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Image: on 20th May heavily armed Sri Lanka military patrolled outside TNPF office for the 3rd straight day, tweeted @TnpfOrg. In a series of tweets Tamil National People’s Front has complained of continuing police harassment by the police against people, party members, and lawyers who appeared on behalf of the TNPF to argue against the […]

Image: Slippers left after the stampede on 21 May at Maligawatta, Colombo that killed 3 poor women who gathered to collect a few hundreds of rupees. Leader of the United National Party, Ranil Wickremesinghe, in a statement to the media, called upon the government to refrain from allowing the upcoming debt servicing to impact the […]

(Image courtesy of www.orfonline.org) President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s declaration that Sri Lanka won’t hesitate to quit international organisations that are relentlessly attacking the nation over ‘unsubstantiated war crimes allegations’ should not surprise anyone. Pending the UNHRC’s next two sessions, in September and March, only the choice of the messenger and the venue should have been a matter of […]

Most of the victims of horrific Easter Sunday bombings were Christian, majority killed inside three churches, and the bombers were Muslims. Immediately after the attacks, many Muslims unreservedly condemned the attacks and offered support and solidarity to mostly Christian survivors and families of victims. As churches across the country closed in the aftermath of the […]

It’s been 10 years since the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka. For thousands of people, missing family members and friends are a constant reminder of the trauma of the conflict. This is the story of Father Francis. On 18 May 2009, a brutal conflict which lasted almost three decades came to an […]

Image courtesy of Al Jazeera. A group of 20 Muslim associations have written to Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchchi expressing serious concern on the continuation of the mandatory cremation of bodies of persons who succumb to COVID-19 and called on the Minister to rescind the Gazette notification issued on 31 March which made the practice mandatory. […]

Dayan Jayethilleke. The footage on TV news was straight out of my favourite Netflix series. A long convoy of glossy black four-wheel drives coming down a dusty road with a heat haze shimmering in the background. Elite guards in red berets and body-armour, sunshades and carrying Heckler-and-Koch MP6s dismount, escorting the Bosses, also in shades, […]

PARL Statement on recent developments in Pottuvil Muhudu Maha Viharaya: Misuse of land acquisition laws and the military. The People’s Alliance for Right to Land (PARL) is deeply disturbed by the military intervention in civilian land administration in the Pottuvil Muhudu Maha Viharaya area in Ampara, and the reported moves to attempt legal acquisition of […]

Washington, D.C. – The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has issued an opinion finding the Government of Sri Lanka to be in contravention of its international human rights obligations for the four month pre-trial detention of author Shakthika Sathkumara. Responding to a petition filed by Freedom Now, the UN concluded that Sathkumara was detained for […]

Image: A Sri Lankan firefighter sprays disinfectants near a mosque in Colombo, Sri Lanka, May 10, 2020.  © 2020 AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena By Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director. HRW. Eleven years since the end of Sri Lanka’s long and brutal civil war, the government has disavowed promised steps toward truth, justice, and accountability for war crimes. Instead, recent years have […]

The Covid 19 pandemic has for sure become a challenge for the regular administration to deal with, in any country. Sri Lanka is no exception. Since its emergence in Wuhan in December 2019, Chinese authorities took unusual steps to control the spread of the disease including a complete lock-down, indicating extra-ordinary measures in extra-ordinary circumstances.  […]

Image: Memorial stones for the Tamil victims of the war and dead LTTE career. July 2017, Mullivaikal.© sunanda deshapriya සුනන්ද දේශප්‍රිය Today we commemorate all those lives that we lost during the war, especially the tens of thousands of Tamil lives that were taken by horrific atrocities perpetrated during the final phase of the war […]

Image courtesy of www.epilepsy.com. (Press release/GTF) The Global Tamil Forum (GTF) joins Tamils worldwide in commemorating the 11th anniversary of the end of civil war in Sri Lanka. The final phase of the war is one of the most brutal in recent history and mass atrocity crimes were systematically committed against the Tamil people. It […]

Friday Forum: AN APPEAL TO THE PRESIDENT. Mr President, the coronavirus pandemic has been declared a national and global public health emergency by the WHO. It has dramatically changed our personal and working lives, and also governance. In Sri Lanka we face an additional challenge specific to our country. Parliament has been dissolved, and we […]

R.Sampanthan. My attention has been drawn to the interview said to have been given to the media by Mr. M. A. Sumanthiran, President’s Counsel, former Member of Parliament Jaffna District, and Spokesman for the Tamil National Alliance. Mr. Sumanthiran has been frank and forthright in his answers to questions that have been asked with the […]

