[Authors note: This was a talk given at the International Conference entitled ‘Taking the Sri Lankan Peace Process Forward’ organised by the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi on May 11, 2010.] Introduction…
From the psycho-social trauma and destruction of the social fabric in Jaffna after close upon three decades of brutal war to the challenges of post-war development, entrepreneurship and economic revival, these two…
“Where you from” asked the precocious teenager from Jane, a World Bank official I was escorting to a remote hillside community in the middle of Sri Lanka to show a community based…
The recent discovery of mass graves at Ganeshapuram in Kilinochchi and at Nachchikuda in the Mannar Districts has been very much in the news during the past weeks. Such finds need not …
One year after the war, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has established another commission; known as the ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’. Eight eminent members have been appointed. The Commission is chaired by a…
I must thank Asanga Welikala (‘Publius’) for a reasoned and literate critical engagement with my views. I respond for the twin purposes of clarification where I think my views have been misunderstood,…
I had not intended contributing to ’s commemoration of the first anniversary of the end of the war, for the simple reason that there having been no movement whatsoever on post-war constitutional…
[Editor’s note: The following article is a riposte to Malinda Seneviratne’s article, published in the Sunday Observer on the 23rd of May 2010.] One of the points I made in my article…
Nationalism in our post-modern era is an extremely suspect concept. It smacks of homogeneity, patriarchy and insularity; all ideas and concepts that our generation has learned with good reason to suspect. Most…
Every day, we fight several battles – from inflation to traffic to our friendly neighborhood cop. Our battles are many, but our defeat in one particular battle stands out, quite spectacularly. Sign…
Louise Arbour of the International Crisis Group is reported to have said during an interview in the BBC that the government violated the laws of war by blurring the line between combatants…
‘Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize.’[1] I was inspired by the above words of Chimamanda Adichie talking about…
“Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Fortune is…
Interestingly of the four best pieces I have read on the first anniversary of the war, . Within Sri Lanka and among Sri Lankans, the debate on the war may be differentiated…
The HOPE in Sri Lanka after war was in 2009 Deborah Philip’s first photo-essay to anchored to a novel and compelling idea – to photograph people holding up a sign board titled…
