CPA Comms Officer on 3 November, 2023

Sri Lankan Indigenous Community struggles in the face of the Microfinance Credit Crisis

The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) is a non-partisan, independent organization primarily dedicated to strengthening institutions and building capacity for good governance and conflict transformation in Sri Lanka. The CPA is committed to conducting research and advocacy programs that critically evaluate public policies, identify alternative solutions, and promote an improved political culture and social environment.

The indigenous community, also known as the Vedda community, constitutes a group of citizens in Sri Lanka with a distinct identity and should be treated with dignity, enjoying full entitlement to all rights and privileges. Nevertheless, today, indigenous communities across the island face a multitude of challenges, with the micro-finance credit crisis emerging as a significant concern.

We do not oppose the provision of micro-finance loans and the institutions that offer them; in fact, we view it as a positive opportunity, especially for low-income communities. However, it is evident that citizens who have taken micro-finance loans are facing mounting issues related to informal loan disbursement, recovery, interest rates, and more, compounded by the unregulated nature of these practices, along with questionable and illegal conditions. The Indigenous community is particularly affected due to these situations.

The indigenous community is characterised by its unique linguistic identity. Although they communicate using the ‘Vedi language,’ their written language is Sinhala. Many are not literate in reading or writing in Sinhala. Similarly, Marine Indigenous groups living in Vaharai and Muttur use their own distinct Tamil dialect and are not well-versed in standard Tamil.

Considering these linguistic barriers, the agreements and contracts exchanged between these communities and relevant institutions during micro-finance loan transactions are often in languages they do not understand or comprehend. While a few organisations do issue documents in both Sinhala and Tamil, these indigenous communities still struggle to understand the contents. As a result, they sign these agreements without a full understanding of the content and consequently find themselves entrapped in the legal ramifications.

These communities are primarily located in the Uva, Eastern, and North Central provinces, residing in places like Dambana, Rathugala, Pollebedda, Dalukana, Dimbulagala, Vahari, and Muttur. They have lost their habitats in the forests and have integrated into mainstream society. They are now confronted with various economic, social, and cultural difficulties and complications.

Currently, the regional Vedda Leaders lead by vedda chief Uruwarige Wannila Aththo, have corresponded with the President, and the Governor of the Central Bank, highlighting the severe financial debt problem faced by their community. Their primary request is to provide relief from this debt crisis and to establish a more streamlined system for loan disbursement and collection.

We have attached relevant articles along with a video clip featuring Vedda Chief Uruwarige Wannila Aththo’s position on this issue. We kindly request your assistance in sharing this information through your media institution and promoting a social dialogue aimed at finding solutions to the microcredit crisis confronting the indigenous community in our country.

On behalf of the Indigenous Community

Centre for Policy Alternatives

Download the Press Release in English – Click Here
Download the Press Release in Sinhala – Click Here
Download the Press Release in Tamil – Click Here

 

CPA Comms Officer on 31 October, 2023

The Proposed Amendments to the Online Safety Bill

The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) has previously raised concerns with the Online Safety Bill (OSB) and challenged certain clauses in the Supreme Court.1 On the 18th of October, during the hearing on the constitutionality of the OSB,2 the Attorney General’s Department of Sri Lanka produced to the Supreme Court a series of amendments that the Government proposed to move during the Committee Stage when the Bill was to be taken up in Parliament. These “Committee Stage Amendments” would make substantial alterations to the Bill that was gazetted. Several of the amendments also deviate from “the merits and principles” of the originally gazetted OSB and thus, are in contravention of Article 78(3) of the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka.3 Subsequently, such substantial change requires the Government of Sri Lanka to withdraw the currently proposed OSB and re-gazette the amended version.

Download the full document in English : Click Here

Download the full document in Sinhala : Click Here

Download the full document in Tamil: Click Here

CPA Comms Officer on 25 October, 2023

Audited Accounts 2021

Audited accounts for 2021. Click HERE to download full PDF.

