Features

When University systems fail:Supreme Court’s landmark intervention in sexual harassment case

Published

3 weeks ago

2026/05/12

Over seven years after making an initial complaint of sexual harassment against her research supervisor, Dr. Udari Abeyasinghe, then a temporary lecturer and now a senior lecturer at the University of Peradeniya, has been finally served justice. On May 8, 2026, the Supreme Court made the following directions regarding Udari’s fundamental rights case: “1) The 1st Respondent [her research supervisor] is prohibited from accepting any post, whether paid or not or honorary, in any university, educational institute or other academic institution; 2) The UGC to issue a direction to all universities and other institutions, coming under its purview, to abstain from giving any appointment, whether paid or not, or honorary, to the 1st Respondent; and 3) The University of Peradeniya, including the Council and respective Respondent [sic], are directed to take appropriate measures to enforce and raise awareness of the University of Peradeniya’s policy on Sexual or Gender-Based Harassment and Sexual Violence for staff and students, including conducting mandatory annual seminars for all academics, staff and students.” I recently spoke with Udari to learn about her experience battling the University’s sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) procedures.

Violence and injustice

Udari was a temporary lecturer when she began working on her MPhil degree. Her research supervisor was a Senior Professor and Dean of her faculty. The harassment began in 2017.

When Udari reached out for support to the SGBV Committee of the University of Peradeniya, the Chair explained the complaint procedure, including how a third party could make a complaint on her behalf. In July 2018, Udari’s mother made a written complaint to the Vice Chancellor (VC). “The very next day [my supervisor] called me … and asked me to withdraw the complaint because it would look bad for me … the university should have taken measures to separate the complainant from the perpetrator … but nothing like that happened.”

Before making the formal complaint, Udari reached out to other academic staff at her Faculty. She shared her experience with a few close colleagues. Many advised her to leave the Faculty. “No one in the Faculty supported me publicly, although some sympathised privately … I was a temporary lecturer … no one really cared.” Some of her colleagues and non-academic staff who knew about the harassments, asked her to avoid involving them because they feared retaliation from higher powers.

Udari faced a preliminary inquiry and then a formal inquiry. The preliminary inquiry took place about four months after her complaint, and the inquiry committee recommended proceeding to a formal inquiry. The latter was held about a year after the initial complaint. “I got to know unofficially that [my supervisor] had got hold of all the statements made at the preliminary inquiry and pressured some colleagues to change their statements before the formal inquiry.” During the time of the formal inquiry, an anonymous letter (“kala paththaraya”) was circulated among staff: “It was a character assassination … the same kala paththaraya would get circulated from time to time.” After the formal inquiry committee submitted its report and recommendations, Udari was informed, in writing, that the University Council had dismissed the report.

“Neither the preliminary inquiry report nor the formal inquiry report were shared with me … I had to make a formal request to the VC and only then did I get a copy of the preliminary inquiry report… I had to get the formal inquiry report through an RTI (a request under the Right to Information Act). What I understand is that [my supervisor] had influenced the Council … that’s why they rejected the report…saying there had been a delay of six months to make a complaint ….” (N. B. there are no time limitations for submitting a complaint in the SGBV by-laws of the University of Peradeniya, although such time bars exist at other universities).

Udari then submitted formal complaints to the University Grants Commission (August 2020) and the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (December 2020), and finally filed a fundamental rights case at the Supreme Court in March 2021. Five years later, on May 8th 2026, Udari’s complaint was vindicated.

University procedures and inquiries

When her mother submitted the complaint against her supervisor, Udari was a temporary lecturer. She had given up her dream of pursuing an academic career because she did not think she would be recruited to a permanent position after making a complaint against a faculty member. It is encouraging that Udari was recruited, but in most instances, students and junior staff endure and stay silent to avoid jeopardising their academic careers. We currently have no procedures in place at universities to protect victims and witnesses from backlash.

According to Udari, the former Chair of the SGBV Committee and the members of her preliminary inquiry panel played a crucial role in her case, and, in her words, “could not be influenced.” But SGBV by-laws at state universities place inordinate power in the hands of the Council and VC. According to the SGBV by-laws of the University of Peradeniya, the Council appoints the 15-member SGBV Committee comprising “[t]wo (02) persons from among the members of the Council; [t]en (10) persons drawn from the permanent and senior members of the academic community; and [t]hree (03) persons external to the University, from among the retired academic or administrative staff of the University” (Section 2.1). While the by-laws recommend appointing persons who have demonstrated “gender-sensitivity, proven interest in working on issues of gender equality and equity, and trained to investigate and inquire into cases of sexual or gender-based harassment and sexual violence” (Section 2.1), we know this is often not the case. In many universities, VCs control which cases are taken up and end up in an inquiry. Most students and staff at state universities have little faith in the existing SGBV complaint procedures.