ECONOMYNEXT – Three minors, all students of the Al-Zuhairiya Arabic School in Karaitivu have filed Fundamental Rights petitions before the Supreme Court alleging that officials who identified themselves as Policemen forcibly took them from their parents and attempted to make them sign false documents. The parents of the children have signed the petitions which have […]

Image courtesy of the Medium Statement from Family of Hejaaz Hizbullah, Attorney at Law.  We have been greatly disturbed by a vile and vicious media campaign being carried out against our husband and brother Hejaaz Hizbullah with the intention of prejudicing public opinion. We believe that this campaign is being carried out with the support […]

Image: ‘Our clinics for respiratory disease meant we could look out for community transmission’: KK Shailaja, health minister. by Laura Spinney./The Guardian. On 20 January, KK Shailaja phoned one of her medically trained deputies. She had read online about a dangerous new virus spreading in China. “Will it come to us?” she asked. “Definitely, Madam,” […]

Yamini Perera. “Life doesn’t battle you because you’re weak, it battles you because you’re strong. Growth takes place when you are challenged, not when you are comfortable” – Vex King We all experience difficult situations and unexpected hardships at some point in our lives. In fact, it is an indispensable part of life. Our chosen […]

(Wednesday 13 May 2020) In an open letter to Sri Lanka’s Minister of Justice, the Hon. Nimal Siripala de Silva, the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) has called upon the country’s government to abide by due process and uphold the rule of law in the case of Sri Lankan lawyer Hejaaz Hizbullah. Former […]

In its response to the allegations of misuse of social media platforms FaceBook and WhatsApp leading to anti-Muslim violence in Sri Lanka the Facebook, Inc says that “it deplores the misuse of the platform and apologizes for, the very real human rights impacts that resulted”. The full report is attached as a PDF. Overview. Beginning […]

Ramzy Razik was arrested on April 9, 2020 at his home off Katugasota in Kandy by the CID. The next day, he was produced before the Colombo Magistrate where the CID claimed that he had violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Cyber Crimes legislation. After a month, he remains remanded. […]

The COVID-19 Pandemic is a unique global health crisis and requires a response across national boundaries. Throughout the world, Government institutions, the private sector, health care services and civil society organizations have come together and pooled their resources in the fight against COVID – 19. This is also the case in Sri Lanka. It is […]

Even as petitions are collected and hands are rightfully wrung for redress regarding the arrest and detention of attorney Hejaaz Hisbullah, it is timely to recall (despite a tad unkindly) that if the attempt to push through Sri Lanka’s draft Counter-Terror Act had succeeded at the height of the ‘yahapalanaya’ years, abuse of civil liberties […]

The tragic circumstances and horrific treatment of the family of the deceased from Modara, [Colombo] who was misdiagnosed for COVID19, and thereafter cremated is important to take note. It also leaves a lot of unanswered questions. As recounted by her family to me, the deceased was a 44 years old Muslim woman (media reported her […]

On 23 March, the Secretary to the Treasury released the Pre-Election Budgetary Position report as required by law. On 30 March, further to preliminary comments, I released a detailed statement on the report. The statement advised the President that this report – signed by the Treasury Secretary and Finance Minister – justified the presentation of […]

My article, ‘Necessity: Doctrine That Destroyed Pakistani Democracy’ published in The Island on 08 May has evoked interest in the subject and I have been asked for my views on its implications for Sri Lanka, including on whether it can be invoked in the present circumstances. For the benefit of readers who have not read […]

It is a modern morality tale about the dangers of misusing the military, of militarising civilian tasks, of expecting generals to handle pandemics. By 9th May, Sri Lanka had 847 officially acknowledged Covid-19 cases. Of these more than half were military personnel. The number of infected naval personnel alone tops 400. When Covid-19 pandemic gripped the […]

The United Nations said in April 2020 that the global economy could shrink by 1% in 2020 and conjectures that a worst-case scenario is more likely than its optimistic best-case scenarios. If the global scene is 2020 growth in the US and the West down to near zero, and 2021 very dicey, Lanka’s predicament is worse. […]

Leader of the All Ceylon Makkal Congress and former Minister Rishad Bathiudeen has  requested the president Rajapaksa to allow Sri Lanka Muslims to honour the dead and dispose their bodies as per the beliefs and traditions. ” As Your Excellency is aware, the body of a Muslim Lady, aged 52 from Modara was cremated yesterday […]