- 29 April 2020
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............
- 05 August 2019
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......
- 17 January 2018
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..............
- 10 September 2014
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....
- 17 March 2019
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.........
- 10 October 2014
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”.
- 06 September 2014
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....
