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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 […]

Rasika Sanjeewa Weerawickrama It was a devastating fact that the Korean navy ship ‘ROKS Cheonan’ sinking in the East China Sea around 9.22PM 26th March 2010. Cheonan was a Korean Navy Pohang Class corvette ship. It sank near Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea. At the time of its sinking, the ship was in South […]

Basil Fernando* On 23 May 2010, police officers, including a woman police constable reportedly tortured and abused a mother and her 12-year-old son in Rajouri Garden Police Outpost in Delhi. It is reported that the officers forced Mala (name changed) to strip naked in front of her minor son and demanded her to have sex […]

Avinash Pandey Samar* On 23 May 2010, police officers, including a woman police constable reportedly tortured and abused a mother and her 12-year-old son in Rajouri Garden Police Outpost in Delhi. It is reported that the officers forced Mala (name changed) to strip naked in front of her minor son and demanded her to have […]

Julia Lemétayer The Pakistani people are increasingly vulnerable to food insecurity because of the government’s bad governance and its lack of political will to tackle hunger. According to the Global Hunger Index (GHI) prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Pakistan is one of the most food-insecure countries in Asia. Causes of food […]

Rasika Sanjeewa Weerawickrama A Most ruthless attack by the Defense Forces of Israel It has been established that the flotilla loaded with humanitarian aid and volunteer humanitarian workers heading towards the Gaza Strip was surrounded by commandos from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDS) and attacked. Initial reports state that nine humanitarian workers were killed. The […]

These days a topic for public discussion is the takeover of the Attorney General’s Department by the President of Sri Lanka. A discussion on this issue will benefit from reflections on the history and the functions of the Attorney General’s Department. We reproduce below a speech made by the then Solicitor General, Mr. K.M.M.E Kaluntunga, […]

The violence on 13, 14 and 15 May 1998 followed as a culmination of a series of violence that occurred in Indonesia before the fall of President Suharto, who had been in power for 32 years. Two major events led to this violence on 13-15 May, namely the kidnappings and disappearances in the period 1997-1998 […]

Danilo Reyes The story of two elderly farmers, Marilyn Lanotes, of Hacienda Tres Hermanos and Uldarico Nalipay, of Hacienda Manuela, both in Cadiz City, Negros Occidental, are just two of the many examples that can illustrate the inequality before the law between farmers and landowners and how the application of the law is abused to […]

Baseer Naveed and Stewart Sloan “Acid will be thrown on the faces of women and girls who step out of their houses without covering their faces… People who fail to comply with these orders will themselves be responsible for the consequences.” This was the announcement made by the Baloch Ghaeratmand Group; until recently a little […]

Danilo Reyes The island of Negros is divided into two dominant languages–Cebuano in the east and Hiligaynon in the west. The accent, words and the meaning of the spoken word in these languages is unique and different in their own way. However, to a certain extent a Cebuano speaker like me, with some basic knowledge […]

Danilo Reyes From the moment a child is born into a family of sugarcane workers he becomes an object of control in his society, community and even in his own family. For such a long time now the lives of the people have revolved around sugarcane planting and production that it is naturally assumed any […]

MCM Iqbal, Secretary to several commissions of inquiry in Involuntary Disappearances recalls some of narratives of cases told by witness before the commissions. This is from a taped interview with Basil Fernando Since I was secretary at two of the separate evidence commissions that were conducting enquiries into disappearances during the so-called period of terror, […]