AHRC News

FOR PUBLICATION AHRC-ART-097-2010 September 16, 2010 An Article by the Asian Human Rights Commission SRI LANKA: The banality of evil, a rejoinder to Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka A strong ruler and weak insti...

By Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza Last week, the government of Pakistan announced it would push the National Assembly to pass the long-awaited Acid Control and Burn Crime Prevention Bill this month. The bill...

Basil Fernando   For all Sri Lankan’s but particularly for those of the educated classes the problems that have come by way of political and constitutional change has created many emotional...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 15, 2010 AHRC-OLT-010-2010 An Open Letter to Faith Suzzette delos Reyes-Kong, senior legal officer of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR 9) by the Asian Human Rights C...

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...

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, ...

The arrest of the printer of a poster and the holding of his family members to force him to surrender indicates the type of suppression that will be extended to all political activities now within the...

Today, the 9th September, Sri Lankans woke up to a country which has changed politically in its character and in its legal system. With the passing of the 18th Amendment Sri Lanka has abandoned libera...

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 ref...

The 8th September will mark the end of an historical period and begin that of a dark dictatorship   Today, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka will be passed by a fast-track-proce...

The Asian Human Rights Commission has closely followed the case of Phyo Wai Aung, who is the sole person detained and accused in connection with blasts on 15 April 2010 in Rangoon that killed 10 peopl...

*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 discri...

On September 8 (tomorrow) the government will move 18th Amendment to the Constitution, which is to be voted on that day itself to remove the constitutional limitation of two terms on the president and...

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 Huma...

A Joint Statement by the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS) and the Asian Human Rights Commission The Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS) and...

A simple way of understanding the 18th Amendment is to compare it to the situation in the United States of America. The president of the United States is elected for a term of four years and is entitl...

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 ...

The Asian Human Rights Commission states that words are inadequate to express the magnitude of the folly contained in the suggested amendments to the Constitution of Sri Lanka by the Sri Lankan govern...

Over 12,000 cases are pending before the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) as there are no ‘commissioners’ to order inquiries into them, according to a report published in Daily...

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...