By Tisaranee Gunasekara “The illusion of destiny extracts a remarkably heavy price”. — Amartya Sen (Identity and Violence) The mysterious leaking in Colombo of the Darusman (UN) Report was accompanied by a carefully choreographed outbreak of patriotic-hysteria. The President, in...

Extracts from report on Sri Lanka by advisory panel appointed by Ban Ki moon 2. Violations in the IDP Camps (a) Arbitrary detention of IDPs in closed camps 154. Civilians emerging from the conflicts zone were initially housed in a...

The BBC Sinhala Service, in asking for comments on the 2010 US Report on Human Rights in Sri  Lanka, gave me little notice, and suggested I could just glance through the synopsis with which the report began. As it happened, I was able to look through some of the rest, which was good, because I ...

By BBC News Hundreds of people have protested against Western-led air strikes in Libya outside the United Nations headquarters in Sri Lanka. Protesters chanted slogans against the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon - pic DailyMirror.lk...

by Tisaranee Gunasekara "When heads of state do not pay attention to the needs of their nation, the people take over”. Turkish Presiden Abdullah Gul (During the February 2011 visit to Iran) “As he launched a series of murderous attacks...

By Tisaranee Gunasekara “But these were monstrous times. So, naturally Jennie turned monstrous”. Klaus Mann (The Turning Point) Neither President Mahinda Rajapaksa nor his administration can be faulted for the calamitous weather conditions afflicting Sri Lanka. Global warming is a global phenomenon, an environmental malaise to which the entire world (and each one of its people) has cont...

By Dr. S. Narapalasingam PART I The baffling moves and actions on the political front of the potent government led by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, since the war ended conclusively mid May 2009 have been considered discretely by many analysts, ignoring...

Tribute to Lasantha Wickrematunge on Second Death Anniversary By Sunalie Ratnayake A recollection of facts Two elongated years have come into conclusion, precisely as of today (January 8, 2011), since the incongruously horrendous cold-blooded murder of one of the most...

By Kalana Senaratne Dr. Gunadasa Amarasekera, President of the Patriotic National Movement (PNM), recently leveled a serious accusation against the LLRC. In an unexpected manner, this has caused some embarrassment, I believe, to both Dr. Amarasekera and Prof. GL Peiris, Sri Lanka’s Minister of External Affairs. The reason for this embarrassment is a peculiar one; for it is not only the n...

Legal limbo Tamils beg for mercy or trial By Swaminathan Natarajan BBC Tamil Hundreds of Tamils detained for years on charges of helping the Tamil Tigers have asked Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to show mercy or grant them a...

By Dushy Ranetunge Wimal Weerawansa, who survived a fast on to death outside the UN compound in Buller’s Road, amidst voodoo style devil dancing, has accused the Sri Lankan High Commission in London of failing in their duty to warn...

By Dr. S. Narapalasingam The current moves of the powerful government in post-war Sri Lanka are mainly for sustaining the wartime military strength, preventing the resurrection of the smashed LTTE and developing the infrastructures, notably the roads and rail network,...

The UN panel of experts appointed by the Secretary General on Sri Lanka has called for written submissions. The panel was set up to inquire into the alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law during the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka. The BBC has reported

By Saroj Pathirana Activists have criticised India's decision to invite Sri Lanka's president to attend the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony in Delhi. Sri Lanka's government said President Mahinda Rajapaksa would be the guest of honour at Thursday's event. The move...

“Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together in new shapes of your own choosing.” -George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty -Four) The end was never in doubt; President Rajapaksa would confirm Gen. Fonseka’s jail sentence and the bête noire of the Ruling Family would be duly incarcerated. Only the blindly optimistic would have...

by UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic American University Washington College of Law INTRODUCTION Justice and accountability are of utmost importance following mass atrocities such as those committed in Sri Lanka during its 25-year civil war. An estimated 80,000–100,000 people...

By Charles Haviland BBC News, Colombo People in northern Sri Lanka have told a war inquiry that family members who served with the Tamil Tigers disappeared after surrendering. They said their loved ones went missing at the end of the...

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” — Voltaire Where do we go from here? The paranoia increases by the day. First came the reported disappearance of Prageeth Eknaligoda (missing since January 24 this year), then the statement made recently by reinstated Deputy Minister Mervyn Silva who reportedly stated at a ...

Report To Congress on Measures Taken by the Government of Sri Lanka and International Bodies To Investigate Incidents During the Recent Conflict in Sri Lanka, and Evaluating the Effectiveness of Such Efforts Office of War Crimes Issues Report August 11,...

By Dr.A.R.M.Imtiyaz [Abstract: Symbols are emotional and they play significant role in all aspect of human communities, including electoral politics. Symbols are deadly in nature because they can provoke deadly violence and war crimes. In Sri Lanka, Sinhala politician and...

By Athiyan Silva Further evidence has emerged in recent weeks of the continuing political disintegration of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was militarily crushed in May 2009 by the Sri Lankan military. Several reports indicate that...

By Charles HavilandBBC News, Colombo On a leafy Colombo corner, surrounded by hundreds of his nationalist supporters and Buddhist monks, Sri Lankan cabinet minister Wimal Weerawansa burns an effigy of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Mr Ban is a figure of...

Current moves undermine further Democracy in Sri Lanka By Dr. S. Narapalasingam The Government of Sri Lanka has been successful in brushing off the alleged accusations of war crimes during the final stage of the war and violations of the...

BBC Sandeshaya The detained former military commander in Sri Lanka says he is prepared to meet the special panel appointed to advice the UN chief on alleged human rights violations in Sri Lanka. Gen Sarath Fonseka told BBC Sandeshaya that...

By S.V.Kirubaharan, France The recent BBC series of hard talk programmes on Sri Lanka presented by Stephen Sackur was well-received globally. This telecasting has shown the good, bad and ugly sides of Sri Lanka...

The recent BBC series of hard talk programmes on Sri Lanka presented by Stephen Sackur was well-received globally. This telecasting has shown the good, bad and ugly sides of Sri Lanka. The true stories about the return of the internally displaced people – IDPs, the present feelings of the Tamils

BBC HARDtalk III In the third of a special HARDtalk series in Sri Lanka, Stephen Sackur reports on what is happening to the thousands of child soldiers who took part in the war. HARDtalk is the hard-hitting flagship news programme...

June 16, 2010: 11.00 am Siobhain McDonagh: (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab): I am grateful for the chance to highlight again the appalling treatment of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan Government....

With its foreboding lighting effects that appear to have been plucked straight out of Dante's dark epic Inferno-and cleverly devised one suspects to reduce its willing, and oftentimes unsuspecting, "victims" to submission-the BBC's HARDtalk program has attained a universal reputation...

By C. A. Chandraprema It was the other day that the BBC aired the full version of the Hard Talk interview with Gotabhaya Rajapakse, and there are certain issues that need to be raised, not about what Gota said in...