Ten Years: Remembering the Past, Planning for the Future
Photograph courtesy Joanna Eckersley 2006: The Seeding Year Sri Lanka entered 2006 on the cusp between a failed peace process and a looming war. The year began with a murder. The killing…
Year: 2016
Yahapalanaya in Sri Lanka: Remains of the Day
(’good governance’) regime. President Sirisena is doing it with a little loyalty to the constituencies that enabled him to win the presidential election in January 2015. He has been going after the…
Transitional justice without justice? A way out
AFP PHOTO/LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHILAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI/AFP/Getty Images via ICMP As Sri Lanka approaches two years of Yahapalanaya, those concerned with issues of accountability and redress for mass atrocity crimes face a new and diverse…
Is it time Sri Lanka sheds its religious identity?
Sri Lanka is on the cusp of history, in several months it will be presenting to the people its third constitution in the space of four decades. Abolition of the Executive Presidency,…
On Groundviews, 10 Years Old
Photography by Seshanka Samarajiwa / The Picture Press, courtesy 30 Years Ago Groundviews offers a look from the bottom up, at the boot pressing you into earth, a shallow grave carved out by a…
Empathetic Media: Covering death with sensitivity
I’m here to speak to you today on a topic that, for me, has deep personal significance. It was quite a difficult decision for me to speak to you all today. In…
Ten Years: On populism and counterfeit democracy
Ten years surviving a tempestuous period of contemporary Sri Lankan political, economic and social change, as an English language electronic platform introducing the most modern forms of communication is surely an accomplishment…
Editorial: Groundviews at 10
I often say I have two children. My son, born in December 2006. And , launched in November of the same year. The first post on the site went up on the…
Yester-Years: The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and The Cuban Revolution
In the 1950s, Cuban revolutionaries launched their July 26 Movement () to get rid of foreign domination and economic injustice. In 1952, Fulgencio Batista launched a coup d’etat, which made the Cuban…
Sri Lankan personal laws between justice and freedom – A value based perspective
No century in recorded history has experienced so many social transformations and such radical ones as the twentieth century (Peter, 2016). Over this period, without any exception every human culture has been…
The Ampitiye Sumana Saga and the Political Economy of Temples
Among the Buddhist monks to rise to fame (or infamy) in Sri Lanka in recent times, the 47-year-old Venerable Ampitiye Sumanarathana Thero from the Batticaloa District is surely the star of the…
A farewell to Fidel
Fidel was the last of the Titans, of the epic heroes. Whatever our travails, our generation and the ones before us were fortunate to live in the decades in which there were…
Invictus: Stories of Resilience from Mannar and Mullaitivu
In the post-conflict narrative, there are stories that are glossed over, or never told. November 25 is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. To mark this day, travelled…
Dealing with Caste Prejudice and Inequalities in Sri Lanka
There is a wealth of anecdotal evidence of the wide prevalence of caste prejudice and occasional oppression spread across our island, particularly concentrated in some localities, notably in Jaffna, but focused research…
Petition signed by over 5,000: Inaction of Police in face of extremism
Photograph courtesy Fox News ### Dear Mr. Jayasundara, Attached herewith, is a follow-up Complaint to you, signed by 5000+ people from Sri Lanka, regarding the inaction of the police against extremist groups,…
