Theruni Sebastiampillai participated at the French-Sri Lankan Diaspora Youth Workshop “Post-War Reconciliation Dialogue for a Sustainable Peace”, which took place in Paris, on October 27th, 2012. She participated as a panelist on the theme “Individual and collective identity(ies): between search and struggle”.
The event was organized by What’s Next!, an independent forum comprising of post-graduates and […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Going beyond UNSCR 1325: Post-war Sri Lanka and Women’s ESCR
An Interview with Sithara Shreen Abdul Saroor
United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, adopted 31st October 2000,
reaffirms the role of women in peace and security settings. In this interview Shreen Saroor explores the potential as well as the limitations of UNSCR 1325, especially in context of post war […]

Second thoughts
The government has apparently had second thoughts about abolishing the 13th Amendment
that deals with devolution of power to the provinces. Its spokespersons now say that such an action is not contemplated at the present time. They even say that the government is considering how to go ahead with President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s war time promises […]

“The future is dark, uncertain. But we can see part of the way leading to it and can tread it with firm steps, remembering that nothing that can happen is likely to overcome the spirit of man which has survived so may perils. Remembering also that life, for all its ills, has joy and beauty, […]