Posts Categorized: Human Rights

Why Truth Is a Radical Proposition

The Office on Missing Persons in Sri Lanka by Chulani Kodikara, International Journal of Transitional Justice, olume 17, Issue 1, March 2023, Pages 157–172 Kodikara OMP in Sri Lanka 2023 ABSTRACT In 2016, the Sri Lanka Parliament passed the Office on Missing Persons Act (OMP) ‘to search for and trace missing persons.’ At the time,… Read more »

HRW: Under Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sri Lanka is Going Fast – In Reverse

Administration Has Moved to Stifle Criticism with a Raft of New, Repressive Laws by Meenakshi Ganguly, Human Rights Watch, February 14, 2024 Published in:Scroll.in Sri Lanka is still reeling from an economic crisis largely caused by misgovernance and lack of accountability. Public protests in 2022 forced the president and the prime minister, brothers Gotabaya and Mahinda Rajapaksa, to step down…. Read more »

TRC – a Sophisticated Get Out of Jail Free Card?

by Yasmin Sooka & Frances Harrison, Tamil Guardian, London, January 8, 2024 A rally in Jaffna in 2021, where Tamils demanded Sri Lanka be referred to the International Criminal Court. Sri Lanka has published a bill to establish a Commission for Truth, Unity and Reconciliation. Though the bill superficially appears to tick several boxes for… Read more »

‘A Showpiece Gesture’: Strategic Legitimation and Commissions of Inquiry in Sri Lanka

by Moira Lynch, Asian Journal of Peacebuilding, Seoul, Korea, Vol.11, No.2, 2023 pp.1-25 Abstract The Sri Lankan government implemented commissions of inquiry between 1977 and 2010. Though several commissions of inquiry produced comprehensive accounts of the violence in Sri Lanka’s civil war, and offered thorough recommendations, they rarely resulted in policy reforms or accountability. What… Read more »

Collective Genocidal Intent in Sri Lanka

by Maxwin Paul Rayen, Spring 2023 Collective Genocidal Intent in Sri Lanka Dear all, I am writing to share the recent publication of my LLM dissertation, which delves into the subject of “Collective Genocidal Violence in Sri Lanka.” My work critically examines the challenges associated with establishing genocidal intent and the subsequent lack of evidence… Read more »

HRW: New Transitional Justice Process Lacks Credibility

UN Human Rights Council Engagement Remains Vital to Ensure Justice for Atrocity Crimes by Human Rights Watch, New York, January 29, 2022 (Geneva) – The Sri Lankan government’s proposed law to create another body to investigate wartime abuses replicates previous failed efforts, ignores the needs of victims, and falls far short of meeting Sri Lanka’s international legal… Read more »

Wigneswaran Points Out the Root Cause of Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict

Many Sinhalese consider Wigneswaran a racist and tend to ignore his views. But no matter how problematic it is, he points to the viewpoint prevailing in the Tamil society in general about the history of Sri Lanka. by P. Harshani Dias, Sri Lanka Guardian, Colombo,  May 20, 2023 Colonial Architecture, Jaffna, Northern Province, Sri Lanka,… Read more »

Prof. Singer 1992: Sri Lanka’s Tamil-Sinhalese Ethnic Conflict

Alternative Solutions by Marshall Singer, Asian Survey, Vol. XXXII, No.6, (University of California Press), August 1992 Marshall R. Singer is Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh. This article is a version of a paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, April 1992, Washington, D.C. Warfare… Read more »

OHCHR’s Sri Lanka Accountability Project FAQs

OHCHR’s mandate under resolution HRC 46/1 by UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, March 2021 SLAP FAQ-accountability-project_EN …What roles do victims and survivors have in the work of the new OHCHR Sri Lanka accountability project? Victims and survivors are a key part of each aspect of the work of the OHCHR Sri… Read more »

HRW: Response to Economic Crisis Undermined Rights

Heightened Repression Against Minorities, Dissent by Human Rights Watch, New York, January 11, 2024 (Bangkok) – Regressive government policies and inadequate social protection left many Sri Lankans at risk from the worst effects of the country’s economic crisis, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2024. The government of President Ranil Wickremesinghe continued to repress freedoms… Read more »

In Defense of Sri Lanka’s Defense Budget

Reducing allocation for defense will require retrenching soldiers. Cutting loose angry youth with weapons skills is not what the crisis-ridden island needs now. [Sri Lanka has actually not done any de-commissioning since the end of the war 15 years ago, using exactly this excuse.  Most of these impoverished soldiers have been deployed in the former… Read more »

How to Evade Justice: Reconciliation without Accountability

by Ambika Satkunanathan, Financial Times, Colombo, January 2, 2024Inter-faith initiatives avoid addressing impact of Sinhala Buddhist majoritarianism on inter-community relations    The lack of outcomes in previous processes is not due to the lack of truth, as there is plenty of truth in the reports of the past commissions, but due to the lack of… Read more »

The Fearlessness of Kanji

by Pallavi Pundir, Eater, New York, January 2, 2024 How a simple rice dish became a Tamil symbol of resistance in Sri Lanka Photography by Steephan Sansigan; Interpreter: Gowthami Thillainathan The plan for a surreptitious meeting had been in the works for weeks. On the morning of November 7, Mariyasuresh Eswari got in touch with a… Read more »

Echoes of Mullivaikal in Gaza

by Satya Sagar, Substack, December 6, 2023 The daily death and destruction in Gaza has evoked painful memories for Tamils everywhere of a similar carnage half a world away in Mullivaikal, the coastal village that became the scene of mass slaughter at the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009. The parallels between the… Read more »

“As a Human Rights Defender, You’re Almost Expected to be Superhuman”

In the words of Anushani Alagarajah by UN Women, Asia Pacific, November 28, 2023 Anushani Alagarajah is a human rights defender who has worked closely with conflict-affected communities in the North and East of Sri Lanka. She is the Executive Director at the Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research, a non-profit research think-tank that works on… Read more »

Maaveerar Naal 2023

by Nillanthan Maha, November 25, 2023 [Translated from the original Tamil by Google Translate with help from the editor.] This is the fifteenth Veterans Day since the end of the armed struggle. Over the past 15 years, there have been legal issues in the widespread popularization of commemorations such as Heroes’ Day. Fear cannot be… Read more »

TGTE to Launch a Movement for New Norms for Peace & Justice

by EIN Presswire, October 26, 2023 Such a global campaign for peace and justice has become more urgent today due to the threat of the Israel-Palestine conflict spreading throughout Middle-East We need to keep evolving and creating other systems to create solutions to conflict.” — former ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo NEW YORK, UNITED STATES,… Read more »

Palestine Israel War: Whose Side are the Tamils On?

by A. Nillanthan, October 21, 2023 In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the armed struggle of the Tamil people began to gain momentum, Tamil movements like EROS, EPRLF, PLOT etc. received military training in Palestine. Those who received such training were called “PLO Rainies” in the homeland. Some of them – Suresh Premachandran,… Read more »

Why Britain Fails to Hold War Criminals to Account

Amal Clooney and Rupert Skilbeck on why Britain fails to hold war criminals to account Three reforms are needed to make its international justice efforts more robust, say the lawyers by The Economist, October 19, 2021 In the year and a half since Russia invaded Ukraine, Britain has repeatedly condemned Vladimir Putin’s illegal act of… Read more »