by Amnesty International, November 19, 2018 Responding to the transfer of Nishantha Silva, Officer-in-Charge at the Criminal Investigations Department and key investigator in high-profile human rights cases, Amnesty International’s South Asia Researcher, Thyagi Ruwanpathirana, said: “We are concerned about the seeming interference by the authorities with investigations into key allegations of human rights violations including… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Government
90,000 Northern Families in Shanties or Homeless
What happened to Govt. promised housing? Opinion by Jekhan Arulian, ‘LankaBusinessOnline,’ September 26, 2018 In October last year I had the privilege of participating in the blessing of a new water well in the Killinochchi District of the Northern Province. Its construction had been funded by the UK based charity Child Aid Lanka. The family on… Read more »
Amnesty: GoSL Cannot Afford to Fail the Office on Missing Persons
Sri Lanka: The government cannot afford to fail the Office on Missing Persons by Biraj Patnaik, South Asia Director, Amnesty International, 21 October 2018 https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/10/sri-lanka-the-government-cannot-afford-to-fail-the-office-on-missing-persons/ Amid the furore around the Joint Opposition’s political mobilisation last month, a key event was overlooked. The Office on Missing Persons (OMP), a key body, empowered to search for and trace… Read more »
Enforced & Involuntary Disappearances in Sri Lanka
by Kumarathasan Rasingam, October 14, 2018 Tamil families of disappeared have been engaged in continuous and indefinite protests in five locations in the North and East for about 550 days. Mothers, wives, sons, daughters and relatives are on the streets in day and night in the hot sun, dust and rain demanding to know the whereabouts… Read more »
Behind the Skeletal Excavations in Mannar
Grave secrets by Indunil Usgoda Arachchi & Vimukthi Fernando, ‘The Sunday Observer,’ Colombo, August 19, 2018 Sunday Observer journalists visit a grave excavation in Mannar, where forensic investigators are hard at work, painstakingly unearthing human skeleton after skeleton, determined that this time, the investigation into the suspected mass grave site will not be compromised- politically… Read more »
UN SR Ben Emmerson’s Report on Sri Lanka
by UN Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson, July 24, 2018 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism on his mission to Sri Lanka Sri_LankaReportJuly2018.PDF A. Conclusions 59. In 2015, Sri Lanka seemed to have turned a corner. New elections brought to power a coalition government and with it the… Read more »
Sumathiran’s April Speech re Constitution
by M.A. Sumanthiran, University of Peredeniya, April 18, 2018 posted on TNA Politics.org in July 2018 Sumanthiran-SPEECH-PGIHS Keynote speech by M.A. Sumanthiran, 3rd April 2018, Research Congress, Inaugural session of the Post Graduate Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Peradeniya The Vice Chancellor of the University of Peradeniya, Dean of Faculty of Arts, Director,… Read more »
The Office for Reparations
An empty shell? by South Asian Centre for Legal Studies, Colombo, July 4, 2018 A few days ago, the Office for Reparations Bill was gazetted. According to the Bill, the Office is expected to play a role in the formulation and implementation of reparations policies for violations of human rights and humanitarian law that have… Read more »
The Chronic and the Entrenched
Ethno-Religious Violence in Sri Lanka by Gehan Gunatilleke, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, 2018 http://ices.lk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/The-Chronic-and-the-Entrenched-Mr.-Gihan-Book-FINAL-WEB-PDF.pdf …This study set out to establish the hypothesis that ethno-religious violence in Sri Lanka is ‘entrenched’ within cultural, socio-political and state structures, and requires radical interventions to overcome. It first reflected on the nature of communal violence in Sri… Read more »
Counter Terrorism & Legal Certainty
by Gehan Gunatilleke, The Bar Association Law Journal, Colombo, 2017 Counter-Terrorism_and_Legal_Certainty
CPA: Making the Case for an Office for Reparations
