Advisory Council - Detailed Biographies

Pakistan's lawyers drew enormous strength and comfort from the support they received from the outside world over the course of their struggle for the rule of law and the restoration of an independent judiciary. Today, we have a similar, but even greater, obligation to the people of Sri Lanka to demand that the human rights of ALL citizens are protected, and that international human rights laws and norms are strictly adhered to in the treatment of all people detained since the end of the country's civil war.

Aitzaz Ahsan

is one of the leading constitutional, commercial, corporate and human rights attorneys in Pakistan.

He is widely acknowledged as one of the most effective and outspoken advocates of an open and plural society and his politics have been non-violent throughout his career.

During the military regimes, Mr Ahsan defended scores of political prisoners in military court trials under Martial Law. And as the Leader of the Lawyers’ Movement he led and sustained a hugely popular, non-violent, and democratic movement for moderate values and rule of law culminating in the restoration of democracy and the reinstatement of the independent judiciary.

Recently he has had the distinction of being the only attorney to represent both the former Prime Ministers of Pakistan: Ms. Benazir Bhutto and Mr. Nawaz Sharif, and thus of straddling the intense political divide in Pakistan.

He successfully defended the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mr Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry in the Presidential Reference filed against the Chief Justice. Later he was counsel for Presidential Candidate Justice (rtd) Wajihuddin Ahmed against General Musharraf. Mr Ahsan is presently counsel, in the Supreme Court, for a victim of the gang-rape allegedly sanctioned by a village council.

In 1997, Mr Ahsan, along with President Kim Dae Jung (Korea) and Dr. Kamal Hussain (former Foreign Minister, Bangladesh) went to the United Nations to promote the cause of democracy in Burma on behalf of Nobel Laureate Aung Sung Suu Kyi and the Forum for the Democratic Leaders of Asia-Pacific.

There is a quote by Martin Luther King that comes in my mind with respect to all horrifying happenings in Sri Lanka: "We shall have to repent in this generation, not so much for the evil deeds of the wicked, but of the appalling silence of the good people"

Beate Arnestad

is a Norwegian film maker. She has over twenty years of experience producing and directing content for both the entertainment and documentary departments at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. She has worked in Egypt, Turkey, India, China, Singapore, Thailand, USA and various countries in Europe.

Her most recent documentary My Daughter the Terrorist was independently produced and filmed during the time Arnestad lived in Sri Lanka. The film is ground breaking, as no one has ever followed the Black Tigers as they prepare for a mission. My Daughter the Terrorist is currently being screened at film festivals all over the world, and has received several mentions and awards including the Centaur Award for best full-length documentary, at Message to Man in St. Petersburg. She is currently working on a film dealing with a court case at the ICTR; the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

"I believe that military victory achieves only a temporary absence of war but no real peace. What is most urgent now is that the Tamil grievances that led to this war be addressed and that a truth and reconciliation commission begins to be formed. Otherwise, I worry that the divisions on this island will become etched even deeper."

Adele Barker

Adele Barker is Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University , studied at Moscow State University and has taught at the University of Washington in addition to the University of Arizona. She has worked with NGO’s in Russia, run government sponsored exchanges between the University of Arizona and academic institutions in Turkmenia and Kazakhstan. She is the author or editor of five books on Russia and the Soviet Union. In 2001-2002 she spent the year as a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka. She returned to the island for two extended stays after the tsunami and has spent time in the Tamil north. Her recently published work of creative non-fiction Not Quite Paradise: An American Sojourn in Sri Lanka (Beacon Press, 2010) is part-memoir, part-travelogue of her own life on an island at war with itself. She is deeply concerned about both the physical and psychological problems faced by those who have been displaced by the tsunami and the civil war.

Lakhdar Brahimi

is former Foreign Minister of Algeria, Ambassador and international diplomat. Negotiated the end of civil war in Lebanon on behalf of the League of Arab States; led several UN Peace Operations, notably in South Africa, Haiti, Afghanistan , Iraq . Chaired the Independent Commission set up in 2000 by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan which produced a report on UN Peace Operations endorsed by the Millennium Summit and widely known as "The Brahimi Report". 

