Human Rights

Subha Wijesiriwardena As another year begins to draw to a close on post-war Sri Lanka, we can take stock of which changes, or the lack of change, we see around us. The full scope of human rights is still not available to civilians living in formerly-Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) controlled areas, now tightly controlled […]

Professor Sisira Jayasuriya ,This is a book that documents the life story of Lionel Bopage, who was one of the highest ranking leaders of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP- the Peoples’ Liberation Front) and a major figure in the JVP led youth insurrection of 1971 in Sri Lanka, drawing on a series of personal interviews […]

“Are you aware of the internationally accepted ‘Command Responsibility’, that all those all the way to the top, be they military leaders or civilians (such as your President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and his brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Secretary of Defence,. and some of these military men including yourself, could be held […]

According to the prevailing law, the culprits can be punished and jailed for five years, but no one has been jailed up to five years due to practical difficulties. In a stunning revelation it has been found that 70% of females between 15 and 45 have been subjected to sexual harassment in public transport and […]

Former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka’s wife Anoma said yesterday she would need a new court directive to ensure that her husband received medical treatment in hospital after the authorities had not permitted him to get such treatment recently.“We tried to get our lawyers to intervene to get my husband to hospital but the authorities didn’t […]

 Devi Selvaratnam holds up a photograph of her son Sivakajan Mel Gunasekera | AFP Two and a half years after the end of Sri Lanka’s bloody ethnic conflict, hundreds of families displaced by the war are still engaged in a fraught, exhausting search for missing children.  Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tamil civilians were caught […]

Sumanasiri Liayanage While young people all over the world are experimenting with new forms of social resistance, the young, energetic and brave 24 year-old daughter of the slain politician, Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra (BLP), Hirunika Premachandra in her interview with Sirasa, Kingsly Ratnayaka, proposed that in order to understand the incident that occurred at the local government […]

Pabodha Hettige The Legal Aid Commission of Sri Lanka is planning to launch a campaign, on November 24, to eliminate violence against women, an official of the commission said.  “The campaign will mainly focus on women being sexually harassed in public transport and the commission will organize workshops, poster campaigns and public speakers will also create […]

By Bob Dietz/CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Sri Lanka’s former attorney general Mohan Peiris, who is now the senior legal adviser to the cabinet and who many Sri Lankans say is aiming to become the next Supreme Court Chief Justice, has made conflicting statements about missing journalist Prageeth Eknelygoda. The discrepancies do more than point up […]

Manopriya GunasekeraPolice dump body at hospital and nowhere in sight when youth is officially pronounced deadDr Ms D. Ranatunga, a medical officer of the Dompe hospital, told a Magisterial inquiry that, after the youth, who was brought by police to the hospital, was pronounced dead, there were no police officers even to find out the […]

Damith WickremasekaraAt least three children are raped daily in the country and several sexually abused. This is based on the shocking statistics maintained by the Police for this year. The majority of the cases were reported from the rural areas of Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Ratnapura, while there have been complaints from the Western Province too.Police […]

Centre for Human Rights The power and promise of national exercises like the LLRC lie in the way that they can access the voices of those who have not traditionally been heard, and use them to build a more representative and inclusive collective memory. Yet for Sri Lanka’s Tamil women, the LLRC simply reaffirms bad old […]

Maheesha MudugamuwaThe National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) had received more than 7,000 complaints of child abuse since it established a telephone hotline, NCPA Deputy Chairman Nanda Indrawansa said. Indrawansa said anyone could use the hotline number to report incidents of child abuse. Most of the complaints had been received on the hotline. The system was […]

Mahinda Rajapakse’s interview to NDTVMaya Mirchandani  Addu:  Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse told NDTV that if the reconciliation commission report endorses any human rights violation in the war against the Tamil Tigers, the government will take action without shielding anyone. He also says the Lankan navy has been stopped from taking Indian fishermen into custody […]

(UPI) — Sri Lanka is granting what amounts to amnesty to 60,000 army soldiers who deserted during the island nation’s 30-year civil war against Tamil separatists. The deserters will be “de-listed,” army spokesman Brig. Nihal Hapuarachchi said.“These are soldiers who had deserted their ranks since 1982. Soldiers who had not reported back to service are […]

