Thirty-five years ago, human rights and democracy in Sri Lanka unravelled in a spectacular manner. Yet the background to these blatant abuses included an erosion of economic and social rights, with which…
The news was sensational, yet it was downplayed. The chief incumbent of a temple in Ratnapura strangled a police sergeant to death. The monk has been absconding after being charged with sexual…
‘How do you explain this to an eight-year old, and do you explain it at all?’ Nusra asks. Two of her three children watched their grandfather’s shop set on fire by people…
We stand today with our collective consciousness bruised almost beyond repair. We feel devastated by the chaos, anarchy and culture of impunity. As someone recently said, the beast rides again. What is…
‘I rode back home that day watching fires burn the places I knew and loved. I watched mobs hunt for petrol. A curfew on the streets meant some areas were deserted, by…
Photo courtesy Asian Mirror Even as I write these words, Kandy is burning. Muslims, their homes and their properties are being targeted in the name of Buddhism, within shouting distance of the…
The cherished Maya Angelou wrote once in her famous poem ‘Caged Bird’: [T]he caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard…
Photo courtesy Dwight D. Eisenhower said “I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have…
I ordered, he says, as if those two words would suffice. Perhaps they do, in his eyes. ‘I’m the state,’ Louis XIV declared, according to Carlyle. Mahinda Rajapaksa sees himself as the…
The monk Ashin Wirathu, center, was the guest of honor at the Buddhist Power Force convention in Colombo, held in 2014. Credit Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, via The presidential election…
His biographer speaks of the unimaginable cultural consequences of living continually under the gun. Although this comment was made about Tamil communities living in Sri Lanka more widely, it provides the basis…
Photo by REUTERS/ Mariana Bazo, via Time magazine There is no getting around it, we humans are emotional beings. Thereby, nations made up of humans will possess an emotional psyche which is reflected…
Two years into a Maithripala Sirisena presidency, Sri Lankan polity and society are still grappling with dealing with the past, all the while buffeted by new and equally worrying issues. This is…
In his article under the above title in the Island of Saturday 3rd December, my old friend P.S.Mahawatta pays me two inaccurate compliments. Firstly, he says, using the present tense, that I…
Photograph courtesy Joanna Eckersley 2006: The Seeding Year Sri Lanka entered 2006 on the cusp between a failed peace process and a looming war. The year began with a murder. The killing…
