Seven Months On the Bar is Silent About Hejaaz
Seven months have passed since the arrest and detention of human rights lawyer, Hejaaz Hizbullah. When he was taken into custody on 14 April, his friends and family, and some within his…
Year: 2020
Military Drones Flying Over Privacy and Freedom
Many are familiar with drone technology as a highly advanced aerial technology. Drones have become increasingly useful for organizations such as the United Nations to provide relief and essential items including food…
Other State Forests and the Conservation of Sri Lanka’s Rainforest Biota
Circular MWFC/1/20201 issued on 4 November by the Ministry of Wildlife and Forest Conservation has caused widespread concern and consternation. This circular seeks to make all Sri Lanka’s other state forests (OSFs)…
Four Million Different Solutions to the Problems of Staying Alive
David Attenborough Forest conservation is primarily about the survival of people, of us, as a species, of protecting ourselves from the detrimental consequences of our own actions. Yet we seem to be…
Gold Dust and Peppercorns from Heaven: Descent into a Dystopian Hell
The heady days of victory and power are diminishing fast. Bankrupt for ideas and a plan for COVID-19 management, clinging to an army that wasn’t trained to run a country, Sri Lanka…
Protecting and Nurturing Children in a Hazardous World
World Children’s Day was first established in 1954 as Universal Children’s Day and is celebrated on November 20 each year to promote international togetherness, awareness among children worldwide, and improving children’s welfare….
Nonsense Upon Stilts? Revisiting Justifications of Presidentialism In Sri Lanka
With the enactment of the Twentieth Amendment, Sri Lanka embarks yet again down the fraught path of authoritarian presidentialism. Whether this latest adventure ends in a democratic nightmare, or is as fleeting…
Precarity, Fear and the Death of Empathy
In our powerful yet fragile state, precarity defines our being. Precarious safety of dissenters and human rights defenders Precarious privacy invaded by drones Precarious plight of frontline workers Precarious lives of daily-wage…
Curbing Online Sexual Exploitation of Children
It was 30 years ago that UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) came into force. Today children all over the world are facing a very different situation. Their lives…
It’s One Year On and the Worst is Yet to Come
Just before the Presidential election of November 16, 2019, the UK’s Guardian newspaper began its editorial on Sri Lanka with this line: “There are worse things than disappointment…” But the electorate, fed…
Takeaways and Parallel Lines: 2020 US Presidential Election and Sri Lanka
A deeply polarised nation, a capitalist theme park, an embedded infrastructure of racism and segregation, and one of the poorest social welfare systems in one of the richest countries in the world…
A Year in Cloud Cuckoo Land
A pandemic with no end in sight, an economy that is unravelling, a fiscal abyss, a debt pile-up, an overwhelmed public health system – and the Gotabaya-Mahinda government is planning to build…
What Death Can Teach Us
The title for this article is taken from the motto above the doorway to the morgue. The Latin words translate as “This is a place where Death has much to teach those…
Death in the Time of Corona: A Risky Business for Muslims
The question of the burial or cremation of COVID-19 victims took a bizarre turn to expose a government at odds with itself with Ministers and health authorities sending out mixed messages and…
Stemming the Tide of Child Sexual Abuse
World Children’s Day falls on November 20. Sri Lanka commemorated Children’s Day on October 1 and September 2 marked 30 years since the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child…