How the PDC World Darts Championship Transformed Sports Betting in the UK, According to Betzella

When the Professional Darts Corporation launched its World Darts Championship at Lakeside’s rival venue, the Circus Tavern in Purfleet, back in 1994, few observers anticipated that the event would eventually become one of the most significant drivers of sports betting activity in the United Kingdom. What began as a breakaway tournament — born from a dispute between the British Darts Organisation and a group of professional players — has evolved into a cultural phenomenon that fundamentally reshaped how bookmakers approach niche sports and how millions of British bettors engage with televised competition during the winter holiday period. The journey from a small Essex venue to the sold-out Alexandra Palace, with global television audiences exceeding four million viewers per session, represents one of the most remarkable transformations in British sporting and gambling history.

From Fringe Sport to Betting Staple: The Commercial Turning Point

For most of the 1990s, darts occupied an awkward position in the betting market. Bookmakers offered odds on major tournaments, but trading volumes were modest and margins were wide, reflecting limited market liquidity and relatively low public interest. The BDO World Championship at Lakeside retained a loyal following, but televised coverage had diminished since the high-water mark of the 1980s, when players like Eric Bristow and Phil Taylor commanded primetime BBC audiences. The PDC’s early years were similarly constrained — the organisation lacked the broadcasting infrastructure to compete with established sports.

The commercial inflection point came in 2002 when Sky Sports significantly expanded its coverage of PDC events, and more critically, when the World Championship moved to Alexandra Palace in 2008. The Ally Pally venue, with its capacity of approximately 3,000 spectators and its association with New Year celebrations, gave the tournament a distinctive identity. Crowd participation, fancy dress, and a festive atmosphere transformed what had been a relatively sedate viewing experience into something closer to a live music event. Betting operators noticed the shift immediately. William Hill reported a 34% year-on-year increase in darts-related wagering following the first Alexandra Palace championship, and Ladbrokes began dedicating specialist trading teams to the event — a resource allocation previously reserved for Premier League football and horse racing.

The introduction of in-play betting technology during the mid-2000s proved particularly consequential for darts. Unlike football or cricket, where scoring events are separated by extended periods of tactical play, a darts leg can turn within seconds. A player who misses a double checkout can watch their opponent capitalise immediately, creating rapid fluctuations in live odds that appeal to bettors seeking fast-paced engagement. By 2012, in-play darts markets were generating more transactions per minute during peak sessions than many Premier League football matches, according to internal figures cited by Betfair in industry presentations.

Regulatory Context and Market Maturation

The growth of PDC Championship betting did not occur in isolation — it coincided with a period of substantial regulatory change in the UK gambling sector. The Gambling Act 2005, which came into full effect in 2007, liberalised advertising restrictions and allowed operators to market directly to consumers in ways that had previously been prohibited. This created an environment in which bookmakers could actively promote darts betting during televised coverage, accelerating customer acquisition precisely as the sport’s profile was rising.

The subsequent Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 extended licensing requirements to offshore operators serving UK customers, which had the effect of consolidating the market around regulated entities with the infrastructure to offer sophisticated darts markets. Smaller, unlicensed operators who had previously captured a share of darts betting were effectively removed from the accessible UK market. For consumers navigating this more structured environment, resources that aggregate and evaluate regulated platforms became increasingly useful — the best sites for betting on the PDC World Darts Championship are typically those that combine competitive outright odds with robust in-play markets and same-event accumulator options, features that have become standard expectations among experienced darts bettors.

Betzella, which has tracked the evolution of darts betting markets extensively, notes that the regulatory consolidation of 2014 to 2018 paradoxically improved market quality for consumers. With fewer but better-capitalised operators competing for darts business, maximum bet limits increased and market depth improved, particularly for outright winner and top-eight finish markets. The PDC’s own commercial arrangements with broadcasters also evolved during this period, with Sky Sports and later DAZN investing in production quality that made the event more attractive to casual bettors who might place a single wager on the tournament winner as part of a broader Christmas betting ritual.