As Udari experienced, the decisions of inquiry committees can be overruled and dismissed by University Councils, indicating the importance of appointing appropriate members to the Councils. The Deans of faculties, who are Ex-officio members, usually collude to protect their own interests and fiefdoms, while the appointment of external members to Councils is deeply politicised. At present, there is no application process or vetting of candidates before they are appointed. They are usually persons who are seen to be sympathetic to the incumbent political dispensation. Furthermore, external members are dependent on the university hierarchy for information on the issues being discussed, the details of which are often hidden from them. It is not surprising then that University Councils would adjudicate on the side of power.

Final recommendation

Beyond barring Udari’s former research supervisor from holding positions in the university system, the Supreme Court has directed the University of Peradeniya to raise awareness on SGBV among staff and students. While SGBV is addressed in the induction courses and orientation programmes at universities, staff and students must be made aware of the nitty-gritties of complaint procedures, including time bars, which were crucial to the outcome of Udari’s case. But is raising awareness sufficient? Do we have ways to hold university authorities accountable for arbitrary and/or prejudicial decision-making and other abuses of power?

For Udari, life continues to be difficult, with constant surveillance of her activities.

“In November 2024 , I shared a post about my case.. it was a newspaper article stating that the Supreme Court had granted leave to proceed… I just took a photograph of it and posted it on my Facebook without any captions… a few weeks later I was summoned by higher authorities…I was informed that several academics had verbally complained about me using my social media to tarnish the name of the faculty and the university and, if that’s the case, that I should know that the University Council has the authority to take action against me … we also spoke briefly about the case and at one point I was told that this incident (harassment) happened to me because I showed some positivity towards (the perpetrator) …”

Let’s hope that university administrations pause before victimising and revictimising SGBV survivors in future. As a community, we have to rethink the hierarchical ways in which universities function and create a meaningful mechanism that supports students and staff to complain without fear of repercussion.

Thank you, Udari, for taking this step forward. University administrations will have to stop, listen and change their ways.

(Ramya Kumar is attached to the Department of Community and Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Jaffna, and is an alumna of the University of Peradeniya).

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.

By Ramya Kumar

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Features

Proactive peacemaking becomes a paramount need

Published

20 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Wasting wars: Some war-displaced people in Lebanon. BBC

It may be some time before the full impact of food inflation is felt in the West. Until such time the world would continue to keep itself in suspense over whether the Trump administration is in earnest when it seeks to convey the impression that it is backing a negotiated solution in West Asia.

As is usually the case, consumer stress would be one of the final determinants of political change. To the degree to which the average US consumer somehow ‘muddles through’ and puts the food on the table, to the same extent would the Republican sections of the US public in particular be tolerant of the Trump administration’s inconsistent handling of the West Asian war and the main issues stemming from it. That is, there would be no grave popular disaffection and a demand for political change in the short term.

However, the indications are that the Trump administration’s support base is suffering some erosion in the wake of the current economic crisis. While reports indicate that Democratic sections are firming-up their opposition to the political centre, Republican support for Trump is also showing signs of waning, we are given to understand.

The above developments are probably why Trump is on record as having given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a ‘dressing down’ recently on his seeming intransigence on the question of giving negotiations a chance in West Asia. The show of displeasure could be really aimed by Trump at containing the impatience of the American public.

However, the current ground situation in the Middle East, particularly the uncontained bloodshed, is likely to impress on the thinking sections of the world that more than temporary political change is needed in West Asia and the US.

A well thought out political solution that addresses all the contentious issues at the heart of the Middle East conflict is what enlightened opinion would demand, and very rightly. Right now, the ‘peace efforts’ initiated by the Trump administration give the impression of being piecemeal solutions at best.

There have been, of course, numerous initiatives in the past aimed at bringing permanent peace to the Middle East. These failed mainly because they did not address in full the root causes of the conflict.

At bottom the Middle East conflict is mainly about race and religious hate bred by socio-economic and material inequalities. For instance, if the Palestinian people were not displaced and deprived of land occupied by them at the time of the founding of the Israeli state, ethnic enmities would not have grown to the current unmanageable proportions.

