Interviews & Articles24/04/2018
Ex-Presidents contesting for 3rd term
Compiled by Sulochana Ramiah Mohan In recent weeks the debate on whether former Presidents Chandrika Kumaratunga (CBK) and Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR) can contest the Presidency once more has been buzzing in the political circle. This is because the head of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna Prof. G L Peries, a...
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Enforced disappearance in Sri Lanka: Past, present and future
Family members of the disappeared in a protest march - File picture Few countries in the world can rival Sri Lanka’s legacy on enforced disappearance. Simply defined, an ‘enforced disappearance’ takes place when an agent of the state takes a person into custody, and subsequently refuses to disclose the fate...
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The case against anti-terrorism laws
Jeyakumari Balendran, an activist campaigning for the whereabouts of missing persons in Sri Lanka, was detained by officers of the Terrorist Investigation Division (TID) in March 2014. Photo: Vikalpa | Groundviews | Maatram | CPA / Flickr Nearly a decade after the end of the civil war, Sri Lanka’s draconian anti-terrorism...
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Women’s Representation and Participation in Formal Politics
By Daisy Perry Despite the drive for gender equality promoted at the Beijing UN World Conference on Women in 1995, the Sri Lankan State appears to have taken little responsibility for narrowing the gender gap in political representation. Savitri Goonesekere explains this as a “non-recognition of the problem” while Kumari Jayawardena has observed that...
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Women’s Participation at the Grassroots Level
By Daisy Perry Drawing on the idea that the personal is political and challenging the notion that political empowerment can be measured solely with a seat in a legislature, this article focuses on the forms in which women who are not involved in formal politics or civil society activism, participate politically....
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