Cities may only occupy about 2% of the world’s habitable land, but they are big drivers of global climate change. Cities are usually hotter than rural areas, and get referred to in the jargon as “urban…
On Friday morning, with fewer than half the votes counted in Sri Lanka’s presidential election, incumbent president Mahinda Rajapaksa unobtrusively moved out of his official residence at Temple Trees in…
Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, has been defeated in the country’s historic presidential elections. Sri Lankans are shocked at the scale and manner of Rajapaksa’s defeat, which has brought his…
There have been many natural disasters since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, but none have exceeded it in the combination of scale and scope of its destructive impacts. The scale of devastation for coastal…
The awarding of a shared Nobel Peace Prize award to a 17-year-old Pakistani girl, Malala Yousafzai, and a 60-year-old Indian man, Kailash Satyarthi, is historic and aimed at conveying multiple messages…
The Australian government has become the great defender of Sri Lanka’s post-war human rights credentials, it seems. But Sri Lanka’s (and Australia’s) insistence that the end of the civil war means an end…
Australia appears to have reached a new all-time low in its violation of international obligations and its treatment of vulnerable people seeking Australia’s protection. If widespread media reports are…
The Sri Lankan government is on the defensive again over human rights. It is hoping to ride out a diplomatic storm after failing to thwart a UN Human Rights Council vote approving an international investigation…
I was the only lady in the group that was caught by [CID](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Investigation_Department_(Sri_Lanka) [Criminal Investigation Department]. CID beat the men but to me they…
The list of crimes alleged to have been perpetrated by brothers Mahinda and Gotabhaya Rajapaksa – respectively the president and defence minister of Sri Lanka – are truly horrifying. During the last few…
Philip Murphy, School of Advanced Study, University of London
It is difficult to do justice to the mood of despair that has been haunting the corridors of the Commonwealth Secretariat’s headquarters in Marlborough House in recent months. The decision to hold the…
Australian prime minister Tony Abbott announced earlier this week that he would not join his Canadian, Indian and Mauritian counterparts in boycotting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM…
When delegates assemble in Colombo later this month for the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM), much of the talk at the summit will be of “moving forward” and of “reconciliation”. The government…
Since October 27 last year, more than 1,070 Sri Lankan boat arrivals have been returned to their home country. In the most recent repatriation last week, 73 of 79 Sri Lankans who arrived in Australia in…
Sri Lanka is at a crossroads. After the end of a long civil war, the country has an historic opportunity to draw on its strengths and riches to create a unified, prosperous and just society. But it is…
In the debate about Sri Lankan asylum seekers in Australia, one question seems to come up again and again. Why, when the bloody twenty-six-year conflict that caused so many to leave their homes has ended…
The Gillard government is facing another High Court challenge to its indefinite detention of the 55 refugees to have received adverse security assessments from ASIO. These continuing legal troubles, along…
Given its long association with the Commonwealth, it is no surprise that Sri Lanka is hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) in November this year. These biannual meetings are normally…
It is all pretty confusing. Are Sri Lankan boat arrivals – like the 66 who showed up in the port of Geraldton last month – actually refugees? Are they fleeing from a country where the police and the army…