Member of "The Elders" & the Global Leadership Forum; Governing Board, SIPRI; Board of Trustees, International Crisis Group and Global Humanitarian Forum.

I respect and admire much of what Sri Lanka has done and represent in the Third World and the Non Aligned Movement. Their Government won the war against the LTTE and that is good. They now urgently need to win the peace on behalf and for the benefit of all the people of Sri Lanka. To that end, international support and cooperation should be sought, not resisted. 

Even in victory, the Sri Lankan government is unable to define peace or outline a political solution to the long-standing cultural and political grievances of the Tamil minority. In fact, a reconciliation rooted in genuine inter-ethnic equality can succeed only if state-sponsored human rights abuses are independently investigated

Brahma Chellaney

is Professor of Strategic Studies at the Centre for Policy Research. He has served as a member of the Policy Advisory Group headed by the Foreign Minister of India. Before that, Professor Chellaney was an adviser to India’s National Security Council until January 2000, serving as convenor of the External Security Group of the National Security Advisory Board.

A specialist on international security and arms control issues, Professor Chellaney has held appointments at the Harvard University, the Brookings Institution, the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and the Australian National University. He is the author of five books, the latest being Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan (HarperCollins) and On the Frontline of Climate Change: International Security Implications (KAF, 2007), with Heela Najibullah.
 

Professor Chellaney is also a newspaper columnist and television commentator. He regularly contributes opinion articles to the International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Japan Times, the Asian Age, the Hindustan Times and the Times of India. In 1985, he won a Citation for Excellence from the Overseas Press Club (OPC), New York.

"The fate of Tamils in Sri Lanka has been a shocking story of mounting horrors. It would be unconscionable to stand by in silence as the remnants face still more torture and disaster. Every effort must be expended to bring this tragedy to an end while there is still time."

Noam Chomsky

is a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author and lecturer.

He is Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is one of the fathers of modern linguistics and his study of language has had a profound influence of the philosophy of language and mind. According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar during the 1980–92 period, prompting the Guardian to comment that “Chomsky ranks with Marx, Shakespeare, and the Bible as one of the ten most quoted sources in the humanities” and the New York Times to say he is "Arguably the most important intellectual alive."

Beginning with his opposition to the Vietnam War, Chomsky has established himself as a prominent critic of US foreign and domestic policy, and this has continued, most recently over the wars in Iraq. His good friend Edward Said said “Noam Chomsky is one of the most significant challengers of unjust power and delusions; he goes against every assumption about American altruism and humanitarianism."

Chomsky has lectured at many universities here and abroad, and is the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards. He has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. He is a prolific writer and his new book is Hopes and Prospects (2009).
 

I wish to underline, that what I see in Sri Lanka is a total crisis of democracy, rule of law and human rights affecting ALL not just minorities only

Basil Fernando

is the Executive Director of the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC)

He has been active in human rights and social action issues continuously from his youth years. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Ceylon, Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1972 and practiced law from 1980 to 1989 at the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka with an emphasis in Criminal Law, Employment Law and Human Rights Law.

He was an Appeals Counsel for Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong, for a project sponsored by the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 1989 to 1992. From 1992 to 1993, he was a Senior United Nations Human Rights Officer-in-Charge of the Investigation Unit in Cambodia under the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). He was the Officer-in-Charge and the Chief of the Legal Assistance at the Cambodia Office of United Nations Center for Human Rights from 1993 to 1994. He has been the Executive Director of the AHRC and ALRC from 1994 up to the present.

He is the author and editor of several books on Human Rights related issues and legal reform issues, and has contributed many articles to academic journals and the media. He is the Chief Editor Human Rights SOLIDARITY and Editor of Article 2.

