Farmer and fisher families of Pulakkudiyiruppu continue their struggle for 10th day Image @garikkalan Farmer and fisher families of Pulakkudiyiruppu have commenced a public protest and sathyagraha demanding that their home and cultivation lands, currently held by the Sri Lanka Navy to be returned back to them. Issuing a statement Peoples’ Alliance for Right to […]

‘Lanka’ journalists who were charged of baseless accusations by the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime have been acquitted by Courts today ( 08) The three ‘Lanka’ journalists were abducted while they visited the Bewaraliya estate at Deniyaya belonging to retired president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s brother-in-law on 2nd September, 2009 to prepare an article regarding a mansion being built […]

CV Wigneswaran, the Chief Minister of Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority Northern Province, expressed doubts if the assassination story involving the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) senior parliamentarian M A Sumanthiran was an attempt by the government not to reduce the presence of military in the north. Wigneswaran, the hardline Tamil chief minister, said those arrested for the […]

Image: Sudesh Premalal being taken to courts by prison guards. Colombo Fort Magistrate Lanka Jayaratne  sentenced a supporter of National Freedom Front (NFF) Leader Wimal Weerawansafor obstructing court proceedings.  On January 24 when the Judge ordered to remand Weerawansa one of his supporters, Sudesh Premalal shouted  in protest. He was immediate remanded and today judge  […]

Cartoon by Avantha Artigla. Since the time Sri Lanka was included in the World Rule of Law Index by the Washington DC-based World Justice Project or WJC in 2012, it had never scored high or ranked high among other nations. It had been a poor observer of the Rule of Law throughout, sparking wide criticism […]

Laksiri Fernando. “A ‘revolution’ is any combination of events which produces a radical shift in consciousness or behaviour over a relatively short period of time.” – David Crystal. The matters of ethnic reconciliation and economic development in Sri Lanka are closely intertwined. It is largely accepted today that erroneous language policies in the past have […]

Image: Jeyakumari Balendran who was arrested under PTA in March 2014 (and released  on 10 March 2015 continue to be under police surveillance; Vikalpa photo) Ruki Fernando. In March 2014, my colleague, Father Praveen and I were arrested and detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act by the Terrorist Investigation Department, under Sri Lanka’s authoritarian […]

Image: Former refugee Jeyaranjini discusses community initiatives with her local project officer in northern Sri Lanka. Photo Credit: Joe Qian/World Bank. Annette Dixon . Jeyaranjini lives near Kilinochchi in Northern Sri Lanka with her husband and daughter. They have been rebuilding their lives through the North East Local Services Improvement Project (NELSIP), which uses a […]

Image: Another step towards censorship. Sri Lankan police arrested an Indian national on Saturday for taking photographs near Temple Trees, the Prime Minister’s official residence Sri Lankan police arrested an Indian national on Saturday for taking photographs near Temple Trees, the Prime Minister’s official residence, Sri Lanka’s state media reported. Undercover police officers, deployed for […]

Image file photo: IDP child in Sri Lanka; one of the areas that has been axed is Social and Economic rights. A lesser known fact is that the National Human Rights Action Plan (NHRAP) was further amended before the Cabinet of Ministers approved it, reports Sunday Times. The amendments were made by the then acting […]

Requests for Information should be made to an Information Officer by completing and handing over a request preferably in the manner prescribed in the Form  RTI ,  although this is not mandatory. 01. Upon making the request for information either in verbal or written form obtain the written acknowledgment from the Information Officer. 02. The […]

Wasantha Samarasinghe, the convener of Voice Against Corruption (VAC) which is linked to the JVP says that former Governor of Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) Arjuna Madhendran, during whose tenure the controversial bond scam was committed, has defrauded Rs.66 million of public funds on 163 occasions. This has been revealed in an internal audit […]

 In Sri Lanka families of the disappeared is still waiting for justice. Image courtesy of AI. In a letter to the The President, and Members and Delegates to the upcoming  34th Session of the  UN Human Rights Council  to  S. V. Kirubaharan, General Secretary of the Tamil Centre for Human Rights – TCHR,  says that […]

