Dharmaretnam Sivaram: 'Appa died doing what he loved most'

This year marks the 15th anniversary of our father’s death and to this day, no one has been convicted for his murder. We are not surprised by this and neither is our family looking for justice. The Sri Lankan state has and continues to target............

Seeing Each Other: Remembering Jean Arasanayagam (1931-2019)

How do I begin? Perhaps with a conversation between two poets, both women, both from Kandy, both outliers. I had just begun publishing my poetry, and Aunty Jean, as the great Jean Arasanayagam was always known to me......

Ambalavaner Sivanandan (1923-2018): An anti-racist fighter from Ceylon

One of the many sad consequences of the ethnic war in (so-called) Sri Lanka is the ignorance or unwillingness of its citizens – from professors to proletariat – in honouring those from yesteryear who fought against..............

A rebel with a cause: Good bye Comrade Sarath

Comrade Sarath Justin Fernando and I met as students of the Engineering Faculty in Peradeniya campus in the late 1960s. Justin as we came to know him was from a very well-known leftist family from Kegalle. Together we were....

Vairamuttu Varadakumar: the quiet centre of the struggle for Tamil rights

The Tamil community has lost a quiet hero. V. Varadakumar held the centre of Tamil community organising and human rights work in the UK for more than 30 years. He created coherence and clarity in the struggle for Tamil rights. In his.........

Sarath: In memory of a friend across the cultural borders

Sarath Fernando will be remembered as a person who allied utopia with practicality. Utopia, understood in the positive sense as something which does not exist today, but will be possible tomorrow. He was a believer in the “other possible world”.

Comrade Tampoe: Remembering the legacy of a legend

Meeting with comrade Bala Tampoe at the Ceylon Mercantile Union (CMU) office in Colombo had been a tradition I looked forward to whenever I visited Sri Lanka. At the end of July, after attending my mother’s funeral in Sri Lanka, I paid....

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Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka

  • JDS is the Sri Lankan partner organization of international media rights group, Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The launching of this website was made possible by the EU’s European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), of which Reporters Without Borders is a beneficiary.