Mr. Fernando has conducted nearly 100 workshops and consultations on Reconciliation issues as well as on diverse aspects of Human Rights and Legal Reform and he was awarded the Kuwanju (Korea) Human Rights prize for 2001.

No one should stand by while human beings are herded into camps, those who expose their plight are murdered, those who try to help them are expelled and those who claim to believe in justice remain silent.

Charles Glass

is an Author, journalist, and broadcaster specialising in the Middle East. Charles writes regularly for The Spectator, was ABC News chief Middle East correspondent from 1983-93, and has worked as a correspondent for Newsweek and The Observer. His work has appeared in newspapers and magazines, and on television networks, all over the world.

Glass himself made headlines in 1987, when he was taken hostage for 62 days in Lebanon by Hezbollah, the Shi'ite Muslim group, and is the only Western hostage in Lebanon known to have escaped, which he describes in his book, Tribes with Flags. In 1988, he exposed Saddam Hussein's then-secret biological weapons program. The U.S. government rejected Glass's claims, until Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. One year later, he went alone with a hidden camera to Indonesian-occupied East Timor and, despite government restrictions, filmed and filed a report on repression and torture. This report influenced a U.S. Senate committee to vote to suspend U.S. military aid to Indonesia. He has covered wars in the Middle East, Eritrea, Rhodesia, Somalia, Iraq and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

He has lectured regularly on the Middle East, American foreign policy, world journalism and human rights in the United States and Britain.

At the Nuremberg Trials following the Nazi Holocaust, Justice Robert Jackson exclaimed ‘The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated’ These words echo and reverberate as we witness the crimes against humanity perpetrated in Sri Lanka.

Michael Grodin

is an internationally renowned medical specialist in the relationship of health & human rights, medicine & the holocaust, bioethics, and the philosophy of psychiatry & psychoanalysis.

He is Professor of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights (Boston University School of Public Health), Professor of Socio-Medical Sciences and Community Medicine and Psychiatry (Boston University School of Medicine) and the Medical Ethicist at Boston Medical Center.

He co-founded Global Lawyers and Physicians, and co-directs the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights, which received the 2002 Outstanding Achievement Award from the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project for “sensitivity and dedication in caring for the health and human rights of refugees and survivors of torture.” He has received a special citation from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in recognition of his “profound contributions - through original and creative research - to the cause of Holocaust education and remembrance.”

Twice named one of America’s Top Physicians, he has received 4 national Humanism in Medicine and Humanitarian Awards. Dr. Grodin has edited or co-edited 5 books including The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation. Professor Grodin is presently working on two books, Medical Ethics in the Shadow of the Holocaust and After the Shoah: Rebuilding the Lives of Holocaust Survivors.
 

If you see the justice of the Tamil quest for equality in Sri Lanka and do nothing about it you stand  condemned

Bruce Haigh

is a former Australian diplomat.He served in South Africa from 1976/79 where he initiated Australian Embassy contact with members of the black South African resistance, including the Black Consciousness Movement. Included amongst the friends he made at this time were Steve Biko and Dr. Mamphela Ramphele. Bruce helped a number of political activists escape South Africa including banned newspaper editor, Donald Woods, and his role in this escape was portrayed in the film, "Cry Freedom" produced by Richard Attenborough.

Bruce has also worked in the Australian Embassy in Saudi Arabia (1982/84), was Director of the Indonesia Section (1984/86), worked in Islamabad (1986/88) when he travelled to Afghanistan to report on the war and other aspects of the Soviet occupation. In 1994, he was Deputy High Commissioner at the Australian High Commission, Colombo.

Bruce was instrumental in helping to set up the Ifa Lethu Foundation which locates, repatriates and curates South African works of art taken out of the country during the years of apartheid. He now provides regular political analysis on international and domestic issues for radio and television, conferences and writes for a number of newspapers.

I have been shocked to see friends from Sri Lanka become increasingly intimidated and silenced over the last few years. The whole world should be concerned that the seeds of the next conflict are being sown right now.’