Phil Taylor, Gerwyn Price, and the Mechanics of Odds Movement

Understanding how the PDC World Championship transformed betting culture requires examining specific cases of how dominant players shaped market behaviour over time. Phil Taylor’s sixteen World Championship victories between 1995 and 2013 created an unusual market dynamic. For much of that period, bookmakers faced a genuine problem: Taylor was so consistently superior to the field that offering competitive odds on him meant accepting significant liability, while pricing him too short deterred casual betting activity. The solution, developed gradually through the late 1990s and 2000s, was to build more sophisticated each-way structures and to promote markets beyond the outright winner — section betting, match handicaps, and 180-checkout specials became popular precisely because Taylor’s dominance made the top market commercially difficult to balance.

This structural innovation outlasted Taylor’s dominance. When he retired from the World Championship in 2018, the market had been permanently diversified. Bettors who had learned to engage with checkout markets, leg handicaps, and first-to-score-a-180 specials continued to use those products with subsequent generations of players. The emergence of competitive figures like Gerwyn Price, Peter Wright, and Michael van Gerwen — none of whom has achieved Taylor’s level of sustained dominance — created a more genuinely open market that sustains higher betting volumes precisely because outcomes are less predictable. Van Gerwen’s three World Championship victories (2014, 2017, 2019) established him as a strong favourite in most years he competed, but his losses to players like Rob Cross in 2018 and Damon Heta in later rounds demonstrated the volatility that keeps in-play markets active and liquid.

Betzella’s analysis of odds movement during the 2019 and 2023 championships found that the largest single in-play liability shifts occurred not during finals but during quarter-final and semi-final matches involving unseeded or lower-seeded players. The 2018 final, in which Rob Cross defeated Phil Taylor in Taylor’s final professional appearance, generated extraordinary betting activity — Cross had been available at 66/1 before the tournament, and his run to the title represented one of the largest liability events in PDC history for major operators.

Broadcasting, Sponsorship, and the Normalisation of Darts Betting

The relationship between broadcasting deals and betting market development is rarely discussed explicitly, but it is fundamental to understanding why the PDC World Championship occupies its current position in the UK betting calendar. Sky Sports’ decision to schedule the tournament across seventeen days in late December and early January — overlapping with the Christmas and New Year period when discretionary spending is elevated — was commercially deliberate. The timing aligned the event with a period when casual bettors, many of whom engage with gambling only a handful of times per year, are most likely to place wagers. Research by the Gambling Commission’s 2022 participation survey indicated that 23% of adults who bet on sports in the preceding twelve months cited darts as one of the sports they had wagered on, a figure that would have been considered implausibly high as recently as 2005.

Sponsorship arrangements have reinforced this normalisation. The PDC World Championship has carried betting company branding prominently since the early 2010s, with companies including Betway, bet365, and BoyleSports holding naming rights or floor-level advertising positions at Alexandra Palace. This visibility created a feedback loop: bettors who watched the tournament saw betting brands associated with it, which lowered psychological barriers to placing wagers, which increased the commercial value of the sponsorship, which in turn increased operator investment in darts-specific markets and promotions. The PDC has been more willing than many sporting bodies to embrace gambling sponsorship, and the financial consequences for the sport have been substantial — prize money at the World Championship increased from £100,000 in 1994 to £2.5 million by 2023, a trajectory that would have been impossible without the commercial infrastructure that betting operators helped build.

The PDC World Darts Championship has, over thirty years, moved from a breakaway tournament held in a converted nightclub to one of the defining fixtures of the British sporting and gambling calendar. Its influence on betting markets extends beyond darts itself — the structural innovations developed to handle darts wagering, from rapid in-play price adjustments to micro-market specials, have been applied across other sports. Betzella’s documentation of this evolution illustrates how a single sporting property, when combined with favourable regulatory timing, broadcasting investment, and genuine competitive drama, can reshape the expectations and habits of an entire betting market. The legacy of that 1994 split from the BDO is measured not only in trophy cabinets but in the architecture of modern sports betting itself.

