Bigoted monks and militant mobs: Is this Buddhism in Sri Lanka today?
Frame grab from News 1st TV broadcast As noted by Raashid Riza, the Multimedia Editor of , Last Friday a mob of about 2,000 Sinhalese, led by a group of Buddhist monks,…
Features
Reflections on Sri Lanka’s Post-Geneva Irrationality
Photo courtesy ISHARA S.KODIKARA, AFP/Getty Images via Chicago Tribune News One can understand to a certain extent the angst of some Sri Lankans over the injury caused to national pride by the ‘Geneva…
Whose Arms Will Embrace You? The United States and the Beijing Consensus
China’s President Hu Jintao shakes hands with Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa in Sanya, Hainan province, April 10, 2008. Image by Reuters, courtesy Transcurrents. The United States is increasingly playing a game of…
Restoring Government in Sri Lanka
Image courtesy Transcurrents If Sri Lanka is fast becoming a state in the eyes of the world, it has nothing to do with the recent UNHRC Resolution. The writing has long been…
Menik Farm after the cyclone: The continuing misery of IDPs
After a punishingly hot day, the skies seemed to provide some relief to the residents of Chettikulam as they opened to release heavy showers during the early evening of Saturday, March 31st….
Horrible rise of disappearances in post-war Sri Lanka continues unabated
Image from Transcurrents [Editors note: ] Twenty nine disappearances (including an attempted abduction) have been reported in Sri Lankan media between February and March 2012. There have been fifteen in March and…
The Geneva II debacle
Photo courtesy Vikalpa, from protest against US resolution in Colombo, 27 February 2012 The US-sponsored resolution at the UNHRC had to be defeated. It was not. 24 in favour, 15 against, 8…
After the UNHRC Resolution Vote: Don’t Hold Your Breath for Truth, Justice or Reconciliation
Photo courtesy JDS/Guy Calaf, Agence France-Presse By the time this article is published, the votes on the hotly-contested UN Human Rights Council resolution on Sri Lanka will have been cast and counted….
A question Sri Lanka’s leaders keep dodging: Where are the disappeared?
Photo courtesy Avaaz I’d been in Sri Lanka just three weeks when I first heard of someone disappearing. It was May 2009 and I got an anonymous email telling me that Stephen…
Sri Lanka and the UNHRC: Implications for India and for Human Rights
Image courtesy India Ink blog by New York Times/Rajanish Kakade, Associated Press As the 19th session of the Human Rights Council progresses, the discourse on Sri Lanka with reference to Human Rights…
What is the bigger lie? US resolution in Geneva or number of people in Vanni in 2009?
Image from Wikimedia Commons “One of the rankest untruths in the public domain today is that the US resolution is innocuous and unobjectionable…” said Amb. Dayan Jayatilleka in his article THE BIG…
Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished: Unofficial video now online
Channel 4’s new documentary on Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields: War Crimes Unpunished aired for the first time in the UK last night. Before it is even available on Channel 4’s…
Sri Lankan Post-War Cinema and Reconciliation
In any conflict environment, the audio-visual medium, in particular cinema, is utilized as a dominant tool of propaganda. In the Sri Lankan context, both the State and the LTTE have used the…
Women’s Day 2012: Concerns, challenges and opportunities from Sri Lanka
For years, has featured content that probes gender from a Sri Lankan perspective. For Women’s Day 2012 we have created a Bundlr bundle of over 35 of the most compelling submissions. The…
Sri Lanka and its ‘Geneva-problem’
The year 2009 was when the Western group of States at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) made a serious diplomatic blunder, by attempting to pass a resolution against Sri Lanka. The…