Photo by Ishara S.KODIKARA/AFP via Today, 10th January 2020, is 10 years since the disappearance of journalist and cartoonist Prageeth Ekneligoda. It also marks 10 years of struggle for truth and justice…
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…
AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena via Yahoo News On the morning of 9 January 2015, I shed a few quiet tears. Mahinda Rajapaksa, who sought an unprecedented third term for the highest office, had…
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…
Mythic Inflation is a concept introduced by American mythologist Joseph Campbell to explain the emergence of a new kind of ruler, the secular king who is also the divinely mandated saviour of…
Whenever the topic of counterterrorism is raised my mind goes back to the 2012 film ‘The Gatekeepers’, directed by Israeli filmmaker Dror Moheh. The documentary was shortlisted for an academic award. The…
Last year, on October 2, Iran executed a 24-year-old woman, Zeinab Sekaanvand, who was a child at the time of her alleged offense. Under international law, she should have been excluded from…
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…
It was a casual Sunday breakfast, as I was making notes on refugees in Sri Lanka, when my partner, his eyes still peeled on his phone, exclaimed in shock that a church…
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….
LONDON – Seven decades after its adoption, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) remains a beacon of hope for the world, sending out an unequivocal message that an injustice anywhere is…
December 10 is Human Rights Day, and marks 70 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. Since inception, has dedicated itself to discussion on issues pertaining to human rights….
“” (‘The Tempest’) Maithripala Sirisena, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe are invoking the notion of the ’will of the people’ to conceal their selfish interests, and their amoral and deracinated feudal elitism. The current…
Citizens of Sri Lanka should heed this warning to the framers of the US constitution. The Sri Lankan Presidency was, until recently, a fixed executive, not dependent or answerable to parliament and…