When addressing the above questions, though, it must be remembered that the Israelis too were a displaced people who were entitled to land and a state of their own in the Middle East. Basically, out of these seemingly irreconcilable and conflicting demands have grown the Middle East imbroglio.

Middle East peace is considerably about reconciling these demands and arriving at a solution that would ensure the creation of two states that would opt for peaceful co-existence thereafter.

As long as the US does not see the need for a non-partisan solution that addresses the needs of both ethnicities and religions and goes all-out, as it were, to have it implemented, the Middle East would continue to bleed.

However, staunching the blood flow through the creation of two states would be only half the job done, though a very important part of it. More pernicious, pervasive and difficult to remedy are the inter-ethnic and inter-religious hatreds that have been unleashed over the decades.

However, if substantial, long-lasting peace is to be fostered in the region the latter ‘demons’ would need to be exorcised from the hearts and minds of the communities concerned. No doubt an uphill task but one that must be undertaken by those who wish the region well.

The UN would need to put its ‘best foot forward’ in such undertakings but it is time that it dawned on the international community and other caring quarters that Middle East peace, and all other such uphill challenges, require proactive peacemaking on the part of all civilized sections for their effective management. That is, public involvement in peacemaking too is a must.

Since hatreds are harboured in the human consciousness the enmities embedded in the latter need to be managed and defused judiciously alongside other undertakings in a peace process. In the case of West Asia, such enmities could be even spread globe-wide besides being multi-dimensional. For instance, it ought to be thought-provoking that Iran is insistent on a peace initiative that would also include Lebanon.

Besides security considerations it is also ethnic and religious affiliations that account for Iran making this demand. For instance, the Shias are a numerically important religious community in Lebanon and they provide a significant number of Hizbollah fighters, who are in a vital sense carrying out a ‘proxy war’ for Iran. It also needs to be factored in that Iran is a Shia-majority country.

Thus trans-border religious affiliations could add to the complexities and enormity of ethno-religious conflicts. However, the task of managing centuries-long enmities needs to be launched and prodded on with by peacemakers since a downing of arms alone would not guarantee substantive peace.

It is not realized sufficiently that the process of ending hatreds begins with mutual apologies by antagonists to a conflict for the harm inflicted on each other. This would be anathema in some ears but there is no getting away from the requirement. It is the vital first step to permanent peace anywhere.

In fact there could be no reconciliation worth speaking of without such mutual apologies. It is a point worth re-iterating in these times when even the government of Sri Lanka is voicing the need for national reconciliation. Well, without the words, ‘I am sorry’, there could be no permanent end to enmities – they would do well to remember.

The above requirements may not go down very well with governments, but they resonate in the hearts and minds of most people, since they are inheritors of religious traditions of some kind.

This is a principal reason why peacemaking works well when publics too are involved in them. The effectiveness of such campaigns increases several fold when they have a Mahatma Gandhi or a Jawaharlal Nehru at their helm. A strong proactive involvement by the public in peace could lead to the emergence of such leaders at some point in these campaigns.

Features

Dialog Brings Sri Lanka’s Largest Digital Vesak Experience to Matara

Published

20 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

From left to right: Hon. Saroja Savithri Paulraj, Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, and Lasantha Theverapperuma experience the Dialog 5G Ultra-powered VR tours.

Official Digital Partner of the 2026 ‘Dakshina Prabha’ National Vesak Zone

Dialog Axiata PLC, Sri Lanka’s #1 connectivity provider, collaborated with the Ministry of Buddha Sasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs to bring one of Sri Lanka’s largest and most technologically advanced Vesak experiences to the ‘Dakshina Prabha’ National Vesak Zone. The three-day celebration, in Matara attracted more than hundred thousand visitors, who engaged with a series of innovative digital activities powered by Dialog 5G Ultra, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR) experiences, digital pandols and a Data Dansala. The opening ceremony was attended by Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development and Hon. Saroja Savithri Paulraj, Minister of Women and Child Affairs, along with distinguished guests and Dialog’s senior management.

One of the key attractions at the venue was the Dialog 5G Ultra-powered Virtual Reality (VR) experience, which attracted more than 35,000 participants. The activation enabled devotees to virtually visit and pay homage to sacred Buddhist sites, including the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi in India and the Atamasthana in Anuradhapura, directly from the Vesak zone in Matara.