by Centre for Policy Analysis, Colombo, June 4, 2018 June 4th 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka: Reparations are an essential part of transitional justice and focus on recognising and repairing past abuses. In 2015, the Government of Sri Lanka recognised the right to reparations by committing to the establishment of an Office for Reparations through at the… Read more »
Adayaalam: Tamil Political Prisoners
Suggestions for a Comprehensive Legal Policy Approach by Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research, Jaffna, May 7, 2018 Issue Brief #3 ACPR-Issue-Brief-No.3-Tamil-Political-Prisoners-Suggestions-for-a-Comprehensive-Legal-Policy-Approach-1 I. Introduction Mr. Satchithanantham Ananthasuthakaran, sentenced to life under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) in 2017, was given three hours on the 18th of March 2018 to take part in his wife’s funeral at their residence in… Read more »
Allocation of Funds to the OMP
Twice betrayed by Verite Research, ‘Sunday Observer,’ Colombo, May 20, 2018 Sri Lanka’s national budget for 2018 allocated Rs. 1.4 billion to the Office on Missing Persons (OMP).[i] The allocation was viewed as a positive step towards supporting reconciliation mechanisms in Sri Lanka. However, a closer look reveals that the allocation entails two betrayals. The… Read more »
Tamil National Question & Tamil Insurgency in Sri Lanka
by Imtiyaz Razak, ‘Colombo Telegraph,’ May 14, 2018 On May 17, 2009 the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) admitted the defeat in the war against the Sinhalese dominated Sri Lanka security forces and vowed to silence guns. In May 18, Sri Lanka security forces announced that the LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, who led the… Read more »
Sri Lanka Imposes Emergency to Quell Communal Riots
by Times of India, March 6, 2018 HIGHLIGHTS Sri Lanka on Tuesday declared a nationwide state of emergency to quell anti-Muslim riots that have killed at least two people and damaged dozens of mosques and homes in the central district of Kandy. Here’s what led the Maithripala Sirisena government to take the extreme measure: *… Read more »
US Embassy Statement
by US Embassy, Colombo, March 6, 2018 March 6, 2018 – COLOMBO: Rule of law, human rights, and equality are essential for peaceful coexistence. It is important that the Government of Sri Lanka act quickly against perpetrators of sectarian violence, protect religious minorities and their places of worship, and conclude the State of Emergency swiftly, while… Read more »
Statement by Tamil Civil Society Condemning Violence against Muslim Community
Courtesy Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research, Jaffna, March 6, 2018 We strongly condemn the violence being unleashed against the Muslim people in Kandy this week and in Amparai earlier last week. Initial reports from Amparai and Kandy make clear that the police by inaction were complicit in the violence. We, as Tamil civil society organizations who work in… Read more »
PEARL: Remembering the Kumarapuram Massacre
by People for Relief and Equality in Lanka, Washington, DC, February 11, 2018 22 years ago today, in a small Tamil village in the North-East of Sri Lanka, a group of soldiers murdered 26 people, left 24 others injured, and gang-raped a 15-year-old girl. Twenty years after the Kumarapuram massacre, on July 27, 2016, an… Read more »
War, Denial and Nation-Building in Sri Lanka
After the End by Rachel Seoighe, Palgrave Studies in Compromise After Conflict, Palgrave MacMillan, Dec. 5, 2017 Abstract This book begins from a critical account of the final months of the Sri Lankan civil war, tracing themes of nationalism, discourse and conflict memory through this period of immense violence and into its aftermath. Using these… Read more »
Inscribing the Victor’s Land
Nationalistic authorship in Sri Lanka’s post-war Northeast by Rachel Seoighe, ‘Conflict, Security & Development,’ Vol. 16, 2016, Issue 5 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14678802.2016.1219507?scroll=top&needAccess=true Abstract This article examines the nationalistic authorship of space in Sri Lanka’s post-conflict Northeast as part of the state’s nation-building strategy and as a continuation of a post-colonial process of Sinhala-Buddhist nationalistic revival. Exploring issues… Read more »