These quotes from conservationists and architects are very relevant to modern Colombo where it seems like every day another huge glass and concrete structure springs up like a poisonous mushroom, blocking the…
When Sri Lanka was ruled by kings and queens, they used 32 types of torture to keep their subjects in line. These included being trampled by an elephant and being impaled on…
According to Greek legend, Sisyphus has the wretched task of rolling a huge boulder up a hill. Just as he gets to the top, the boulder comes tumbling down and Sisyphus begins…
The images are harrowing and all too familiar – an electrocuted baby elephant, a caged dog, a leopard caught in a trap, a butchered dolphin; accounts of animals suffering due to neglect,…
When new faces are seen at the Zion evangelical church in Batticaloa, it is customary for the pastor to welcome them. As a healing church, it is open to non-Christians. Two years…
Not so long ago, to be a person with disabilities meant stigma, exclusion and isolation because people are disabled by society and not just by their bodies. But as the number of…
They joke of being followed by intelligence officers and questioned on who visited them and what they spoke about but underneath lies a real fear of being intimidated, harassed and threatened when…
Thennamaravadi is an isolated rural village some 65 kilometres north of Trincomalee on the Pulmoddai Road. The inhabitants rely mostly on farming and fishing to make a livelihood. They have some livestock…
Trapped between unscrupulous microfinance companies and duplicitous governments, Sri Lanka’s rural women farmers are drowning in debt. Over 200 have committed suicide, some with their young children; families have been wrecked and…
A protracted war leaves behind many legacies – grieving families, shattered limbs, destroyed homes, disrupted education, lost livelihoods and psychological trauma. One of the lesser known legacies is land blanketed with landmines…
A destructive civil war, social upheaval, market forces and plastic have all played a part in the gradual erosion of Jaffna’s rich legacy of arts and crafts. A major dyeing and weaving…
Three years ago, the villagers of Mullikulam in the Mannar district left behind their brick homes with water, toilets and beds to camp out in tents on the land they called home….
It is a small shed with cement brick walls and an asbestos roof facing a dusty street. Car horns blare and trucks rattle past. Outside on a weedy patch of grass three…
The sentiments are unanimous. Under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency and government, Sri Lanka’s human rights defenders in the north are being threatened, harassed and intimidated on a scale never experienced before. Interviews…
Whenever President Gotabaya Rajapaksa embarks on a “discussion with the villagers” visit, Sri Lanka’s environmental defenders shudder in anticipation of yet another verbal executive order resulting in the destruction of more trees,…