Image: A woman belonging to the Sri Lankan minority Tamil ethnic group lights a candle for people (c) Getty Image. According to a media statement issued by 12 civil society personal, Sri Lanka government has  stopped consulting the civil society  at the final stages of preparing National Human Rights Action Plan 2017-2021. A group of […]

Image: Neelan, Rajini and Amirthalingam all killed by the LTTE for being moderate. By Manekshaw. Plans to assassinate Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian Mathiaparanam Abraham Sumanthiran, who is a confidant of TNA Leader and Leader of the Opposition R. Sampanthan, have been unearthed by the Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) with the arrest of five suspects. […]

Image: A small section of radical Tamil nationalists led by Northern Provincial Council members M.K.Shivajilingam and Ananthy Sasitharan, observed the independence day as a “Black Day” for the Tamils. North Sri Lankan Chief Minister Wigneswaran is increasingly taking steps that portrait him as the uncompromising Tamil nationalist leader. At the same time by his words […]

Image:Popular poster – Chaurasi Devataon-wali Gai [Ravi Varma Press – 1897] By Sadanand Menon. The cow, the bull and the buffalo have waddled themselves into the centre of India’s politics, exposing its bovine underbelly. The cow has been milked in Indian politics for over a century now; the bull has sharpened its horns over the […]

Image: If they suspect of whereabouts of missing children parents can now request relevant information. Sri Lanka’s Right to Information (RTI) Act came  into effect from 3 February 2017. Right to Information has been a decades long struggle spearheaded by press freedom organisations in the country. Public Authorities have a lot of information that is […]

Image courtesy of Getty Images: Supporters of Sri Lankan opposition presidential candidate Maithripala Sirisena chears during the final day election campaign rally on January 5, 2015 in Kalutara, Sri Lanka. A new report released by Colombo based think tank The Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA) concludes that “the government must now reenergise the reform project, […]

Image: A Sri Lankan Tamil woman and child look on in the eastern town of Muttur. (c)AFP. Chairperson of  the Sri Lanka government appointed Office for the National Unity and Reconciliation (ONUR), former president Chandrika Kumarathunga says that after  a new constitution and the Office of the Missing Persons, there would not be any necessity […]

Image from the cover page of the report. The previous government’s Urban Regeneration Programme (URP), which is being continued by the present Government, aims to beautify the city and create a slum-free capital has, resulted in large scale eviction and relocation of working class poor away from the city center, says a report by Centre […]

Minister of Sports Dayasiri Jayasekara says that Chief Minister C. V. Wigneswaran had become nothing but a ghost and he has has joined hands with the LTTE, its sympathizers and NGOs, to destroy the country’s harmony according to media reports. Minister Dayasiri represent the SLFP. the party headed by the president. He has further said […]

Image: Members of the CTF with president Sirisena. ( CTF face book photo) A face book post by the Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms (CTF) after having met president Sirisena says that ” the President clearly stated the prioritisation of Constitutional Reform over Transitional Justice”. This implies that the Transitional Justice process will take […]

Image: Post war Vanni district remains one of the poorest areas in the country (c)s.deshapriya. In his Independence Day message Leader of the opposition R.Sampanthan has emphasized the need to addressing the the causes of the conflict to have abetter future for the country. I have great pleasure in sending this message of good wishes […]

Image: Vijitha Rohana Wijemuni, a former Sri Lankan naval rating who shot into infamy for hitting Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi with his rifle butt at a Guard of Honor here on July 30, 1987, and who has been predicting the death of President Maithripala Sirisena by January 27 this year. Astrologer Vijitha Rohana Wijemuni […]

Press Trust of India  |  Colombo  February 1, 2017. Former Lanka strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa has blamed Sirisena Government for letting the guard down on LTTE by downsizing “intelligence operations” on the group’s erstwhile strongholds in the Tamil-dominated northern regions. Rajapaksa, two term former President who oversaw the ending of country’s two-and-a-half decade-old separatist war led […]