“Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.”
~Nicolas Chamfort
The first Constitutional Professor-President of the United States of America has been stung, as almost all US Presidents in the last five […]

There are many unresolved grievances that face the war-affected people of all communities after the end of the war, and which the centralized
system of government has so far failed to adequately address. These include the resettlement of persons who were displaced during the war, such as Muslims displaced over twenty years ago, who have still […]

In May of 2009, images of displaced Tamil people trapped behind the barbed wire of internment camps flashed across the world. “Everybody wanted to get out of those camps, but they were too scared to discuss their rights”, one priest recalls.
The Government of Sri Lanka had just declared a military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (ltte), […]

“No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere, whether it is holding out a hand of friendship, or making clear that you disapprove of something, is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being, so the goal is to always establish common ground.” ~ Madeleine Albright
Finally the UNP addresses […]

New Constitution
The proposals for a new Constitution presented by the main Opposition party could have been much better, but as they stand they constitute a welcome and useful intervention in the political discussion. What is most positive is the stand the UNP has taken on the single most important political problem facing Sri Lanka, […]

“We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.”
~Mahatma Gandhi
The Thirteenth Amendment which saw passage in Parliament in August 1987 amidst civil chaos and political turmoil, once again has gained unusual attention from political quarters, both international and local. What is even more bewildering is, after accomplishing a military victory of unprecedented scale […]

21st January 2013
I am deeply honored to be apart of these celebrations in remembering one of the greatest spiritual leaders of all time – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Thank you Don Austin for that generous introduction. Thank you also to the Greater Ithaca Activities Centre, to the Office of Student Engagement and Multicultural Affairs, […]

GENEVA/AP: After nine years of legal wrangling, former U.N. investigator Caroline Hunt-Matthes has won a judgment that she was unfairly punished for
documenting a woman’s rape case in Sri Lanka a decade ago.
Hunt-Matthes told The Associated Press on Wednesday the long-running case is “a consummate story of abuse of power” by U.N.’s oversight unit.
The twin rulings […]

“That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who’d never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept”
Auden (The Shield of Achilles)
The Lankan crisis 
The Lankan crisis is a multi-dimensional one. There is the political crisis which encompasses the crisis of democracy and the crisis of […]

Fate of Yugoslavia 
Yugoslavia was a sister country of Sri Lanka; a fellow founder of the Non Aligned Movement in that country’s capital Belgrade in 1961.
Yugoslavia no longer exists. The breakup of that country resulted from a chain reaction that commenced with the dramatic change of the Yugoslav Constitution promulgated by the sagacious socialist Marshal Tito […]