Sometime last September,Facebook was upping its engagements in Sri Lanka by holding media awareness sessions. Off the record media briefing sessions, where the contents were not reported.

With the March regular session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) approaching, some news detrimental to the Sri Lankan government were heard from abroad. It was mostly so when the Rajapaksas in power in

On Sunday March 1, the United Nations marks “Zero Discrimination Day” and the 2020 theme is ‘zero discrimination against women and girls’. The UN says the day is universal in nature and does not confine itself t

The government has announced that it would withdraw the co-sponsorship of a UN Human Rights Council Resolution that it co-sponsored with the US in 2015 and two subsequent rollover resolutions. Foreign Minister Di

A series of daylight robberies – technically-termed ‘Issue of Treasury Bonds’ – was committed from the beginning of the millennium at the government banker’s coffers under the watchful eyes of its heads, both local and foreign. Ironically,

Historically, languages have been a unifier as well as a divider of communities and counties, though their divisive role has gained more attention, as indeed, all conflicts do. In India, in 1950, its top leaders wanted to make Hindi the sole offic

On January 28, 2020, standing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, at a White House press conference, US President Trump unveiled his peace plan to settle the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

The Coronavirus (CoV) outbreak will eventually be brought under control, and hopefully sooner than expected, but it has brought attention to a darker side of China’s carefully manipulated State-sponsored image of the world’s fastest-growing mega

“May you live in interesting times” is a saying that is believed to be an ancient Chinese curse. Many writers and speakers often use this expression or phrase and attribute Chinese origins to it. In spite of the widely-held belief about Chinese l

On January 14 this year, the same day that US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Alice Wells met President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in Colombo,

Yesterday was the United Nation’s International Mother Language Day and the world body in a statement stresses the importance of safeguarding linguistic diversity. It says languages, with their complex implications for identity, communication, soci

For Hindus world over Maha Sivarathri is purely a religious ceremony of day time fast and vigilance throughout the night. They observe these special rites on the fourteenth night of Phalgma (February/March) which is the longest night in the year, acc

In November last year shortly after Sri Lanka’s presidential election US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Alice Wells in a speech at a Washington think tank mentioned that the US would be soon launching the controversial Millennium Challenge Co

The plight of domestic workers employed in the Middle East is worse than the frustrated farmers who curse their crop being devastated by fungi. Both the domestic worker and the farmer...

What would have been the response of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) had a new local council been established for the Muslim dominated Sainthamaruthu area during the last regime?

Foreign Relations Minister Dinesh Gunawardane will fly to Geneva next week to indicate the Government’s interest in doing away with the resolution 30/1 adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). This is a resolution adopted on Oc

Sri Lankans have a fondness for rice and any politician failing to understand this would be in for a rude shock. At present the regime is involved in sorting out a scarcity for rice. We’ve read enough about the government purchasing paddy from farm

Mangala Samaraweera is reported to have opined that the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) will secure a two-thirds majority at the parliamentary elections which are expected to be held in a few months’ time. Interesting.

Three months into the tenure of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government, Sri Lanka’s former ambassador to Russia, Udayanga Weeratunga, who was in the wanted list of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the Financial Crimes Investigation Depart

In life, there are certain absolute necessities that we must have like food, water, shelter for starters and nobody will ask if it were worth it. It is just something we need to have to stay alive. The difference is what, why and how.

This is a reference to the matter of Ratnayake Mudiyanselagedara Abeyaratne Ratnayake of Kahalla in Katugastota under Section 51 of the Courts Ordinance 1889 in the Supreme Court (SC). The person charged was none other

The conversation that took place between the Gampaha District Assistant Conservator of Forests Devani Jayatillake and State Minister of Fisheries and Inland Fishery’s Industry Sanath Nishantha received much publicity on print,

Though the United States President Donald Trump still insists that climate change is mainly a Chinese hoax while continuing with his despicable and dangerous measures that have upset the balance of power in the US, one of the

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who always asserts the application of scientific knowledge, especially the information technology in every aspect of the life of a person as well as every aspect of governance, had on February 11 discussed another simila

America’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week imposed a travel ban on Lt. General Shavendra Silva, the acting Chief of Defence Staff and the Commander of Army, and the Sri Lankan government no

Residents of Rudra Residencies, Wellawatte claim that they have been deprived of the common facilities that were promised in their sales agreements by the developer. They also claim that the illegal and unconstitutional decisions taken by the Managem

On 14 February, two days ago, US Secretary of State Pompeo officiously announced that the United States had designated Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva, current Commander of the Sri Lanka Army and Acting Chief of Defence Staff....

Caste is all present in Jaffna, but a silence prevails about caste oppression. Such silence and invisibility were not always the case, where vibrant struggles against caste oppression shook Jaffna some five decades ago.

Munich Security Conference, the world’s largest security conference just concluded with a series of grim notes about directions and chaos in global security. The main theme of the conference for 2020 was, “Westlessness”.

Dandu Monara, an ‘aircraft’ that resembled a peacock was used by Ravana, the mythical multi-headed demon-King of Lanka in Valmiki’s Ramayana. In this Sanskrit epic poem of India written in the 5th century BCE, Ravana kidnaps Seetha....