Abolition is not a delusional cry for social chaos. It goes beyond the momentary, deconstructive approach of eliminating the police. Abolition calls for the active reimagining and recreation of a society in…
The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka conducted the first national study on the treatment and conditions of prisoners from February 2018 to January 2020. The findings of the report are very…
The looming presidential election of the first week of November, 2020 draws some resemblances to that which confronted John F. Kennedy in the build up to the November 1960 presidential election. Although…
The Easter Sunday attacks were brutal and unprecedented. It surfaced communal prejudices and certain phobias that Sri Lankan society lives with. There is a paradoxical narrative that may help us understand some…
‘What physicians say about consumptive illness is applicable here: that at the beginning, such an illness is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose; but as time passes, not having been recognised…
Photo courtesy A tumultuous year has ended, and an uncertain future lies ahead. Democratic space is already closing around us, and it is critical for civil society to be clear-eyed about where…
AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena via Yahoo News As the presidential election heads into its final stretch, handwringing over the lesser of the two evils is reaching its tortured apex. The most terrible strain…
June 20 is World Refugee Day, coinciding with a time Sri Lanka faces its most serious refugee crisis since 2014. Though not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967…
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…
On September 5, Colombo was nearly empty even during the after-school rush hour. The reason was the Joint Opposition’s Jana Balaya rally, the location of which remained under wraps until the last…
The diverse profusion of contributions on this subject reminds me of an apocryphal story of a man of Abrahamic faith (Christian/Muslim/Jewish), ship- wrecked on a land unknown to him. He kept wandering,…
Featured image courtesy Tamil Guardian Undergraduates of the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo presented their proposals on Constitutional Reforms on Wednesday, 30 March 2016. Among the proposals was the draft Bill…
There has been an organised move to bring back the hangman and implement the death penalty in Sri Lanka. Several weeks ago, Colombo District MP Hirunika Premachandra presented in Parliament an adjournment…
Image courtesy News First The recent gang rape and murder of a school girl in Jaffna has, within the few days, triggered many public reports in newspapers and elsewhere, raised many issues…
Image courtesy Maithripala Sirisena website It’s now 50 days since Sri Lanka’s new President took oaths on 9th January 2015. This is an attempt to reflect on the first 50 days of…