Carolyn Hayman OBE*

is a specialist in conflict resolution and peace-making and has direct experience of building coalitions for peace in Sudan.  After a brief career in the UK civil service, Carolyn has focused on supporting innovation and startups in the private and not for profit sector. She was a Board member of the Commonwealth Development Corporation from 1994 to 1999, is currently a member of the Quaker UN Office (Geneva) Committee, and received an OBE in 2003.

The world cannot continue to ignore the suffering of the approximately 280,000 Tamil civilians, including women and - according to Amnesty International - at least 50,000 children, illegally detained in internment camps in northern Sri Lanka. The imminent monsoon will create life threatening conditions in these camps, and risks causing a humanitarian catastrophe.

Bianca Jagger

has worked as a human rights advocate for over thirty years, campaigning in defence of human rights, civil liberties, peace, social justice and environmental protection.

She is President and Founder of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, a Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador, Chair of the World Future Council and Trustee of the Amazon Charitable Trust.

Jagger has been the recipient of many prestigious international awards, not least of which is the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “alternative Nobel prize”. Others include the United Nations Earth Day International Award, the Amnesty International USA Media Spotlight Award for Leadership for her Human Rights work around the world, the World Citizenship Award from The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, the World Achievement Award from Mikhail Gorbachev. In November 2000, Ms. Jagger received The National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyer (NACDL) Champion of Justice Award, naming her as a “steadfast and eloquent advocate for the elimination of the death penalty in America .” She holds two doctorates honoris causa: an honorary doctorate in Human Rights from Simmons College , and an honorary doctorate in Humanities from Stonehill College , Boston Massachusetts .

Bianca Jagger is a member of the Executive Director’s Leadership Council for Amnesty International USA, the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch America , and was a member of the Advisory Board of the Coalition for International Justice, and the Twentieth Century Task Force to Apprehend War Criminals.

"The Eelam war in Sri Lanka resulted from an inability of the state to develop politcal equity for all its citizens, in particular its ethnic Tamils, who have for decades suffered formal and informal discrimination. The horrors of that war were perpetrated by boths sides and now it is ended. It is now the task of any government claiming to rule on behalf of all citizens to again seek political equity, rather than the imposition of the sometimes discriminatory views of the majority at the expense of the legiitmate rights of the minority."

Damien Kingsbury

Professor Damien Kingsbury holds a Personal Chair in the School of International and Political Studies at Deakin University. He is the author and editor of numerous books and a large number of articles on political and security matters in the South-East and South Asian region and has advised the Australian government on a range of security policy issues.

In 2005, Professor Kingsbury was advisor to the Free Aceh Movement in the historic Helsinki peace talks, in which he drafted the negotiating points and negotiated much of the final agreement, including the critical last point on local democracy. The Helsinki peace talks brought and end to almost three decades of separatist war through the introduction of regional autonomy, democratic elections and controls over the armed forces and police. In 2008, the mediator of the talks, Martti Ahtisaari, received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Professor Kingsbury is a regular contributor to and commentator for Australian and international mediator, including the BBC, Financial Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The Sydney Morning Herald, The National Times, The Age and many others.

The Tamil struggle for justice and self-determination is a cause that should be supported by all citizens of good faith. Like the disenfranchised Palestinians, Tamil stories should resonate around the world.

Antony Loewenstein

is an independent freelance journalist, author and blogger.He has written for many Australian and international newspapers, including the Guardian, Washington Post, Haaretz and the Nation, and appears regularly around the world on radio, TV (including Democracy Now!), in public, writer’s festivals (in Australia and overseas) and at universities (including Harvard) discussing current affairs, politics and media.

Antony contributed a major chapter to 2004’s Australian best-seller, Not Happy, John! on the Middle East. His best-selling book on the Israel/Palestine conflict, My Israel Question, was short-listed for the 2007 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award. He was a contributor to A Time to Speak Out: On Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity and his second book, The Blogging Revolution is on the internet in repressive regimes.

