Sri Lanka's war-scarred north hopes vote will bring change
The Peninsula
Jaffna, Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka s main newspaper in the northern port of Jaffna endured bullets and bombings during a decades long Tamil separatist war,...
Jaffna, Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka's main newspaper in the northern port of Jaffna endured bullets and bombings during a decades-long Tamil separatist war, but its publisher says the biggest threat came during peacetime.
While an unprecedented 2022 economic crisis hit all on the island -- with furious protesters in the capital Colombo ousting the then-president -- it knocked northern regions still rebuilding 15 years after the war especially hard.
Many among the island's Tamil minority are hoping that presidential polls on September 21, the first since the economic meltdown, will bring financial stability.
Eswarapatham Saravanapavan, 70, the publisher of the Tamil-language Uthayan daily, a defiant symbol of peaceful resistance during the no-holds-barred war, said it nearly closed because there was no foreign exchange to import newsprint paper and ink.
"I was determined that the continuity of the paper should never be hampered," Saravanapavan told AFP in his modest office in Jaffna, the capital of the Tamil-majority northern province.
