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From Black July to Easter Sunday: Sri Lanka’s Tragedy of Collective Amnesia and Majority Rule over Minorities
Sri Lanka’s modern history from Black July in 1983 to the Easter Sunday bombings in 2019 is a story of a country that bled lives and wealth while refusing to confront the structures that made violence possible. Between pogrom, war and terror attacks, well over a hundred thousand people were killed and the economy lost…
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A Crisis of Governance and the Fluidity of Ethnic Identity: Understanding Modern Sri Lanka — Interview with journalist Mark Salter
This interview was originally published by JURIST News on April 25, 2025 Written by: Pitasanna Shanmugathas | University of Windsor Faculty of Law, CA 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…
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Interview: ‘The Prospect for Political Change in Sri Lanka Rests on the Dynamics of the Next Few Months’
Pitasanna Shanmugathas | University of Windsor Faculty of Law, CA The interview was initially published by “JURIST” on October 7, 2024. 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,…
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Implementing the ‘Himalaya Declaration’ with a ‘Mahavamsa Mindset’ during Sri Lanka’s Transition from a Kleptocracy to a Stratocracy
OPINION — In December 2023, a group of senior Buddhist monks from different Nikayas (called Sangha for Better Sri Lanka or “SBSL”) and members of the Global Tamil Forum (“GTF”) visited Sri Lanka for several engagements. According to the GTF, this visit was a continuation of their fruitful dialogue in Nagarkot, Nepal, in April 2023, where…
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Sri Lankan War Wounds Still Not Healed
After more than 25 years of tense, protracted, and bloody civil war, the guns fell silent in Sri Lanka. In May of 2009 the military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as Tamil Tigers, gave Sri Lanka the golden opportunity to unite the divided island nation. Unfortunately, this never happened.…