Desperation drives Sri Lankans abroad

Thousands of Sri Lankan women work as domestic helpers in Hong Kong. They have only one free day a week, which they spend with fellow workers in places like Kowloon Park, along with thousands of domestic workers from other countries.
Several Sri Lankan domestic helpers interviewed last week expressed views that represent the situation of thousands [...]

Sri Lanka’s broken institutions

In recent weeks there has been a convergence of ideas within and outside Sri Lanka that the most important obstacle to the achievement of human rights is the failure to investigate and prosecute crime.
Many journalists have fled the country, realizing that justice and protection are impossible. The Bar Association of Sri Lanka has come forward [...]

Sri Lanka’s despicable approach to crime

When Sri Lankan Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapakse was questioned by a BBC correspondent about the recent assassination of well-known journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge, he countered the question with another: Why was the correspondent worried about one man when thousands have died?
Murders and assassinations always involve individual victims. This question by the defense secretary would upset anyone [...]

No justice available in Sri Lanka

Thabutthegama is a remote village close to the city of Anuradhapura in the North Central region of Sri Lanka. A young man from this village once described the shocking conditions of life there as, “When the officer-in-charge of the police station shoots one of our live stock and takes away the animal for one of [...]

Sri Lanka destroying democracy from within

A letter written by six U.S. ambassadors, in their personal capacities, to the president of Sri Lanka has expressed concern over the deteriorating situation in the country and urged him to re-establish accountability and the rule of law by ensuring investigations into assassinations and human rights abuses.
The letter, according to the authors, was prompted by [...]

A revelation paid for with death

An article written by the assassinated Sri Lankan journalist, Lasantha Wickramatunga, predicting his own murder by the government, has become the most widely circulated piece of journalism by any Sri Lankan writer so far. The event he predicted in fact took place on Jan. 8, and the article was published three days later.
In this article [...]

Sri Lanka’s death squads rise again

Lasantha Wickramatunga, chief editor of Sri Lankan English weekly The Sunday Leader, was fatally attacked by four persons Thursday as he was on his way to work. Despite strenuous efforts by a medical team to save him, he succumbed to his head injuries the same afternoon.
Wickramatunga, one of Sri Lanka’s most senior and prominent journalists, [...]

Lawyers in Sri Lanka threatened

The Sri Lankan government’s Ministry of Defense website published the following caption with a photograph of the president’s counsel, Romesh de Silva.
President’s Counsel Romesh de Silva, Mr. M A Sumanthiran, Mr. Viran Korea, Ms. Lilanthi De Silva and Chamaine Gunarathne are the team of lawyers who regularly appear for the detainees charged with terrorist activity.
On [...]

Sri Lanka’s one-man-show government

The president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, is operating as a “one-man show,” in the words of a former minister who quit his post because he felt he could not function properly under this circumstance.
The well-known lawyer and former minister, Wijeyadasa Rajapaksha, said in an interview with the Sri Lankan publication Lakbima: “I relinquished my [...]

War against the Sri Lankan judiciary

The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, in a controversial judgment on Dec. 17, ordered a reduction in petrol prices and said it should be implemented on the same day.
The government, on the other hand, declared that it would not implement the court’s ruling as it was contrary to the war effort against the Liberation Tigers [...]