In Sri Lanka, motherhood appears to be publicly venerated: the country is called The Motherland, and mothers are universally regarded as a powerful force and influence in the lives of their children.…
Nallasera Nallamma was cooking lunch when the soldiers stormed into her remote village of Mylanthanai, one hour northwest of Batticaloa town, on August 9, 1992. They rounded up the villagers, separating the…
When I set off for Columbia University to become a foreign correspondent, to cover wars and peacemaking, famine, floods, murders, kidnappings, larceny on a global scale, I never imagined that…
As a Catholic, I start November with All Souls Day remembering our departed loved ones; as a Tamil, November ends with remembering the Tamil militants who sacrificed their lives for a Tamil…
APOCALYPSE The thunder of horses’ hooves No longer evokes terror This comes from the skies Life limps amidst the craters, The suffocating smoke, Brimstone would be a welcome manna from heaven…
The title of the article comes from a comment made by Donald Rumsfeld when he was US Defence Secretary for President George Bush and when they learnt that the UN Monitoring, Verification…
Universal Children’s Day is an important global event that focuses on the rights and welfare of children worldwide. It is celebrated on the 20th of November in commemoration of two significant milestones…
The Supreme Court judgement about the Rajapaksa culpability for Sri Lanka’s economic ruin couldn’t have come at a better time. The sense of hope generated by the ending of chronic shortages and…
Conversations lay down the foundation for consensus; they provoke discussion and enable debate. One Text Initiative’s (OTI) session on strengthening parliamentary fiscal sovereignty through the Committee System opened such a debate and…
Artists and writers throughout the ages have depicted the horrors of war in graphic detail in their work. From Wilfred Own’s poems about World War I to Picasso’s painting Guernica on the…
Nathasha Edirisooriya, a young female standup comedian, was arrested under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Act no. 56 of 2007 on May 27, 2023 for comments during a…
Since September 2023, the discourses on online safety and digital spaces in Sri Lanka have been dominated by the implications of the proposed Online Safety Bill. The Bill has attracted criticism for…
“Those who want to thwart the possibility of a Palestine State should support the strengthening of Hamas and the transfer of money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy” (Benjamin Netanyahu…
Recent events in the Middle East have left people throughout the world horrified, especially since so many of the injured and killed have been children. Those with widely varying backgrounds and beliefs…
As the IMF has noted in its Governance Diagnostic Assessment in September, “The resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in July 2022 emphasized that addressing the crisis required changes in governance as much…
