Sri Lanka

The news of the brutal assault by police on Thariq Ahamed, a 14 year old autistic boy of Dharga Town, Aluthgama is shocking and the prejudice that ensued after by the Police and the JMO needs to be exposed. Thariq was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder since he was 4 and his development has been […]

Sri Lanka Brief Up Date/ 03 June 2020 Rights of the migrant workers in the Middle East during the pandemic 1. The estimated number of overseas Sri Lankan workers is 1.5 million and 1.2 million of these are in the Middle East. The majority of the 1.2 million Sri Lankan workers in the Middle East […]

Image courtesy of “Time” GENEVA (3 June 2020) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet expressed alarm at the clampdown on freedom of expression in parts of the Asia-Pacific during the COVID-19 crisis, saying any actions taken to stop the spread of false information must be proportionate. Many countries in the region already […]

The activism in America against systemic racism and injustice is a powerful lesson to us all. Whichever country we live in, be it America, Sri Lanka or another, it is not the State that should determine our sensibilities and sensitivities. That’s your choice and mine. The State should not determine our wisdom, compassion, empathy and […]

The new Presidential Task Force is headed by Defence Ministry Secretary Major General (Retired) Kamal Gunaratne has been appointed to build a secure country, disciplined, virtuous and lawful society. The other 12 members are; Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva (Commander of the Sri Lanka Army), Vice Admiral Piyal de Silva (Commander of Sri Lanka Navy), Air Marshal […]

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to consider petitions filed by opposition parties and civil groups seeking to annul a presidential order dissolving Parliament because the coronavirus pandemic has prevented elections within the constitutionally mandated time. The Supreme Court made the decision after listening to arguments from the petitioners […]

Image: Western Province DIG Deshabandu Tennekoon says Police are looking for temporary residents. ECONOMYNEXT – Questions are being raised over a door-to-door survey being conducted by Police in the City of Colombo and its suburbs of residents and the collection of personal data by officers accompanied by unidentified civilians. The Deputy Inspector General of Police […]

The events of 39 years ago set the stage for Sri Lanka’s civil war – and still echo today. By Thamil Venthan Ananthavinayagan. It was May 31, 1981 when early signs of the looming civil war broke out on the Jaffna peninsula of northern Sri Lanka. An organized Sinhala mob carried out an arson attack on […]

Image: Sri Lankan migrant workers have been sending billions to Sri Lanka to boost its foreign exchange resources. But now with the coronavirus pandemic, most of them want to come home. Till they are brought back, some of them are seen here sleeping on mattresses on the floor of a detention centre in Kuwait. Sri […]

The Sri Lankan government has declared its intention to rule without parliamentary oversight for the first time in the country’s modern history, potentially sparking a serious constitutional crisis. Elected in November and without a majority in parliament, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa seized his earliest opportunity to dissolve the legislature on 2 March and schedule a general […]

File photo of Sri Lankan migrant workers arriving home. This week, the Sri Lankan government stopped planned air flights to bring Sri Lankan migrant workers back home from the Middle East. The decision was made after it was discovered that many were infected with the coronavirus. On May 26, President Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s media division announced […]

Executive Summary. This report [by INFORM, Colombo,Sri Lanka] records 95 incidents that had been reported during the 90 days period. The average number of incidents per day reported prior to the covid-19 curfew is slightly higher than the number of incidents reported during the curfew. There were a high number of incidents related to legal, […]

1. President Rajapaksa dissolved the Parliament on 2nd March 2020– six months before the due date, amidst the growing danger of COVID-19 pandemic. By this time, the uncertainty relating to the possibility of holding elections during the outbreak had already surfaced. However, the President chose to disregard the looming threat and called an election without […]

Image: Army Commander visited violently anti-minority monk Amapitiye Suman on his trip to East. “We’ll leave behind an iron scrap And the hollow, mocking laugh of generations.” – Tadeusz Borowski (Wherever the earth) While the world struggles with the Wuhan-born COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government has taken a great leap towards Hong Kong. Beijing has […]

Transparency International Sri Lanka wrote to Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa on 22 May 2020, highlighting an opportunity for Sri Lanka to take global leadership in financial transparency during the COVID-19 pandemic. TISL makes 3 key recommendations in this letter – Establish an online platform providing all information on grants/donations received with timely updates on spending […]

Image courtesy of independent.co.uk. Menstruation is stigmatized all over the world. Menstruation is a normal and healthy part of life for most women. Roughly half of the female population — around 26 percent of the global population[i] — are of reproductive age. Most women menstruate each month for about two to seven days. Yet, as normal […]

Obstructing and Intimidating the work of regional journalist Bimal Shyaman is a violation of media freedom – Free Media Movement Media reported an incident where Bimal Shyaman, the regional journalist of Hiru, Derana, and Swarnavahini Television channels, was intimated and harassed on May 24, 2020 while reporting the Ramazan celebrations of the Atulugama area, which […]

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has brought six institutions under the Ministry of Defence issuing an extraordinary gazette on 22 May 2020. Sri Lanka does not have a minister of defence but it is president Rajapaksa who acts as the unofficial minister of defence.  According to the constitution, the president cannot hold any ministries. The deputy minister […]

There has been a very useful discussion in the public domain about the relationship between the three organs of government, especially in the present context where one organ, namely Parliament, is not functional. While Parliament has been described by some as being ‘dead’ due to it being dissolved, others point out that under the Constitution […]

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 reported continuing police harassment by the police against people, party members, and lawyers who appeared on behalf of the TNPF to argue against the quarantining […]

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 […]

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 […]