Achieving a 92 per cent literacy rate, universal primary education, gender parity and free education including at the tertiary level, Sri Lanka should have literate, numerate and confident young people ready to…
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…
In his presidential election manifesto, Gotabaya Rajapaksa noted that “Sexual and Gender Based violence has increased in our country”. However, during his first year in office, little has been done to introduce…
Using the policy tool of a dedicated special economic zone for services, the Colombo Port City in Sri Lanka aspires to become an international financial centre after the pandemic in a bid…
I put on a shirt today with red and blue stripes bordering a sea of white, and wrapping my legs a pair of blue jeans, my hair black as crows that…
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…
Photo courtesy of InfoLanka Kanagasabai Thevathasan is a 64-year-old prisoner I met while I was at the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka. Twelve years have passed since he was arrested, more…
We watched the film, Funny Boy, directed by Deepa Mehta and adapted from Shyam Selvadurai’s 1994 novel, twice. We were surrounded by the numerous debates and controversies about the film. The first…
For nine months Muslims in Sri Lanka have been begging the government to allow them to bury relatives who have died of COVID-19. Their plea has been supported by some non-Muslim civil…
Sri Lankans are, in general, an emotional lot. They like conspiracy theories and where there aren’t any they like to cook some up. The Ranjan Ramanayake verdict is a case in point.…
The estate sector, a high foreign exchange earner for the country, is undergoing a severe crisis. On one hand, estate workers are underpaid and forced to live in cramped and unhygienic conditions,…
The propagation of extremism, the political patronage it receives and the fueling of division in society by extremist elements and their actions is the very antithesis of democracy and democratic principles. Extremist…
“An alleged former combatant who was “rehabilitated”. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is the armed group that the Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa government claim they defeated in May 2009.…
We will not forget Mullivaikkal, the shot, the strafed, the scissored, and the cluster-bombed. We will not forget holes in roofs, holes in water tanks, holes in heads. We will not…
When I first heard the phrase “MiG deal” as a kid in 2007, I never expected that less than two years later, the printing of those two words in my father’s newspaper…
