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Q: What was your purpose in writing the book ‘Torture of the Poor?’ Why do we talk about torture and poverty? A: Because in the real world, particularly in less developed countries, we can see that poverty and the torture are linked. Q: How are they linked? A: First of all, the majority of people […]

Basil Fernando In an article which appeared in the Island newspaper entitled, ‘Hardly the Death of Democracy or the Nation — Ten Points from a Political Scientist’, (September 11, 2010) the author, Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka wrote the following words: ‘Nations are too strong a reality to be killed off by constitutional amendments’. Nations, as someone once said […]

Today in an emailed letter I received from a friend there was this sentence: “Sometimes, I feel that when institutions die, it’s even worse than people dying.” This is a profound reflection. I showed it to several of my colleagues from different countries, Burma, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They all nodded, agreeing. I am sure if […]

*Avinash Pandey     Britain, in a major victory for the movement against caste based discrimination and atrocities, can soon declare caste prejudice unlawful under laws against racial discrimination becoming the first country of the world to do so. The development was imminent in the wake of the fact that the House of Lords had […]

Darja Merkina   The current floods are having a detrimental effect on children’s health due to the potential outbreak of endemic waterborne diseases. The UN Office for the Co-Ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) spokesman, Maurizio Giuliano, has confirmed that 3.5 million children are affected by endemic watery diarrhoea and dysentery. The shortage of clean water […]

The comparison between Hong Kong and Sri Lanka Rasika Sanjeewa Weerawickrama LLB (SL), LLM (HK) It was reported that around 192 people have died from dengue fever in the first seven and a half months of this year. The total number of infected people came to more than 26,824 and there can be no doubt […]

Basil Fernando Sri Lanka has turned out to be a land of many quarrels but no debates. Often quarrels turns into violence, sometimes murder and even worst. And the violence itself leads to new quarrels and the circle goes on. Sadly however, hardly anything ever turns into a debate. Debate has become a lost art […]

The WISE project started its second leg in Jakarta on August 2nd and with only 9 days to train and create a video – it was bound to be a challenge from the start. The women were all drawn from different backgrounds, ex-drug users, ex-sex workers, some were living with HIV, some were trans-gendered and […]

Basil Fernando   Two cabinet ministers laughed in public about the police assault of two opposition Members of Parliament at the Galle police station. They added to their laughter by adding to the story, saying that nothing else is to be expected when anyone tries to assault police officers inside a police station. That was […]

Basil Fernando The beating of an opposition Member of Parliament by officers of the Galle police raises one important question: how many times do you have to beat an MP before he learns his lesson? The politicians of the present generation are not good learners. They certainly are not the type that learns by reading; […]

There are times when children are wiser than the adults. We live in such a time. Today’s children know more about the problems of climate as a man-made problem. They worry about it, talk about it and feel sad about it. They are wiser than the earlier generations. They are learning the folly of those […]

*Avinash Pandey Thinking about tragedies, especially manmade ones, is a subversive process bursting with its inherent dangers. It makes one go numb, outrages the self and at times fills one with the disgusting and incapacitating feeling of losing the humaneness itself, of becoming more and more incapable of having any control over one’s own lives. […]

Basil Fernando A mother burned the mouths of two children who were crying for food. The two children were girls, one and half and five years old. The mother has been arrested and is presently in remand custody. The incident took place on the 28th July at Awissawela. A few months ago a mother threw […]

WISE — Women’s International Shared Experience Project – travelled to Karachi, to work with women from throughout the Sindh area who have been raped, sexually assaulted or domestically abused. 9 women spent 14 days living together and receiving training in video production. Some of the women could not read or write and their confidence had been […]

*Mr. Avinash Pandey The recent verdict of the Bombay High Court in the Khairlanji massacre case convicting all the accused to life imprisonment could have been a welcome one and gone a long way in restoring ordinary people’s faith in the country’s justice system and its rule of law framework. It could have marked a […]

Avinash Pandey* Rarely do individual tragedies reflect all that is wrong in a society. Even rare are occasions where their implications go beyond the lives of the individual, his family, or the neighborhood. But, when they do, they assume a significance that has bearings on the history of the community and the society. The recent […]

SSP Angunawala (Rtd) who served the department for thirty six and half years commented on the reasons for the degeneration of the police department in a taped interview given to Janasansadaya, a human rights organization. Sri Lanka at the moment is undergoing a very bad situation in the field of human values and the deterioration […]

Avinash Pandey The Kashmir valley in India has witnessed more than 15 deaths in June alone, all of them caused by Indian security forces firing upon the protesting crowds. These crowds were comprised largely of teenagers pelting stones at the security forces especially in and around areas of old Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and […]

Basil Fernando For many decades now, international journalists have interpreted every story that has emerged from Sri Lanka to be some kind of war story. Some journalists have proposed that Sri Lanka’s use of overwhelming force was able to eradicate terrorism in the country, and that other countries such as the United States, should follow […]

Noveline Education is one of the most important elements both as an indicator as well as a tool of a country’s development .Without a good education system that guarantees the future of the new generation the country cannot develop. After a military coup in 1962 the education system in Burma was changed from a nationalist […]