Past is Prologue for Sri Lanka’s Journalists
Photo courtesy of Centre for American Progress Terror tore through me when I heard that my friend and editor of the Nation newspaper Keith Noyahr had been abducted. It was May 2008; civil…
Politics and Governance
Geneva and Other Fateful Trysts
The Defence Secretary is shocked, outraged, and flummoxed. The National Security Council has discussed the ongoing environmental devastation. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men (airmen too) have been mobilised…
A Statement on the PCoI on Political Victimisation
I am going to explain about the Commission on Political Victimisation established by President Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The Commission was set up to investigate acts of political victimisation faced by Government officers,…
Sowing the Seeds of Conflict: Statement by UN Officials and Independent Experts
Former UN officials and independent experts call on the international community to take immediate steps towards justice and accountability to end Sri Lanka’s cycles of violence. The recently released report on Sri…
Sri Lanka: Government Suffocating Dissent and Obstructing Justice for Historic Crimes
Amnesty International Press Release: The Sri Lankan Government has launched a renewed crackdown on dissent that is severely curtailing civil society freedom and obstructing efforts to deliver justice for conflict-era crimes under…
HRC46: Not for Reform But for Respite
Why do Sri Lankan human rights advocates repeatedly place their trust in an imperfect and highly politicised inter-state human rights mechanism year after year? For many of us working in the domain…
The Defence Secretary and the President
Photo Courtesy of BBC News Sri Lanka is led by a man who has, by his admission, two faces. In a more democratic avatar is Gotabaya Rajapaksa the President. Here, the individual…
Cult and its Heretics
Image Courtesy of Women Working The tyranny of unreason does not stop at the borders of politics. It spreads its tentacles to every aspect of human life. In his first post-Trump media…
2020: The Highlights
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The Void in the Nation’s Heart
In early November 2019, a 45 year-old man in Northwest Sri Lanka sought divine assistance to find a wife. The intermediary was a former labourer who became a godman after his body…
Military Drones Flying Over Privacy and Freedom
Many are familiar with drone technology as a highly advanced aerial technology. Drones have become increasingly useful for organizations such as the United Nations to provide relief and essential items including food…
Nonsense Upon Stilts? Revisiting Justifications of Presidentialism In Sri Lanka
With the enactment of the Twentieth Amendment, Sri Lanka embarks yet again down the fraught path of authoritarian presidentialism. Whether this latest adventure ends in a democratic nightmare, or is as fleeting…
A Year in Cloud Cuckoo Land
A pandemic with no end in sight, an economy that is unravelling, a fiscal abyss, a debt pile-up, an overwhelmed public health system – and the Gotabaya-Mahinda government is planning to build…
Democracy: The Sri Lankan Way
The democratic ideal sounds simple enough. All citizens have a say in their system of governance, typically through elected representatives. The concept has been a part of Sri Lankan politics since as…
Corona with the Big Brothers
It is increasingly evident that the lasting impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic will not be merely health related. In the early stages of government efforts to contain the virus and over the…