CPA Comms Officer on 12 October, 2023

CPA Challenges the Online Safety Bill (SC/SD 89/2023)

The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) and its Executive Director, Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, filed a Petition in the Supreme Court on the 11th of October 2023 challenging the Constitutionality of the Bill titled “Online Safety”. The Bill was Gazetted on the 15th of September 2023, and tabled in Parliament [the first reading of the Bill] on the 3rd of October 2023. CPA has previously commented on this Bill, and urged that the Government withdraws the Bill which is fundamentally flawed and riddled with potential for abuse. 

In its Petition CPA argues that the Bill as a whole violates several articles of the Constitution including entrenched provisions and would thus be required to approved by the people at a referendum in addition to being passed by two thirds of the Members’ of Parliament voting in favour of the Bill. CPA argues that the vague and over broad offences contained in the Bill and the  broad powers of the so called “Online Safety Commission” will have a chilling effect on the exercise of Fundamental Rights by the citizens of Sri Lanka. 

The Petition also challenges various individual aspects of the Online Safety Bill which violate Articles of the Constitution including but not limited to; 

Firstly, the several vague objectives of the Bill including the power of the Online Safety Commission to “protect” people against the damage caused by “alarming or distressing statements”. 

Secondly, the over broad and unconstitutional nature of the listed “prohibited statements” within the Online Safety Bill. 

Thirdly, the arbitrary and unreasonable powers granted to the Online Safety Commission, including the exercise of judicial power which is inconsistent with the Constitution. 

Fourthly, the arbitrary powers granted to the Minister to appoint private individuals as “experts”, who are then given extensive powers, which impact the liberties of citizens and with no accountability. 

CPA also challenges the Online Safety Commission’s ability to make rules and the Minister’s ability to make regulations on ‘Online Safety’ because the Clauses within the Online Safety Bill regarding these abilities lack precision and sufficient criteria.

As such CPA and its Executive Director argue that the Online Safety Bill is inconsistent with Articles 3, 4(c), 10, 12, 14(1)(a),(b),(c),(e),(f), and (g) and 14A(2) of the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka and thus cannot be enacted into law, unless it is approved by the People at a Referendum in addition to a two-thirds vote of the whole number of the Members of Parliament. 

To read the Full Statement in English – Click Here

 

 

CPA Comms Officer on 10 October, 2023

Land Issues in the Northern and Eastern Provinces in Sri Lanka

Documentaries

Land has been a catalyst for conflict for several decades in Sri Lanka. 15 years after the war, this issue persists particularly in the North and East provinces of Sri Lanka. Recently, archaeology and national heritage have been used as tools to marginalize minorities.15 years after the war this should not continue. Is reconciliation possible in Sri Lanka?

 

Animations

Land has always been a source of conflict in Sri Lanka, particularly in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, where a civil war raged for over 30 years. Various entities still continue to exploit land disputes to create ethnic tensions between communities.
One notable location is Kurunthurmalai, also known as Kurundi Temple in Sinhalese. Interventions by the Archeological Department and the construction of a new Buddhist temple, and discriminatory rules imposed on the Tamil community, barring entry to the site for worship have heightened fears among locals about their rights to land and freedom to practice their religion.
These critical issues continue to impede the reconciliation process in Sri Lanka, even a decade after the conclusion of the war. Such activities raise questions about whether the state is genuinely committed to achieving reconciliation.

In Mannar, Sri Lanka, local communities are sounding the alarm over two major development projects that could devastate their livelihoods and environment. The Sri Lankan Cabinet’s decision to expand wind power stations in partnership with Adani Green Energy Limited has sparked concerns about land destruction and depleted fishing waters. Additionally, unsustainable sand mining activities by private businesses are putting the island’s ecosystem and groundwater reserves at risk. Experts warn that these projects could disrupt migratory bird flight routes and natural habitats, further threatening local species. As mega-scale developments continue, the community fears displacement and a loss of their traditional ways of life.