He writes regularly for online magazines New Matilda and Crikey, is a board member of Macquarie University’s Centre for Middle East and North African Studies and co-founder of advocacy group Independent Australian Jewish Voices. He contributed to Amnesty International Australia’s 2008 campaign about Chinese internet repression and the Beijing Olympic Games.

International pressure on Sri Lanka is working. Now is the time to intensify it, to bring about real negotiations over how to recognize and implement the Tamils’ legitimate right to self-determination. That is not going to go away because it is based on human needs – as long as it remains unfulfilled, the peoples of Sri Lanka will be condemned to endure a repeating cycle of violence and abuse.

Jake Lynch

is Director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney

He is also co-convener of its Sri Lanka Human Rights Project, an Executive Member of the Sydney Peace Foundation and an Advisor to the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research.

Following his PhD (City University, London), Jake has spent the past 12 years researching, developing, teaching and training in peace journalism – and practising it, as an experienced international reporter in television and newspapers. He was an on-air presenter, anchoring over a thousand bulletins for BBC World News; the Sydney Correspondent for the London Independent newspaper, and a Political Correspondent for Sky News.

Jake has led training workshops in peace journalism for media professionals in many countries including Indonesia, the Philippines, Nepal, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Cyprus, Armenia, Georgia, Norway and the UK. Publications include several books, including the landmark Peace Journalism, and in 2008, Jake was guest editor of a special edition of the Routledge scholarly journal, Global Change, Peace and Security.

In 2009, he won a prestigious competitive grant, worth half a million dollars, from the Australian Research Council, to investigate prospects for devising a Global Standard for reporting conflict, in partnership with the International Federation of Journalists and the aid agency, Act for Peace.
 

Chibli Mallat

is Presidential Professor of Law and Professor of Middle Eastern Law and Politics at the University of Utah. He also holds the EU Jean Monnet Chair of Law at St Joseph 's University in Lebanon. He has been tenured on three continents, and has in his academic career held teaching and research positions at a number of universities, including Princeton, Yale, Lyon, London, and Virginia. He has published over thirty books in English, French and Arabic, including the award-winning The Renewal of Islamic Law, Cambridge 1993, Introduction to Middle Eastern Law, Oxford 2007, and Iraq: Guide to Law and Policy, in press at Aspen.

As a legal practitioner and consultant, he was lead counsel in a number of international criminal law cases, including for the Sabra and Chatila victims in Belgium, for Imam Musa Sadr’s family against Mu‘ammar al-Qaddafi, and has helped set up Amnesty International's regional office in Beirut in 2000, for which he acts as legal counsel. In 1996, he helped establish Indict, the international NGO that worked to bring Saddam Hussein and his aides to justice. He has advised several governments and governmental agencies on various legal issues, currently as Senior Legal Advisor to the Global Justice Project: Iraq. He is a frequent contributor to the media, and presently edits the Beirut Daily Star law page. In 2005, he ran the first democratic campaign for the Lebanese presidency.

Now is the time to settle the civil conflict in Sri Lanka, which has consumed thousands of life and brought severe misery to countless others. In the short term, access should be provided to the UN and international relief agencies to deal with the humanitarian problems facing refugees and lists of detainees should be made available. In the long run, economic development in the war torn areas must proceed hand in hand with political measures aimed at reconciliation and empowerment.

Rajan Menon

is an American foreign policy specialist

He is the Monroe J. Rathbone Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and, in August 2010, will become the Spitzer Professor in Political Science at the City College of New York/City University of New York.

His current work concerns American foreign policy; globalization; terrorism; security issues in Northeast Asia; the political and security dimensions of energy development in the Caspian Sea zone; and the comparative study of empires; and the international relations of Russia and the other post-Soviet states.

