As lawmakers in Sri Lanka celebrate the 70th anniversary of the country’s parliamentary democracy, one of the oldest in Asia, minorities including Tamils, Christians and Muslims remain on the fringes of society.
Even with some representation in Parliament, the minorities complain they have been sidelined by the majority Buddhist Sinhalese. The Sinhalese-controlled legislature has done little to heal the wounds left from a quarter-century civil war that ended in 2009, and still refuses to acknowledge or investigate allegations of wartime atrocities by the government.