Monthly Archives: November 2012

Reconciliation: Re-weaving a Social Fabric that Heals

In Search of Reconciliation
In the market place of ideas, the concepts and language of reconciliation have become quite popularized and at the same time diluted. Coming out of the turmoil of the South African political transition of the 1990s, it became abundantly clear to me that the term reconciliation was easily ‘hijacked’ to serve the particular interests […]

By Carl Stauffer, PhD | Published on November 7, 2012 at 12:33 am

LIfe is a transit lounge

Q: In the fifteenth chapter of the Gita, there is a description of a tree which is upside down. The branches are in the ground and the roots are in the sky. What could be the significance of this?
A: This is a symbol to signify that your origin is the Divinity; the consciousness. That is […]

By Times of India | Published on November 6, 2012 at 11:24 pm

Impeachment of Chief Justice: Owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk

The government’s decision to impeach Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake on the grounds of alleged misbehavior is a controversial one. It is extraordinary in a democratic society for a chief justice to be faced with charges that are said to merit impeachment.
Timing
During her long tenure on the Supreme Court Justice Bandaranayake since 1996 she has maintained […]

By Dr. Jehan Perera | Published on November 6, 2012 at 4:03 am

Tisaranee pickaxed by the Sunday Leader new management

Tisaranee Gunasekera a fearless columnist who has been a strident Rajapakse critic has been severely edited by the Sunday Leader newspaper – once a bastion for free speech in Sri Lanka.
Tisaranee has today (November 4, 2012)written to both the Sunday Leader’s editor Shakuntala Perera and to its Chairman Lal Wickrematunge and we publish the letter […]

By Staff Correspondent | Published on November 4, 2012 at 9:57 pm

Rajapakses launch anti democratic assault on judiciary

“Tyrant, why swell’st thou thus, of mischief vaunting?
…..Lewd lies thy tongue contrives…. Falsehood thy wit approves…”
Psalm 52 (Translated by Mary Sidney)
Hell hath no fury like the Rajapaksas thwarted.
All those who opposed the interests, whims and fancies of the Ruling Siblings in the past know
the hellfire of their fury. Students, workers, Tamil civilians, Sinhala farmers, journalists, […]

By Tisaranee Gunasekara | Published on November 4, 2012 at 8:32 pm

SRI LANKA: The attack on the judiciary

Saturday, 3 November 2012, 1:32 pm
The 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which ended all the debates and discussions on the
17th Amendment, brought an end to all independent public institutions in Sri Lanka. From that point on, only one institution remained outside the complete control of the executive president. That was the judiciary.
True, that institution itself […]

By Asian Human Rights Commission | Published on November 3, 2012 at 10:50 am

Impeachment of CJ – An unconstitutional witch-hunt

The Rajapaksha Regime, through its parliamentarians, handed over an impeachment motion to the Speaker, the elder brother of the President Rajapaksha against the first woman Chief Justice of the country.
It appears that the Government of Sri Lanka is in a mighty hurry to “get rid of the Chief Justice”
so that a major obstacle for […]

By JC Weliamuna | Published on November 3, 2012 at 9:36 am

The Top Five Threats to Internet Freedom You’ve Never Heard Of

Great firewall of China
You’ve probably heard of the Great Firewall of China, which scrubs the web of any potentially subversive content for half a billion internet users. And you’ve definitely heard about the Egyptian government’s decision to switch off all internet and mobile-phone networks at the height of the uprising in 2011. But there are […]

By Freedom House | Published on November 3, 2012 at 2:08 am

Mixed results: Sri Lanka pilloried and praised at UPR in Geneva

Pilloried and praised, congratulated and condemned, Sri Lanka has received a forthright, but divided, assessment of its postwar human rights record.
Sri Lanka, whose 26-year-civil war ended in 2009 with the defeat of the separatist Tamil Tigers,
was excoriated by a swath of countries, including the US, Britain, France and Canada, at the UN Human Rights Commissioner’s […]

By Sydney Morning Herald | Published on November 2, 2012 at 10:34 am

Bring back journos in exile and guarantee their safety IFJ urges Sri Lanka

IFJ Urges Attention on Free Speech
As the Universal Periodic Review on Sri Lanka begins at the U.N. Human Rights Council in
Geneva, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its partners and affiliates in Sri Lanka, urge closer attention to issues of free speech and the right to information, which have been casualties of the quarter […]

By International Federation of Journalists | Published on November 2, 2012 at 10:24 am