Human Rights Challenges in Sri Lanka
Thank you for making me part of this celebration. Practically, felicitations are possible for a few, but many deserve felicitation. Felicitation for me means felicitation for many others I have worked with….
Year: 2015
‘What is represented and what is made invisible’: Women and Transitional Justice Processes in Sri Lanka
Photo via Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom During a recent conversation about campaigns to eliminate violence against women, and the participation and role of women working at the community level…
Plantation Community: A status revisit
Image via Wikipedia Disenfranchisement of the Indian Origin plantation workforce in the year 1948 after independence stalled the development of the ‘plantation community’ (PC) in contrast to other communities in the country….
‘Raja Saha Ghatakaya’ – An exceptional novel
The novel ) first and published it in October 2014, and the Sinhala version in December 2014. This review is limited to the Sinhala novel as I am yet to read the…
Sri Lankan perceptions on life post-war
Six years after the end of war in Sri Lanka, the four main ethnic communities are still divided when it comes to issues related to reconciliation. ‘Sri Lankan perceptions on life post…
Addressing “blocked grief” in Jaffna
Photograph via Steppes Travel Six years after the end of the war the population in the North of Sri Lanka remains passive, ensnared in wartime mentality because they haven’t been able to…
Gang rape and murder of a school girl
Image courtesy News First The recent gang rape and murder of a school girl in Jaffna has, within the few days, triggered many public reports in newspapers and elsewhere, raised many issues…
Evicted under the World Bank’s Watch
Forcible demolition of 34 Watta homes when court case was ongoing, September 2014. Photograph by Selvaraj Rajasegar. As part of on-going research at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) dealing with evicted communities in…
Power mapping
Image by I was asked to contribute an article to an up-coming issue of , the journal of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects. The issue will be anchored to the idea of…
A Choice between Stability and Virtue?
Photo by EPA/M.A.PUSHPA KUMARA, via Sky News I start with a quote from Shang Yang (390-338 BC), an insightful statesman in the Chinese state of Qin: “A country where the virtuous govern the wicked…
The rape and murder of Vidya: Do women really matter in Sri Lanka?
Editors note: Original image was taken from Icarus Wept. Rather than the issues noted in the article, or the incident of rape, many initial comments focussed on the use of the photo. Histrionics…
A Panopticon state: We must not wait until they come for us
On Tuesday last week (12th) I watched, at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute the screening of ‘Citizen Four’: A documentary film concerning systems analyst Edward Snowden and the information he leaked on the…
Post-war Sri Lanka: 6 years and still an open wound
On May 19 six years had passed since the war ended. Six years ago former president Mahinda Rajapaksa spoke to the people of Sri Lanka commenting the final battle of the war:…
NO to Animal Cruelty. YES to Animal Welfare Bill
Image courtesy Embark Recently a video which was shared by a Sri Lankan on his Facebook managed to grab a lot of attention. Why? Many reasons. One probably being that some people…
A tale of two Presidents, six years after the war
May 19th 2015, marked six years since the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, which at that time had been the world’s second longest running civil conflict, after Lebanon. The end of the…
