunanathan, a human rights lawyer and former commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, referring to former presidents Mahinda and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, brothers who between them ruled Sri Lanka for 13 out of 17 years between 2005 and 2022.
It was under Mahinda Rajapaksa that the Sri Lankan army carried out the final, bloody assaults that ended the war in 2009, amid allegations of human rights abuses.
“But has anything changed substantively [under Dissanayake]? Not yet,” said Satkunanathan.
Satkunanathan cited the government’s continued use of Sri Lanka’s controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and a gazette issued on March 28 to seize land in Mullivaikkal as problematic examples of manifesto promises being overturned in an evident lack of transparency.
Despite his pre-election promises, Dissnayake’s government earlier this month denounced Tamil claims of genocide as “a false narrative”. On May 19, one day after the Tamil commemorations, Dissanayake also attended a “War Heroes” celebration of the Sri Lankan armed forces as the chief guest, while the Ministry of Defence announced the promotion of a number of military and navy personnel. In his speech, Dissanayake stated that “grief knows no ethnicity”, suggesting a reconciliatory stance, while also paying tribute to the “fallen heroes” of the army who “we forever honour in our hearts.”
Kathiravelu Sooriyakumari, a 60-year-old retired principal, said casualties in Mullivaikkal in 2009 were so extreme that “we even had to walk over dead bodies.”
She said government forces had used white phosphorus during the civil war, a claim Sri Lankan authorities have repeatedly denied. Although not explicitly banned, many legal scholars interpret international law as prohibiting the use of white phosphorus – an incendiary chemical that can burn the skin down to the bone – in densely populated areas.
Sooriyakumari’s husband, Rasenthiram, died during an attack near Mullivaikkal while trying to protect others.
“He was sending everyone to the bunker. When he had sent everyone and was about to come himself, a shell hit a tree and then bounced off and hit him, and he died,” she said. Although his internal organs were coming out, “he raised his head and looked around at all of us, to see we were safe.”
Her son was just seven months old. “He has never seen his father’s face,” she said.
The war left many households like Sooriyakumari’s without breadwinners. They have experienced even more acute food shortage following Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic crisis and the subsequent rise in the cost of living.
“If we starve, will anyone come and check on us?” said 63-year-old Manoharan Kalimuthu, whose son died in Mullivaikkal after leaving a bunker to relieve himself and being hit by a shell. “If they [children who died in the final stages of the war] were here, they would’ve looked after us.”
Kalimuthu said she did not think the new government would deliver justice to Tamils, saying, “We can believe it only when we see it.”
Sooriyakumari also said she did not believe anything would change under the new administration.
“There’s been a lot of talk but no action. No foundations have been laid, so how can we believe them?” she told Al Jazeera. “So many Sinhalese people these days have understood our pain and suffering and are supporting us … but the government is against us.”
She also expressed suspicion of Dissanayake’s JVP party and its history of violence, saying she and the wider Tamil community “were scared of the JVP before”. The party had backed Rajapaksa’s government when the army crushed the Tamil separatist movement.
Satkunanathan said the JVP’s track record showed “they supported the Rajapaksas, they were pro-war, they were anti-devolution, anti-international community, were all anti-UN, all of which they viewed as conspiring against Sri Lanka.”
She conceded that the party was seeking to show that it had “evolved to a more progressive position but their action is falling short of rhetoric”.
Although Dissanayake’s government has announced plans to establish a truth and reconciliation commission, it has rejected a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution on accountability for war crimes, much like previous governments. Before the presidential elections, Dissanayake said he would not seek to prosecute those responsible for war crimes.
“On accountability for wartime violations, they have not moved at all,” Satkunanathan told Al Jazeera, citing the government’s refusal to engage with the UN-initiated Sri Lanka Accountability Project (SLAP), which was set up to collect evidence of potential war crimes. “I would love them to prove me wrong.”
The government has also repeatedly changed its stance on the Thirteenth Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, which promises devolved powers to Tamil-majority areas in the north and east. Before the presidential election, Dissanayake said he supported its implementation in meetings with Tamil parties, but the government has not outlined a clear plan for this, with the JVP’s general secretary dismissing it as unnecessary shortly after the presidential election.
“Six months since coming into office, there’s no indication of the new government’s plan or intention to address the most urgent grievances of the Tamils affected by the war,” Thyagi Ruwanpathirana, South Asia researcher at Amnesty International, said. “And the truth about the forcibly disappeared features high on the agenda of those in the North and the East.”
Still, some, like 48-year-old Krishnapillai Sothilakshmi, remain hopeful. Sothilakshmi’s husband Senthivel was forcibly disappeared in 2008. She said she believed the new government would give her answers.
A 2017 report by Amnesty International [PDF] estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 people have disappeared in Sri Lanka since the late 1980s. Although Sri Lanka established an Office of Missing Persons (OMP) in 2017, there has been no clear progress since.
“We need answers. Are they alive or not? We want to know,” Sothilakshmi said.
But for Jeevarani, weeping on the beach as she looked at a photograph of her three-year-old daughter Nila, it’s too late for any hope. Palm trees are growing over her family’s grave, and she is no longer even able to pinpoint the exact spot where they were buried.
“If someone is sick, this government or that government can say they’ll cure them,” she said. “But no government can bring back the dead, can they?”
UN chief Antonio Guterres says Gazans are enduring “the cruelest phase” of the war. He denounced Israel’s blockade, calling the 400 trucks cleared to enter Gaza so far “a teaspoon of aid” when “a flood of assistance is required.”
Published On 23 May 202523 May 2025
The UK has suspended trade talks, while France and Canada have threatened action if Israel continues to starve and bomb Palestinians in Gaza. So, is the tide turning on foreign support for Israel, or is this all just PR? Soraya Lennie takes a look.
Published On 21 May 202521 May 2025
The UN says 100 aid trucks were approved Tuesday to enter Gaza Tuesday, far below the 600 needed daily. Despite Israel easing a 2.5-month blockade, aid remains stalled. Medicine sits unused in Jordan as Gaza faces worsening hunger and critical shortages.
Published On 20 May 202520 May 2025
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called Israel’s Gaza aid “totally and utterly inadequate.” Only five aid trucks have entered Gaza since Monday. Britain, France and Canada have threatened “concrete actions” against Israel if it does not stop it offensive in Gaza.
Published On 20 May 202520 May 2025
May 15 marks Nakba Day when millions of Palestinians commemorate the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.
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Video shows the moment an Israeli missile hits Gaza’s European Hospital in Khan Younis.
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