Photo stories

CPA’s research in the North and East demonstrates accusations against the Department of Archaeology and others of bias towards promoting Buddhist historicity. The continued appropriation of lands belonging to and used by minorities disrupts religious inclusivity and coexistence. This is a series of photos depicting some land conflicts that are being researched by CPA. Further research and insights on these issues are forthcoming.
Watch the Photo story here
The land conflict in the North and the East has multifaceted implications. Previously, CPA looked into several contested sites in the region, where land appropriation had led to grave socio-cultural implications. In this series, we delve in to the socio economic implications of land conflict faced by minority ethnic communities living in the North and East region.
Check full story via the link

 

Key Cases

 

For over 6 months, Cattle farmers in Mailathamadu have protested against the encroachment of their ancestral grazing land. This dispute highlights challenges of achieving reconciliation and addressing historical grievances in a post-war context. The government’s response has been mixed, deepening Tamil distrust and raising questions about its commitment to genuine reconciliation.

 

32 buddhist temples have been initiated at the Kuchchaveli Divisional Secretariat. Kuchaveli is a majority of Tamil-speaking administrative division in Trincomalee, with the majority of the community being muslims and tamils. 2506.5 acres of private land belonging to Tamils in the the Kuchchaveli region are alleged to have been acquired forcefully for the construction of these 32 Buddhist temples.

 

Vedukkunaari Aathi Lingeswarar Temple has been at the center of controversy during recent times as the Department of Archaeology has claimed it as part of an ancient Buddhist pilgrim site and has banned people from entering the site. This, along with several acts of vandalism, has sparked new concerns regarding post-conflict minority rights in the Northern Province. This can be seen as yet another attempt by the state and its institutions to suppress the cultural rights of people.

 

 

 

 

CPA Comms Officer on 6 October, 2023

Commentary Comparing the Proposed Anti Terrorism Bill to the Prevention of Terrorism Act

Commentary updated with revisions as of 4 March 2024

The Government of Sri Lanka published the revised ‘Anti-Terrorism Bill’ (hereinafter the proposed ATA) in the Gazette, on the 15th of September 2023. This Bill seeks to abolish the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) which for nearly four and a half decades has been one of the most vicious tools of suppression and persecution used by the State. There have been calls to abolish the PTA since its inception in 1979 but the draconian law has survived through several Governments.

The publication of the presently Gazetted version of the proposed ATA follows a former version of the ATA, which was published on the 22nd of March 2023, containing a few differences. The proposed ATA is also in substance fairly similar to a Bill published during the Yahapalana regime in 2018, the Counter- Terrorism Bill (CTA) which also sought to replace the PTA. In this commentary, there is some reference to the CTA and the previous version of the proposed ATA published in March to comment on changes seen in the present Bill. However, the primary aim of this commentary is to compare the latest version of the proposed ATA in relation to the PTA.

In initial comments issued on the 27th of March 2023, the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) noted concerns regarding the initially proposed ATA though acknowledging that the Bill does address some of the key concerns that persisted with the PTA over its several decades in operation. With the recent version of the proposed ATA being published in September 2023, CPA continues to reiterate these concerns. To put these recurring concerns in context, it must be borne in mind that the Sri Lankan State has demonstrated a pattern of abusing counter-terror laws, emergency laws and regulation-making powers in the past. Thus, any new law must be formulated with additional safeguards to prevent abuse.

At the outset, CPA notes that the proposed ATA lacks sufficient checks, and if operational, would provide ample space for abuse. Further, over-broad definitions of offences leave room for these laws to be used for means beyond the purported purposes of the Act, targeting minorities, civil society, the media and any dissenters in general. Further, this law has also taken away some of the improvements that were sought to be made by way of the CTA in 2018, such as the shortening of the duration of detention orders.

Overall, it must be remembered that for law reform to be successful, there has to be the administrative will for the law to succeed, and to be used for the correct purpose. The timing of this new law, rushed through with little to no meaningful stakeholder consultation suggests that this law reform is not being brought in the interest of addressing a decades-long problem that has plagued the country, but as a matter of political expediency. While CPA would welcome any reform in a positive direction, this law does not signify much optimism with deep implications for human rights, governance and democracy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

To access the full document – click here