Bogota, Colombia – Finding Anna Karenina in the rubbish would change Jose Alberto Gutierrez’s life. It was 20 years ago, but Jose still remembers first glimpsing the Russian classic by Leo Tolstoy in the rubbish outside a home in Bogota’s Bolivia neighbourhood. The rubbish collector loaded his truck with the rest of the waste, but took … Continue reading
The town of Gampola in Sri Lanka’s Kandy district houses a 100-year-old structure comprising five “line rooms”—each windowless square, just ten by 12 feet in size, was once home to an entire family of estate workers. Though elsewhere people still live in such cramped accommodations, this particular row of rooms has been turned into … Continue reading
Edward de Alwis was admitted as a 14-year-old to the Hendala Leprosy Hospital. He has been a patient there for some 75 years. [Smriti Daniel/ Al Jazeera] Hendala, Sri Lanka – Edward de Alwis was born in 1928, the youngest of nine siblings. He was only 14-years old when a Public Health Inspector on a … Continue reading
Sri Lankan activists will tell you that the island has a commission culture. In the last 15 years alone, people have stood up and testified before dozens of committees – some, such as the Udalagama Commission, investigating human rights abuses, and others, such as the Mahanama Tilakaratne and Paranagama Commissions, looking into abductions and … Continue reading
When Ahilan Arulanantham heard that the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation had named him a recipient of the $625,000 “Genius Grant,” one of the first things he thought about was how much he would like to spend some of it on supporting human rights work in Sri Lanka. Since the announcement was made … Continue reading
Since 2014, Hasanah Cegu Isadeen has met with and interviewed some 700 Sri Lankan Muslim women. A lawyer, independent researcher and activist, Cegu is haunted by the stories she has heard. She has met women who were married as young as 12 and forced into sex by their adult partners before they had even attained … Continue reading
Let me begin with this apartment, where a grocery store and six people are all crammed into 400 square feet in the Methsara Uyana high-rise. The people fit themselves around the groceries, which occupy all of the living room and most of the kitchen. Sleeping arrangements are flexible, and visitors and wet laundry must both … Continue reading
It was 33 years ago, but Chandraguptha Thenuwara still remembers the group of men stopping the bus and clambering on. They had a seemingly bizarre demand, going from passenger to passenger, insisting that he or she say the Sinhalese words for pen and bucket – pǣna, bāldiya. Tamil tongues twisted different around these syllables, making … Continue reading
Asha de Vos knew what to expect before the big announcement. “The hardest part was keeping it secret,” she tells The Sunday Times. The only Sri Lankan so far to have a Ph.D. in marine-mammal-related research, de Vos was named an Emerging Explorer by the National Geographic Society in May this year. Subsequently featured … Continue reading
Seran Sivananthamoorthy is only 25 years old which is why his knowledge of the Jaffna Public Library is limited to memory and anecdote. The library with some 95,000 volumes including the only original copy of the Yalpana Vaipavamalai or the History of the Kingdom of Jaffna was set alight by a mob in 1981 as … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 