Refugee agencies have blasted a ruling by a Swiss federal court backing the repatriation of rejected asylum seekers to post-civil-war Sri Lanka. The Federal Administrative Court said despite existing human rights concerns it was still safe to send asylum seekers back to all but one area of Sri Lanka – thereby upholding a decision made […]

 Sri Lanka’s gender gap increased over the last year and gender equality ranking declined from a 16 in 2010 to a 31 this year, a report released by the World Economic Forum showed. The World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2011 showed that Sri Lanka has slipped several places from its privileged position in […]

 ”Further, on 9th September, 1990, the army arrested all the members they could find of the four villages in the area of the same army camp, Saththurukondan, Pulliaradi, Kokkuvil and Pannichaiadi, ranging in age from 70 years to 2 months, a total of 184 persons. None of these persons have been seen by anyone after […]

Reporters Without Borders has written an open letter to President Mahinda Rajapaksa urging him to take whatever measures are necessary to protect Frederica Jansz, the editor of The Sunday Leader, and to ensure that those responsible for last week’s death threats against her are arrested.The threatening letter Jansz received on 27 October was prompted by […]

Tom KeneallyDear ‘Shooty’, I‘ve just watched our Prime Minister talking about shared Commonwealth values in Perth. My mind turned at once to you and your solitary, late-night death in Villawood detention centre last week. I say solitary, but you may have had a mobile. You may have talked to your girlfriend on the outside that dismal […]

”Folks, let us not wait until the state tells us what to do. We from the university system and from outside it, civil society (by civil society I do not mean NGOs), need to undertake a serious study of the imperatives of education that would act as a public commission and a public document that […]

Political context Restrictions on freedoms of association and peaceful assembly in the north of the country  Serious reprisals against human rights defenders seeking accountability for human rights violations Slandering campaigns against human rights defenders and NGOs In 2010 and until April 2011, freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression remained significantly hindered in Sri Lanka, […]

British Prime Minister David Cameron urged Sri Lanka on Sunday to make progress on human rights before it hosts the next Commonwealth leaders meeting in 2013 to prevent the likelihood of boycotts. Cameron said he pressed President Mahendra Rajapaske during this year’s Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Australia to show that Colombo did not […]

A confederation of people’s forums for humanitarian work was formed in Jaffna on Saturday morning, when representatives of various civil groups and civil activists met at the NGO Centre located at the Temple Road in the city. The decision to form the confederation was unanimously resolved at the meeting. President of the NGOs in Jaffna, […]

Fear and tension prevail among residents of Batticaloa district following the re-introduction of registration of persons by the Sri Lankan Police. The SL police personnel, predominantly Sinhalese, have been collecting the details of residents living permanently and temporarily in Batticaloa. Students and others from remote areas such as Paduvaankarai, staying in Batticaloa for study and […]

Michael Roberts Whatever the death toll during the last stages of Eelam War IV in 2009 the official government data in that year acknowledged that 11,696 (9078 male and 2024 female)[i] of those who survived had identified themselves or been identified as members of the LTTE — whether combatants or active functionaries. There were others […]

Ten to 14 per cent of Sri Lanka’s young girls are sexually abused, said the Family Health Bureau. According to the Bureau’s statistics, seven pc of girls become pregnant at a very young age. Head of the Bureau Dr. Deepthi Perera has told a population workshop in Colombo that unsafe abortions are performed on 11 out of […]

The Sri Lanka Army has expanded the sole intelligence battalion of the Military Intelligence Corps into six battalions to face future threats and to make sure that a situation similar to what the country underwent in the recent past would not take place again.“If we have a stable and a strong intelligence network facing internal […]

Asian Human Rights Commission  Mr. Rajavarothayan Kavirajan (27) of Nalloor, Punarin in Kilinochchi District, a final year student of Art Faculty of the Jaffna University was severely assaulted by members of an unknown group, who are believed to be of the country’s military intelligence units, in Jaffna on 24 October 2011. Rajavarothayan was seriously injured, […]

We are writing to bring to your notice an action by some priests, namely, Rev. Father Prasad Perera the Parish priest of of the church at Raddoluwa Junction and Fr. SriLal Manoj Perera, the Bishop’s property caretaker, who were accompanied by a lawyer made a request to the Seeduwa Police to demolish the monument for […]