The international community should stop providing financial and other support to Sri Lankan government mechanisms such as the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) and instead refer Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court, writes J.S. Tissainayagam in International Policy Digest this month.

“Meeting with UN Secretary-General António Guterres in September, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s president, reiterated issuing death certificates for the disappeared in Sri Lanka,” said Tissainayagam.

Writing in the Diplomat, Madura Rasaratnam and Mario Arulthas, maintain that the current policy of appeasement, and of soft-pedalling on demands for "accountability and political reform", adopted by the US and India  "comes with considerable costs and uncertain gains".

Instead of attempts to outbid China, they argue that it is necessary to use "soft" leverage to "give Sinhala leaders a reality check and push for measures that are crucial to securing stability and preventing conflict recurrence".

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.

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 ??????, 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%.  

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.