Incident 1: Convicted murderer, death row inmate, Premalal Jayasekara was given permission by the Appeals Court on the 7th of September to attend sittings in Parliament. He was convicted of murder by the Court on 30th July, a few days before the General Election. However, he secured a seat in Parliament obtaining over 142,000 preferential …
A JOINT COMMUNIQUE BY PEOPLE’S ACTION FOR FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS (PAFFREL) AND HASHTAG GENERATION TO FACEBOOK INC. The below is a joint communique by People’s Action for Free and Fair Election (PAFFREL) and Hashtag Generation with observations from the 2019 Presidential Election and looking at the impending 2020 General Election. The communique was shared …
Analysis: Covid-19 Response by Country Here is an analysis done by our social media analyst Prihesh Ratnayake on the responses by 113 countries to the COVID 19 pandemic. There have been many analyses produced on the Coronavirus Outbreak and the global response to the pandemic. Our intentionality is to conduct an analysis based on the …
Methodology for Calculating the Response by Country Read More »
By Shreen Abdul Saroor Today marks the one-year anniversary of the Easter Sunday attacks, in which eight IS terrorists senselessly murdered 269 Catholic and Christian worshippers and tourists, shattering our collective sense of unity and togetherness. Families celebrating Christianity’s holiest day and tourists visiting our beautiful shores were massacred by those who claimed Islam only …
Honouring the Victims of 21 April 2019 Through Togetherness and Unity Read More »
Let’s have a quick look at what got attention in March, 2020. The Hashtag Generation team has been monitoring social media for a while and there has rarely been a dull day! While social media is limited to the digital space, we believe that its impacts can have an effect on life much beyond the …
We collaborated with the Muslim Personal Law Reform Action Group (MPLRAG) to hold a briefing for the media and other key stakeholders titled ‘Sri Lankan Quazi Courts, Where are the Women Judges?’ on the 6th of November 2019. Our collective demand was that the next Sri Lankan President, whoever they may be, should prioritize the …
Sri Lankan Quazi Courts, Where are the Women Judges? Read More »
In March 2016, the Local Authorities Election Act was amended to include a 25 percent quota for women at the local government elections. Abiding by this amendment, an amount of over 2000 women were to be elected into office at the conclusion of the next local government elections in 2018. The implementation of this policy …
The LGBTQ+ community of Sri Lanka undergo severe challenges on online platforms that can be understood as a translation of prejudices and discriminatory laws and practices within offline scenarios. Taking into consideration the need to educate youth from the LGBTQ+ community, #Generation successfully carried out a 3 day residential training on Cybersecurity and Digital Advocacy …
As a group that has been advocating for meaningful engagement of women in local governance we were concerned that the delays in holding elections, while posing a broader threat to democracy in the country, will also pose a significant challenge to sustaining the continued interest in on the 25% quota for women in local government …
Strategizing Meeting on Postponement of Local Govt Elections Read More »
Hashtag Generation was awarded a grant by Frida Young Feminist Fund to conduct training programs for aspiring young women politicians in Sri Lanka through residential training programs held in Colombo and Jaffna, the former in Sinhala and the latter in Tamil, in June 2016. Each training ran for two days, and had a total of 40 participants and covering topics such as basics of politics, how to run a social media campaign, utilizing mass media for election purposes, electoral mapping, etc.