Writing in The Diplomat, former US for religious minorities during both the Obama and Trump administrations, Knox Thames has urged for international pressure and sanctions on Sri Lanka to force a change in the government's policy of religious persecution against Hindus, Christians, and Muslims. The diplomat's statements follow two damning reports on religious freedom in Sri Lanka by the Cristian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom which have highlighted the degradation of religious freedom on the island. In his piece, he maintains that the US...
Last month, Former Commissioner, Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka Ambika Satkunanathan addressed the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission at an event entitled "Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights: Striking the Right Balance".
Writing in Declassified UK , Archana Ravichandradeva and Sutharshan Sukumaran warm against Sri Lanka's efforts to pave out its appalling human rights record with the language of environmental stewardship and urge the UK to "redouble its commitment to accountability, justice and a political solution that resolves the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka".
Writing in The Herald this week, Wayne Jordash QC and Uzay Yasar Aysev of Global Rights Compliance LLP, called for Police Scotland to end their training programme with Sri Lanka following heaps of evidence highlighting human rights abuses. The advert forms part of a campaign led by Scottish Tamils ahead of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26. Earlier this week, a landmark legal submission was filed by Global Rights Compliance LLP with the International Criminal Court (ICC) calling on the Chief Prosecutor to “investigate and in due course arrest” several senior Sri Lankan officials for crimes against humanity.
I don’t call myself Buddhist any more. There was a long time when I still automatically used it as an identifier in forms and affidavits, but even that has passed many years ago. But because Buddhism is racialized in Sri Lanka, it’s also impossible to entirely escape it: regardless of what you believe or don’t believe, practice or don’t, Buddhist privilege is inescapable if you have a Sinhala name or had a Buddhist childhood. For example, I know the ඉතිපිසෝ, which is a short prayer of praise for the Buddha, now most notable for its use as a shibboleth to distinguish Tamil speakers from Sinhala speakers during the 1983 pogrom. Once you know things like that, I feel, this prayer—and all the other Pali prayers—become unspeakable. They stop meaning what they say; they stop meaning what they might have once meant. Now they mean something else.
Photo of army-seized agricultural land in Jaffna Reporting on Sri Lanka's ban on chemical fertilisers, the Economist highlights the dire economic straits the country finds itself in with inflation near 6% and food prices rise more than 11%. Whilst the Rajapaksa regime had initially planned to implement the transition to organic fertilisers over a ten year period, the announcement of a sudden total ban caught many farmers off guard. Sri Lanka's Planter's Association predicts a massive fall in tea production and export revenue of around 25% across the next six months and thereafter nearly a...
A new generation of young Tamil men are being picked up and tortured by the security forces in the north and east for exercising their legitimate peaceful political rights. As Frances Harrison writes, parents, teachers, politicians and community organisers need to be more aware of the risks.
Mangala Samaraweera, a formidable figure in Sri Lankan politics who previously held several ministerial posts, passed away from COVID-19 at a private hospital in Colombo this week. News of his death was met with international tributes from senior political figures worldwide , including the United States, UK, Europe and India. Many of those messages mourned the loss of a man that came to espouse the type of liberal Sri Lankan politics that reverberated with those powers. His passing will therefore be a particular blow to longstanding Western efforts that seek active partners amongst the Sinhala Buddhist polity for the liberal order project.
Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, Kaisar Andrabi and Zubair Amin warn against India’s attempts to manipulate the demographics and electoral strength of Kashmir, the only Muslim majority region in India.
Following the appointment of Basil Rajapaksa to the cabinet, the Economist highlights growing unrest throughout Sri Lanka including farmers, teachers, war victims, and civil society actors. In light of this growing unrest, the Economist writes that “the Rajapaksas’ suffocating hold on power look like a weakness”.