He was Senior Advisor at the Carnegie Corporation of New York for two years, where he played a key role in developing the Corporation’s “Russia Initiative.” He has also served as Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and as Director for Eurasia Policy Studies at the Seattle-based National Bureau for Asian Research (NBR). He has also served as Special Assistant for Arms Control and National Security to Congressman Stephen J. Solarz (D-NY)

He has authored or edited five books and more than 60 articles in leading academic journals and edited volumes. He writes often for the Los Angeles Times and has also written opinion pieces for Newsweek, the International Herald Tribune, Financial Times, washingtonpost.com, Christian Science Monitor, and the Chicago Tribune. He has been a commentator on the BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, CNN, and National Public Radio.
 

Stuart Rees

I don’t want yet again to be wringing my hands, in a few months or years, about something close to ethnic cleansing or genocidal war crimes that we failed to investigate or prevent while there was still time.

Edward Mortimer CMG*

is Senior Vice-President and Chief Programme Officer at the Salzburg Global Seminar and chair of the Advisory Council. From 1998 to 2006 he served as chief speechwriter and (from 2001) as director of communications to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He has spent much of his career as a journalist, first with The Times of London, where he developed an expertise in Middle East affairs, and later with the Financial Times, where from 1987 to 1998 he was the main commentator and columnist on foreign affairs.  

Mr. Mortimer has also served as a fellow and/or faculty at several institutions, including Oxford University (where he was a Fellow of All Souls College), the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the International Institute of Strategic Studies, and (as Honorary Professor) the University of Warwick; and on the governing bodies of several non-governmental organizations, including Chatham House, the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, the John Stuart Mill Institute, the 21st Century Trust, Minority Rights Group International, the Agence France-Presse Foundation and the Children’s Radio Foundation.

Both the present situation in Sri Lanka and the scenarios under which it could again get much worse cry out for the attention of all those dedicated to humanitarian values.  I am also deeply worried about the demonstrator effects of the Sri Lankan government’s exploitation of security discourses to justify its methods and policies; there are already signs of other governments seeking to emulate the Sri Lankan ‘model

Craig Scott*

is Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School (York University, Toronto) where he is also Director of the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security.  Scott has sought to create productive linkages between his academic work and various external commitments, including: involvement in major cases before the Supreme Court of Canada; acting as academic expert for Maher Arar’s legal team at various stages of his civil claim against the government of Canada related to his torture after rendition to Syria by the US; serving an advisory role to the African National Congress on a future South African Constitution while the ANC was in exile; and advising the government of Bosnia on the legality under the UN Charter of measures taken by the Security Council. He has also given other academic opinions on international law to various governments, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations across a wide range of areas of public international law. Prior to starting his academic career, Professor Scott served as law clerk to the former Chief Justice of Canada, Brian Dickson.

Teesta Setalvad

is a renowned journalist and human rights activist based in Mumbai. In addition to her role as Secretary of Citizens for Justice and Peace, she is Director of KHOJ  - Education for a Plural India Programme, and Editor of Communalism Combat, as well as Advisory Consultant to the International Centre for Transitional Justice, New York and South Africa.

In her career as journalist since 1983, Teesta has written for a number of papers, including the Business India. Her film credits include ‘Bombay – a Myth Shattered’ on the 1993 Bombay riots. She has received many awards for journalism, including the Prince Claus Award 2000 (Netherlands) for Communalism Combat, and  the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Journalist  1993 for her coverage of the riots.

Teesta has a strong interest in the role of curricula in reinforcing or combating inter-communal stereotyping, and served, among many other roles, as a member of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) for the Government of India. Her advocacy has extended also to the protection of rights on minorities, Dalits and women, and judicial and police reform.

It is many years since I have heard an organization describe so clearly what is desperately need in Sri Lanka.  As a Sri Lankan, anything I can do to support the process towards peace and unity is something I cannot ignore.

Roma Tearne

is a Sri Lankan born writer and artist living in Britain.
She arrived, with her parents in this country at the age of ten.
Trained as a painter at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford her latest novel, Brixton Beach (Harper Collins) is in part about the conflict in Sri Lanka.