Photo courtesy Iromi Perera’s Flickr album on 2018 constitutional coup The more visible euphoria that precedes the coming presidential election, is accompanied with a deeper, solemn realism that the country is unlikely…
Photograph courtesy We are presently witnessing a whirlwind of activities in the lead up to Presidential Elections due on 16th November with an unprecedented number of candidates and election hype. It was…
Photograph courtesy ‘The Brother’s Grip‘, Global & Mail, by Ishara Kodikara, AFP ### The past is what Gotabaya Rajapaksa invokes when he tells us to vote for him. In his glitzy…
Photo by Reuters, via South China Morning Post The term ‘Colombo liberal’ is one that’s almost always used as a pejorative. Elitist, out of touch, NGO-kaarayas and foreign agents are among the…
Image from “Sri Lanka: Reconciling and Rebuilding”: Framing the lies What would a Gotabaya Rajapaksa Presidency look like (Economist Intelligence Unit – 11.8.2019) Saviours need crises, not the average inflation-unemployment…
The International Day of the Disappeared is on August 30, and I was in Mannar when a group of mothers were preparing to show their collective resistance at Omanthai in the North…
For three long decades, Muslim women have fought to reform the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA). Justice Saleem Marsoof’s Committee issued two sets of recommendations early last year, the culmination of…
The true stories of the violence on July 1983 are not captured in newspaper headlines. 36 years ago, Page One of the Daily Mirror read, “Anti-Govt forces behind rioting and looting.” A…
For the last 11 weeks Shakthika Sathkumara, an award winning creative writer, has been deprived of his liberty by the State, for what appears to be the crime of blasphemy. Apart from…
Maru Sira (his real name being D.J. Siripala) died at Bogambara Prison in Kandy, on August 7 1975. He was executed by hanging, on the direction of the State. He had been…
The blue, red, yellow, orange and white lights are on, as are the makeshift stalls selling lanterns. Yet few pause to see, haggle, buy. Vesak, so near chronologically, had never seemed so…
Photo courtesy Getty via The Easter-Sunday attacks have changed a lot of things in Sri Lanka. It proved, if proof was indeed required, the sheer inefficiency of the present government. Some of…
Major General Shavendra Silva faces credible allegations of violating international humanitarian law and human rights. During the last stages of the war in 2009, he was the Commanding Officer of the 58th…
Do you love New Zealand, asked the extremely inebriated young white man and his companion as they suddenly blocked my path at the Octagon, a few weeks after I arrived in Dunedin….
On the night of January 2nd, 2006, five students were killed in Trincomalee. Shanmugarajah Gajendran, Lohitharaja Rohan, Thangathurai Sivanantha, Yogarajah Hemachandran and Manoharan Rajihar, all of them either engaged in or about…
