Below is an interview with Ambassador Dayan Jayatilleke published in the French Diplomatic Review – La Lettre Diplomatique (The Diplomatic Letter)
Two years after the end of a three decades conflict, the lifting of the emergency rule in late August 2011 confirmed the beginning of a new era for Sri Lanka. With the recent discovery of […]

Whatever one may think of the LLRC and NORAD reports, it is incontrovertible that two of the three major
players in the last stage of the Sri Lankan conflict have undertaken and undergone a preliminary audit of sorts—the Sri Lankan state and the Norwegians– while the third (and the second in importance) has not, and not […]

Calling upon the international community to establish a “mechanism for accountability” to bring to book the
perpetrators of war crimes during the last stages of the Eelam War that ended in May 2009, the Tamil National Alliance  said the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission report “categorically fails to effectively and meaningfully deal with issues of accountability”.
Recalling […]

“Practically the possibility of a full accounting of what happened in the whole course of our thirty year war would only come when the government is headed by those who had nothing to do with the war. This is the experience internationally as well where internal processes for accountability and truth seeking are concerned. If […]

WASHINGTON DC, DECEMBER 19:  Former US Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Robert O Blake has not always been Colombo’s darling. He has earned the wrath of many an extremist pen-pusher in the government controlled press for his comments on human rights issues and his name […]

Exposed: Public relations firm’s dealings with some of the world’s most controversial regimes
Senior executives at Bell Pottinger told undercover reporters that they were so influential that they had written a key speech
given by the Sri Lankan President to the United Nations.
During the address by President Mahinda Rajapaksa last year, which the company said was used […]

“They will capture me,
They will put me In jail;
They may torture me and they may even kill me.
Then they will have my dead body, not my obedience”
(Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in South Africa in early 1900s)
Ever since the beginnings of chronicling our history, while it’s the survivor who always pens it, the written tale of our […]

Amidst some attempts to sabotage the initiative by internal elements opposed to him, opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe  last week took the lead in organising a massive demonstration in Colombo
against the continued incarceration of former army Commander General Fonseka, .
In parliament Last Tuesday the UNP leader removed his tie bearing the logo of the Commonwealth Parliamentary […]

The occasion was the annual Budget Speech in Parliament. Unlike in the Westminster- system days, and
in terms of age-old traditions of parliamentary practices, the Finance Minister, in this instance His Excellency the President of Sri Lanka (as he could not trust to give this vital portfolio away to any other member of his sixty one-strong […]

Next week, government, business, and civil society representatives will gather at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Nairobi, Kenya to discuss
the future of the global digital space. This gathering takes place against the backdrop of growing restrictions by repressive regimes on online freedoms. The U.S. and European governments have undertaken significant initiatives to respond to […]