The Domestic Violence Act: Seven Years On
Photo courtesy Beyond Borders blog On 9th August in 2005, the Sri Lankan parliament unanimously passed the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act (PDVA). The Act does not create a new offence of…
Year: 2012
The end of the music?
Photo by Sagara Lakmal De Mel At a time of general cultural degeneration and falling standards, one bright spot in our firmament is the classical music scene, both Western and eastern. Due to…
The Kattankudy mosque massacre in Sri Lanka: 22 years after
During my recent visits to Batticaloa I met many elders for my I Am narratives project. Many of them, like Father Harry Miller S.J., talked about the difficult period for Batticaloans during…
Small arms and ammunitions imports into Sri Lanka from 1992-2010: A latent hypocrisy?
Google has just released an interesting visualisation of the global small arms and ammunitions trade (works best in Google Chrome). For those with older browsers, a screencast of the visualisation can be…
Obliteration of Road Painting Commemorating Neelan Tiruchelvam on Kynsey Road (with photos)
Following the assassination of Neelan Tiruchelvam by the LTTE on 29 July 1999, in a spontaneous outpouring of grief and loss, friends and people with whom he worked, including from the institutions…
The Urgent Need of a National Water Resources Policy
Sri Lanka is endowed with rich and sustainable water resources emanating from the central highlands. The island wide average of rainfall is about 1,900 mm, almost two and a half times more…
A Critique of Political Fundamentalism in Sri Lanka
The mirror-like symmetries of dogmatic Sinhala and Tamil nationalism are occasionally remarked upon but not often pinned down. It is these interactive symmetries that constitute the amalgam which has hardened into the…
Sri Lanka’s LLRC: A timeline from inception to implementation
is pleased to present a new web based timeline that traces key events and developments around the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), from its inception to the implementation of its recently…
Undocumented Sri Lankan Migration to Italy: Its Rise and Fall
Photo courtesy Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images More than ten years ago the smuggling of people out of Sri Lanka by boat was thriving. While Australia is currently the preferred destination of these smuggled migrants,…
The struggle to go home in post war Sri Lanka: The story of Mullikulam
Photo courtesy National Fisheries Solidarity Movement In 2011, a young Advanced Level student from Mullikulam in the district of Mannar, living as an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) in a camp in Thalvupadu,…
Ganesan Nimalaruban: A damning murder, funeral and silence
Photo credit: It is very likely readers of Sinhala mainstream print media have no clue who Ganesan Nimalaruban was, or exactly how he died. A simple Google news or general web search…
In conversation with M.A. Sumanthiran, TNA National List MP
M.A.Sumanthiran, is a National List Member of Parliament from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA). has carried in the past the Minister’s submissions to Parliament against the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, for…
A quotidian response: Letter to President regarding religious extremism
On 4th July 2012, along with printed and bound copies of the over 1,400 comments in Tamil, Sinhala and English generated by Not In Our Name (coming to over 300 pages), a…
The Writer Fighter
Have you become a lance corporal, wing commander, lieutenant, private, sergeant, major general? Or are you a writer transporting yourself into trenches to wield a saber against a vague menace, bespectacled, sitting…
Tamil Civil Society Memo to the TNA regarding the Eastern Provincial Council Elections
Editors note: Also read , published in December 2011. Tamils have consistently made it clear that a unitary constitution and a provincial council system within the confines of a unitary constitution are incapable…