Search Results for: Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s recently elected President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s political coalition, the National People’s Power (NPP), won an overwhelming amount of support from the majority Sinhalese community as well as the minority Tamil community, receiving a historic supermajority in the November 2024 Parliamentary elections. This broad mandate across ethnic lines presents a historic opportunity to address [...]

Edited by: Alanah Vargas | JURIST Staff, US Mark Salter, a journalist, analyst, and writer with over 25 years of professional experience in democratization, governance, and post-conflict peacebuilding, speaks to JURIST’s Senior Editor for Long-Form Content, Pitasanna Shanmugathas, about his upcoming book From Independence to Aragalaya: A Modern History of Sri Lanka. In this interview, Salter [...]

If Prime Minister Mark Carney wins the Canadian federal election, new Attorney General and Minister of Justice Gary Anandasangaree — appointed by Carney on March 14 — will likely remain in the role as he now faces a moment that directly parallels his earlier career as an international human rights lawyer advocating for Tamil victims [...]

Edited by: Alanah Vargas | JURIST Staff, US Sri Lanka’s civil war (1983-2009) between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist Tamil militant and political organization fighting for an independent Tamil state, claimed 80,000-100,000 lives by UN estimates, with its legacy of displacement and land dispossession still affecting various minority [...]

The UK government imposed sanctions Monday on four individuals held responsible for serious human rights abuses during Sri Lanka’s civil war. The 26-year conflict, which ended in May 2009, claimed an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 lives according to UN figures, with an estimated 40,000 Tamil civilians killed during the final stages of the war. The [...]

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned Sri Lankan authorities on Thursday for what it called their failure to uphold accountability and due process in the 2009 extrajudicial killing of investigative journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge, urging decisive action to end the country’s “alarming record of impunity” in journalist killings. CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi denounced [...]

Former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s second son, Yoshitha Rajapaksa, was arrested Saturday on corruption charges, according to local media. He was arrested on the advice of the Attorney General after it was determined that there was sufficient evidence to charge him under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act No. 5 of 2006. Yoshitha Rajapaksa [...]

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), along with 24 civil society organizations, called on newly elected Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to prioritize press freedom in his administration. The groups, in a letter addressed to the president, called for urgent measures to address decades of violence, intimidation and legal repression faced by journalists in [...]

Peter Russell was a leading Canadian scholar of constitutional law who taught at the University of Toronto from 1958 to 1997.  Numerous Canadian Supreme Court judges have read and cited his work in their rulings. Professor Russell passed away on January 10, leaving behind an enormously rich academic legacy. Known for his openness, Peter Russell [...]

Sri Lanka elected Anura Kumara Dissanayake as its new president on September 21, marking the first time in the country’s history that a candidate outside the two major political parties has won the presidency. Dissanayake, representing the National People’s Power (NPP) coalition, defeated candidates from the long-dominant United National Party (UNP) and Sri Lanka Freedom [...]