US Secretary of State John Kerry who visited Sri Lanka at the invitation of Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera concluded his two-day visit to the country on Sunday, 3rd May 2015.
During the visit which was the first official visit by a US Secretary of State in 43 years, Secretary Kerry called on President Maithripala Sirisena at […]

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry who undertook an official visit to Sri Lanka from May 2-3, 2015, addressed a public event in Colombo on Strengthening the U.S.-Sri Lanka Partnership for Human Rights and Lasting Peace. The event was organized under the auspices of the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies on May […]

The Governor of the Central Bank was summoned to the Bribery Commission and grilled for six hours. A three-month travel banwas imposed on him. That one incident demonstrates how far we have progressed since January 8th.
The journey away from Rajapaksa Rule towards democracy, accountability and the rule of law has been far from perfect; it has […]

“I think I’ll call it morning….”
Gil Scott-Heron[i]
Neither their dire warnings nor our nightmarish fears materialised. The election ended as it should, in a peaceful change.
A large chunk of credit for that unexpectedly felicitous end should go to former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Had he tried to resist the results illegally and unconstitutionally, as some of his […]

07 January 2015
His Excellency Mahinda Rajapaksa
President of Sri Lanka
Presidential Secretariat
Colombo 1
Dear Mr President,
The Importance of January 8th – Lasantha Wickrematunge’s murder
The irony of the presidential election being fixed for the sixth anniversary of the day on which my husband and your ‘friend’, Lasantha Wickrematunge, was assassinated, may have escaped you. It has not escaped me.
Lasantha […]

“…superficial unity, which is the result of the denial or the sacrifice of differences”.
Tagore (The One Nationalist Party)
The regime reverted to business-as-usual literally on the day Navi Pillay left Sri Lanka.
The first salvo of lies against the UN High Commissioner Human Rights was fired, predictably, by
the state-owned Sunday Observer: “UNHRC chief Navi Pillay’s request to […]

“In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
~Martin Luther King Jr.
Fifty years ago, on August 28, 1963, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., the uncrowned king of the African-American […]

21 August 2013, Colombo, Sri Lanka: The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) is deeply concerned by reports that the Ministry of Buddha Sasana and Religious Affairs is to introduce new laws seeking action against
publications that ‘defame the original teachings and traditions of the major religions’. These reports state that as a first step, a draft […]

nguished Sri Lankan, Dr Thakshan Fernando, died last Thursday in New Zealand at the age of 81. A Muslim place of worship was attacked on the day after Eid, in Grandpass, Colombo, on Saturday. What is the connection?
Dr. Thakshan Fernando
The distinguished Sri Lankan in question, a former student of Ananda College and a Buddhist of […]

“A five-month old baby-girl had been raped, in our Sri Lanka – a horror symbolic and symbiotic of the moral-ethical malaise affecting our society. That is a non-political issue, one which should concern all of us, irrespective of every difference. The fact that it has not engaged the attention of political and civil society and […]