Human Rights in Sri Lanka in 2021

As 2021 comes to an end, we have been looking back over some of the key developments in human rights, justice, and accountability in Sri Lanka over the last year. This has been an extremely challenging year in Sri Lanka, as an increasingly militarised, authoritarian,...

Gotabaya Rajapaksa at COP26: protests and elbow bumps

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has been in Scotland this week to attend the UN’s COP26 Climate Change Conference. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who served as Defence Secretary between 2005-2015, is accused of command responsibility for mass atrocity crimes that killed...

Remembering the Disappeared

27th October is Day of Commemoration of Disappearances in Sri Lanka Sri Lankans have lived under the terrible shadow of enforced disappearances for decades: in the security forces’ campaign against the JVP leftists in the late 1980s and in the conflict between the...

One year on: independent institutions under the 20th Amendment

On 22nd October 2020, the Sri Lankan Parliament passed the 20th Amendment to the Constitution with a two-thirds majority, despite opposition from a wide range of civil society groups and concerns raised by international NGOs and UN experts. One year on, we look at the...

Take action: ask Police Scotland to stop training police in Sri Lanka

Police Scotland’s training of Sri Lanka’s abusive police force is currently paused. Now we have an opportunity to cancel the training altogether. Our friends at Freedom From Torture are running a campaign asking Scottish supporters to write to their representative in...