Yesterday we received from Maarten Bavinck the diaries of his father Ben Bavinck (1924-2011)
The diaries (23 notebooks) cover his stay as a relief and rehabilitation officer with the National Christian Council in Sri Lanka from 1988-2004 and mostly deal with the North and East of Sri Lanka during the war years. Parts of his diaries have been published in two volumes. The first being ‘Of Tamils and Tigers : a journey through Sri Lanka’s war years’ published in 2011 and covering the period 1988-1994, the second volume is forthcoming (2013).
The original and complete diaries (in Dutch) are now kept at IISH and are considered an invaluable source for the study of Sri Lanka in the earlier mentioned period. The diaries will be available for consultation soon. See also: http://www.iisg.nl/archives/en/files/b/ARCH03463.php
PS. in our eagerness to share this information we completely overlooked the fact that, although this collection was acquired by the Southeast Asia department, it of course belongs with the South Asian collections. The 'historical' explanation for this is that the first contacts about this acquisition took place when we still had one Asia Department and we decided not to handover ongoing negotiations, so this one remained with Southeast Asia. Apologies for the possible confusion.