Hand Washing
Murder cannot be hidden, bodies decompose but skeletons remain; certainly they can be washed from beach into sea and stripped clean by carnivorous fish yet the panel requires just a few examples,…
Murder cannot be hidden, bodies decompose but skeletons remain; certainly they can be washed from beach into sea and stripped clean by carnivorous fish yet the panel requires just a few examples,…
My conversation with Lakshan Dias, Programme Manager, Centre for Human Rights and Development, was pegged to the issue of human rights in post-war Sri Lanka. Lakshan was in the news recently when…
Many readers may have seen if not read about Defence Secretary Gothabhaya Rajapaksa’s interview with Stephen Sackur of the BBC HardTalk programme in which he calls Sarath Fonseka a liar and threatens…
The Sun God disappeared from the scene in May, 2009 killed by advancing army units, not clear which brave soldier pulled the trigger, for some reason government has kept quiet about circumstances,…
What a large and dramatic idea occurred to the brigadier in charge of rehabilitation , to organize a mass wedding to spur former Tiger troops into formation under a different philosophy and…
Today, 18th June 2010, has been declared a public holiday by the government. Many Sri Lankans, especially Sinhalese from the South are expected to respond enthusiastically to the government’s elaborate plans to…
From the psycho-social trauma and destruction of the social fabric in Jaffna after close upon three decades of brutal war to the challenges of post-war development, entrepreneurship and economic revival, these two…
“Where you from” asked the precocious teenager from Jane, a World Bank official I was escorting to a remote hillside community in the middle of Sri Lanka to show a community based…
The recent discovery of mass graves at Ganeshapuram in Kilinochchi and at Nachchikuda in the Mannar Districts has been very much in the news during the past weeks. Such finds need not …
One year after the war, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has established another commission; known as the ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission’. Eight eminent members have been appointed. The Commission is chaired by a…
I must thank Asanga Welikala (‘Publius’) for a reasoned and literate critical engagement with my views. I respond for the twin purposes of clarification where I think my views have been misunderstood,…
I had not intended contributing to ’s commemoration of the first anniversary of the end of the war, for the simple reason that there having been no movement whatsoever on post-war constitutional…
Louise Arbour of the International Crisis Group is reported to have said during an interview in the BBC that the government violated the laws of war by blurring the line between combatants…
‘Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize.’[1] I was inspired by the above words of Chimamanda Adichie talking about…
“Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Fortune is…