Unfreezing the Grief: Coping with Ambiguous Loss
Are you a wife or a widow if your husband has been gone for years? Are you still a mother if your only child is missing? Do you speak of your brother…
Author: Minoli de Soysa
A Life Wrecked by an Unjust Law
In the decades of its use, the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) has been condemned for being an unjust and arbitrary law. The suffering of those detained under the PTA and the…
The Urgent Need to Repeal a Law that Cannot be Reformed
It was supposed to be a temporary law to fight the perceived threat of a militant uprising but it has remained for over 40 years, enduring even after the enemy has been…
Paying Attention to the Voices That Will Not Be Silenced
As the world marks another International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, in Sri Lanka, which has the second highest number of forcibly disappeared in the world after Iraq, families of…
D-Day for the Aragalaya
Mahatma Gandhi said that civil disobedience became a sacred duty when the state became lawless and corrupt. To the diehard protesters left at the diminished GotaGoGama, Gandhi’s words are at the heart…
Father Jeewantha Peiris: A Warrior for Truth and Justice
Rediff Ever since the aragalaya began in April this year, Father Jeewantha Peiris has been a familiar figure in the forefront of the protesters, easily identifiable by his flowing black hair and…
The Curse on Sri Lanka’s Bloodstained Leaders
The Catholic Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, knows exactly why most Sri Lankans are living through the worst times ever experienced in recent history. It’s the curse on the bloodstained leaders…
Who Will Punish the Perpetrators?
The images are stark and compelling. The STF men are stoic and menacing. They stand unmoving, machine guns clasped tightly to their chests, their faces obscured by motorcycle helmets. The women are…
The Puzzling Case of Hejaaz Hizbullah
The gold balloon tubes spelling out the words “welcome back” still hang in the living room, swaying in the gentle breeze one month after he finally returned home, a stark reminder of…
Time is Running Out to Stop Sri Lanka’s Slide into Mayhem
As the world marks Human Rights Day, two years of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency and over one year of his government have seen Sri Lanka slide rapidly down the slippery slope to…
Pursuing Justice and Accountability for the Navy 11
There is an air of weariness around the small protest at Hulftsdorp outside of the Supreme Court. They silently unfold the banners as they have done countless times before, lining up in…
Creating a Safer World for the Truth
Every week a journalist is killed. Killing the truth is the world’s safest crime; in eight out of ten cases the killers go free. Since 1992, more than 1,400 journalists have been killed around…
Coping with Dementia
The world is ageing fast. Today there are 703 million people aged 65 or older; by 2050 the number will rise to 1.5 billion. According to population estimates and projections from UN…
Adhering to Human Rights – The Time for Words is Over
When a government contravenes the rule of law, crushes human rights, reneges on its responsibility of protecting its own citizens and begins attacking them instead, the international community will step in. It…
Living on the Edge: Children of Cemetery Dwellers
Their playground is a graveyard; their toys are sticks and stones. They run in the sand and dirt, flying kites and joking, fighting and laughing. They are Tamil children living on the…