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Sharmini Peries speaks to Sunila Abeysekera award-winning human rights defender and the Executive Director of INFORM, an organization working to spread the word on Sri Lankan human rights violations. The speak about the history of the ongoing torture allegations in Sri Lanka and the so-called “internment camps” where roughly 300,000 refugees of the recent conflict linger. Abeysekera says, “Forget the torture; just overcrowding, lack of access to medical attention, and then including on top of that the beatings and the waterboarding. You know, you name it, we hear stories about it.”

Sunila Abeysekera

Sunila Abeysekera is the Executive Director of INFORM, an organization working to inform the world about human rights violations in Sri Lanka. The major themes of Sunila Abeysekera's work include issues of equality and difference in understanding women's human rights, problems of re-conceptualising the nation-state and principles of good governance from a feminist perspective; problems of representation of women in art and culture; and feminist film criticism. In 1998, Abeysekera was honoured by the United Nations for her contribution to the protection and promotion of human rights along with Jimmy Carter.