Visitors receive complimentary mobile data through Dialog’s QR-powered Data Dansala.

Dialog also conducted an AI Digital Vesak Greeting Card Competition from 21 May to 01 June 2026, attracting numerous entries from across the country. The shortlisted designs were showcased across 20 large LED screens throughout the venue and across Matara City, and were also made available for download via mobile devices. Further, through the use of AI, traditional Jathaka Katha were reimagined in a digital format, demonstrating how technology can be used to preserve and enhance cultural and religious heritage. Together, these initiatives blended traditional Vesak celebrations with emerging technologies, offering visitors a unique and immersive way to engage with Vesak traditions.

Extending the spirit of Vesak through connectivity, Dialog conducted a special Data Dansala powered by its QR Reload platform, enabling visitors to receive complimentary mobile data by scanning QR codes placed across the venue. In addition to the Matara National Vesak Zone, similar Data Dansala activations were also conducted at the Gangaramaya and Bauddhaloka Vesak zones in Colombo.Visitors also had the opportunity to create personalised Vesak-themed digital photos through an AI Photo Booth, generating AI-enhanced portraits using their own photographs and adding a contemporary digital element to the Vesak celebrations.

Visitors watch AI-generated Jathaka Katha

Commenting on the initiative, Hon. Sunil Handunnetti, Minister of Industry and Entrepreneurship Development, said, “The 2026 Dakshina Prabha Vesak Festival marked the first time AI-powered digital innovations were incorporated into a National Vesak Festival in Sri Lanka. Presenting Buddhist stories and teachings through technology created a new and engaging way for visitors to connect with these traditions. We thank Dialog for supporting this initiative and for working closely with us to bring our vision to life. Their contribution played an important role in making this first-of-its-kind event a reality.”

Lasantha Theverapperuma, Group Chief Marketing Officer of Dialog Axiata PLC said, “We thank the Government of Sri Lanka for the opportunity to support the 2026 Dakshina Prabha National Vesak Festival and for embracing technology as part of this year’s celebrations. As the Official Digital Partner, we were privileged to contribute through our Dialog 5G Ultra and AI capabilities, creating new ways for visitors to engage with Vesak traditions while preserving their cultural significance for future generations.”

Beyond supporting the National Vesak Zone in Matara, Dialog also enhanced the Gangaramaya and Bauddhaloka Vesak zones through a range of digital activations during the Vesak season. The company additionally continued its sustainability initiatives, including the Thirasara Aloka Poojawa, which illuminated rural places of worship through solar-powered lighting solutions.

Features

Beauty, elegance and talent…for women

Published

20 hours ago

2026/06/4

Sahan Weerasooriya

Universal Woman is an international pageant focused on “beauty, elegance, and talent” for women, positioning itself as a platform to shape global ambassadors. The 2026 edition will be held in Cambodia, and Sri Lanka will be there, as well.

According to reports coming my way, contestants, at the international event, will work with industry trailblazers, under international standards.

Sri Lankan supermodel, runway and pageant trainer Chulpadmendra Kumarapathirana, is the National Director for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026.

With over two decades in the industry, Chula was crowned Miss Sri Lanka 2006, and has since shaped the next generation of titleholders through her Colombo-based Chulpadmendra Catwalk Studio, widely regarded as one of the country’s leading modelling academies.

The team behind Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026

A former host of Derana Miss Sri Lanka for Miss World 2008 and a judge for Miss Universe Sri Lanka 2025, Chula now serves as National Director for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026, leading the franchise’s search for Sri Lanka’s delegate to the international final in Cambodia.

Applications for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 are being taken, via WhatsApp: 077 659 4994, says Chula.

The judging panel for Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 includes Senaka De Silva, Pageant Aesthetic Advisor & Chairperson of the Judging Panel, Angela Seneviratne, Caroline Jurie, Rozelle Plunkett, and Suraj Mapa.

Universal Woman Sri Lanka 2026 officially began its journey with a first round of auditions, held in Colombo, marking the start of an exciting new chapter in Sri Lanka’s pageant industry.

Launching the first round of auditions

The platform aims to empower women while selecting an intelligent, confident, and inspiring representative to compete at the Universal Woman International Pageant 2026 in Cambodia, this September.

Universal Woman Sri Lanka now moves forward with the vision of creating one of the country’s most prestigious and empowering pageants while preparing to crown a queen who will proudly represent Sri Lanka on the international stage.