(4 Apr 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mankulam, Sri Lanka – 3 April 2025
1. Various of demining team wearing personal protective equipment getting ready, carrying equipment
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Paranthan, Sri Lanka – 2 April 2025
2. SOUNDBITE (Tamil) Thavarathnam Pushparani, deminer: ++STARTS ON SHOT 1 AND PARTIALLY OVERLAID BY SHOTS 3 AND 4++
“My husband died in the attack on Mullaitivu camp. I have two girls. Both my husband and I were in the organization (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). I was studying in Trincomalee and had to displace to Vavuniya because of the anti-Tamil violence in 1983. I joined the organization while studying in Vavuniya in 1984.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Jaffna, Sri Lanka – 5 June 2002
++ 4:3 ++
3. Deminer searching for mine by hand with a probe on ground
4. Mine exploding
5. Wide of area, smoke rising
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mankulam, Sri Lanka – 3 April 2025
6. Deminers walking and carrying equipment
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mankulam, Sri Lanka – 1 April 2025
7. SOUNDBITE (Tamil) Vilvaraj Vinothan, deminer: ++PARTIALLY OVERLAID BY SHOTS 8 AND 9++
“While my work (demining) was going on, two of my brothers were injured in a mine blast in the adjoining land. The three of us, my other brother and father, looked after them taking turns. It’s been six years since I started working. Now I am attending agriculture classes and Sinhala language classes. It is important to know the language to work in Colombo or any other place in case I don’t get the job at the Mine Advisory Group.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mankulam, Sri Lanka – 2 April 2025
8. Vinothan wearing protective equipment and holding metal detector
9. Various of deminers at camp for briefing
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mankulam, Sri Lanka – 3 April 2025
10. Wide of a deminer wearing protective equipmnent, digging
STORYLINE:
Thavarathnam Pushparani fought on the front lines for the now-defeated Tamil Tiger rebels against the Sri Lankan forces in its decadeslong separatist war and later took to clearing the land mines on the same battle lines.
But the Trump administration’s suspension of aid threatens Sri Lanka’s demining operations, pushing the livelihoods of thousands like Pushparani into uncertainty.
What is more uncertain for Sri Lanka now is its obligation to rid the island nation of mines by 2028 under the Ottawa Treaty, which it ratified in 2017.
Pushparani has experienced the civil war in its full fury.
In her family, her husband, father and two brothers died fighting for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, as the rebel group was formally known.
Two other siblings are missing.
She was born in eastern Sri Lanka and while still in school, her family had to move to the northern parts of the nation after a countrywide ethnic pogrom against minority Tamils by majority Sinhala mobs in 1983.
The incident stirred up emotions among many Tamil youth who joined militant organizations to fight for an independent state for the Tamils.
Pushparani too joined the Tamil Tigers while still a teenager in school.
She was reunited with her children when the fighting ended in 2009 and started working with demining groups for a living.
Demining operations in Sri Lanka started in 2002 during a ceasefire period and the U.S. has been the major donor among 11 countries supporting the effort, contributing about 34% of the $250 million grants received for the projects so far.
The U.S. contribution was 45% of the grants received last year, according to M.M Nayeemudeen, director of the state-run National Mine Action Center.
AP video by Eranga Jayawardena
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