Red Lines documentary screening & discussion
invites you to a screening of the award winning documentary ‘Red Lines’ on Tuesday, 15th December 2015, from 5 – 7.30pm at the LKIRRSS auditorium, 24, Horton Place, Colombo 7. The screening…
International
Progress and Backsliding
Photo via by AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena Rizana Nafeek was the first Lankan woman to be executed in Saudi Arabia. She was beheaded after a questionable trial. Now a second Lankan woman is…
Sri Lanka’s Domestic Probe & India, the US and China
The fourth US sponsored Resolution to the UNHRC Sessions in Geneva concedes the SL government could conduct its own investigations into “alleged serious violations and abuses of human rights and related crimes”…
Why do ‘Hybrids’ oppose the Hybrid Court?
Photo courtesy SBS Sri Lankans as individuals and as members of diverse ethnic groups are cultural, economic, and political hybrids. They are receptive to hybridity in anything and everything they do, without…
A rond-point for vessels plying the Indian Ocean: Sri Lanka in Arab cartographic tradition
Source: Picture Collection, Mid-Manhattan Library, The New York Public Library Preserving Sri Lanka’s interests and ensuring her prosperity in a global trading network has demanded a cautious and balanced foreign policy through…
Debating the Ancient and Present: A Conversation with Romila Thapar
Sasanka Perera, ed., . Delhi: Aakar Books and Department of Sociology, South Asian University, 2015, pp.75, INR.125.00 (Paperback). The ‘Past’ decides the ‘Present’ in India. The past is an everyday word, in…
Kumar Sangakkara: The greatest hero of our time
The Cricketing world will pause for a moment, to celebrate the legendary career of Kumar Sangakkara that draws to a close, and then move on; a bit richer for the legacy he…
Troubling, The U.S. Declaration of Independence
Modern, recent, European, the concept of the human being as a rights bearing subject dates only from around the seventeenth century. This in itself isn’t troubling. (Europe has given us good things:…
800 years of the Magna Carta and Human Rights today
Image courtesy The Remnant Trust To me, the essence of Magna Carta is limiting the sovereignty and powers of the rulers (King at that time) and moving towards reaffirmation of sovereignty and…
A Panopticon state: We must not wait until they come for us
On Tuesday last week (12th) I watched, at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute the screening of ‘Citizen Four’: A documentary film concerning systems analyst Edward Snowden and the information he leaked on the…
Can the United Kingdom Survive the General Election Result?
Image courtesy fivethirtyeight Thursday’s election leaves the Anglo-Scottish Union on the brink. A combination of the first past the post system and the crystallisation of increasingly sharp attitudinal differences between England and…
Sri Lanka’s emergency assistance to Nepal and return of exiled journalists
Photo courtesy Asianews.it Sri Lankan government has announced that it had dispatched emergency supplies and support personnel to Nepal a day after the devastating earthquake and that there would be further materials…
Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers: Reflections from visit to Sri Lanka
Photo by DushiYanthini Kanagasabapathipillai I first visited Sri Lanka in 2003. I took leave from the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship for a short humanitarian stint with a Sri Lankan NGO during…
Dealing with two Asian superpowers: President Sirisena’s visit to China
Image courtesy Asia One Sri Lanka stands to benefit enormously by dealing positively with the two Asian super powers, India and China. The two countries are potential rivals. The two Asian whales…
The other side of Narendra Modi’s Sri Lanka visit
Photograph via Quartz Ever since becoming the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy, Narendra Modi has concentrated on building strong diplomatic ties with foreign nations. The process began with the swearing-in…
