Government and Politics in Sri Lanka

Taylor & Francis

Government and Politics in Sri LankaBiopolitics and Security\nAuthor(s): A. R. Rajah\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Routledge\nISBN-13: 9780367886189, 978-0367886189\nSynopsis\nThe island of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) was one of the few Asian colonies in which the British Empire experimented liberal state-building in the nineteenth century, and where many British colonial officials predicted that the independent state would become a liberal democratic success story. Sri Lanka has held on to much of the liberal democratic state-institutions left behind by the British Empire, including periodic elections. At the same time, the UNs Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded in September 2015 that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Sri Lanka committed serious international crimes against the Tamils. Such accusations are usually levelled against authoritarian states; it is unusual for a democracy to face such ch.