Nalika Gajaweera

Iconic Black British poet and author Benjamin Zephaniah dies aged 65 ✍️🏽 tamilguardian.com/content/iconic… His second novel Refugee Boy, was inspired by a young Tamil refugee he had befriended, who had fled to London after his parents were killed by the Sri Lankan Army. In 2002, Zephaniah wrote: I know what an asylum seeker is because many of them are my neighbours in my part of London. They are all very different, with very different stories to tell. They have in common great suffering. Like the boy from Sri Lanka I met who was having problems at school. He was a Tamil and his family became caught up in the civil war. Sri Lankan soldiers shot his mother in front of him. They then forced his father to committed a sexual act with the body, and then they shot his father. The boy ran away, and then met some Tamil Tiger guerrillas. They gave the boy a choice; join the guerrillas as a boy soldier or accept their help to go into exile. He became a refugee and I defy anyone to say there is anything bogus about his plight.

The “Great Hartal” of 1953 drew together workers, peasants, and the organized left across Sri Lanka. It was the high point of mass action in the country — until last year’s people’s uprising. jacobin.com/2023/08/sri-la…