Sherman de Rose is a Sri Lankan LGBT activist. He grew up in Kotahena. As a young person, he wanted to join the Catholic church and studied in Ireland, but he left the church after realizing he was gay. Then, he set up Companions on a Journey, Sri Lanka's first gay rights group, in 1994.
Sherman de Rose grew up in Kotahena, a suburb of Colombo with six siblings. He was connected to the local Catholic St. Lucia's Cathedral and wanted to become a priest. At the age of 17, he went to the Poornawatte Seminary near Kandy and after a few months had the opportunity to study in Ireland. Between 1989 and 1992 he studied theology and philosophy.
Sherman de Rose set up Companions on a Journey in 1995, provoking a controversy since it was Sri Lanka's first gay rights group. He received death threats and was forced to go abroad for a time until things had settled down again. [1] [2]
De Rose helped to set up ACCESS (AIDS Coalition for Care, Education and Support Services), becoming its treasurer and convenor in 1997. [3] In 1999, de Rose made a complaint about a letter to a newspaper which advocated violence against lesbians. The Sri Lanka Press Council refused to hear the complaint and fined de Rose 2100 rupees. [4]
Mary Patricia McAleese is an Irish activist lawyer, academic, author, and former politician who served as the eighth president of Ireland from November 1997 to November 2011. McAleese was first elected as president in 1997, having received the nomination of Fianna Fáil. She succeeded Mary Robinson, making her the second female president of Ireland, and the first woman in the world to succeed another woman as president. She nominated herself for re-election in 2004 and was returned unopposed for a second term. Born in Ardoyne, north Belfast, McAleese is the first president of Ireland to have come from either Northern Ireland or Ulster.
Ian Richard Kyle Paisley Jr is a former Northern Irish unionist politician. A member of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), he served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Antrim from 2010 to 2024, and was previously a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for North Antrim from 1998 to 2010. Paisley is the DUP's Spokesperson for Digital, Culture, Media and Sports. He is a son of the DUP's founder Ian Paisley.
John Charles McQuaid, C.S.Sp., was the Catholic Primate of Ireland and Archbishop of Dublin between December 1940 and January 1972. He was known for the unusual amount of influence he had over successive governments.
Joseph Vaz, CO was an Oratorian priest and missionary in Sri Lanka (Ceylon). Originally from Sancoale in Portuguese India, Vaz arrived in Ceylon during the Dutch occupation, a time when the Dutch had banned Catholicism in Ceylon and imposed Calvinism as the official religion after taking control from the Portuguese Empire.
The Catholic Church in Sri Lanka is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the pope in Rome. The country comes under the province of Colombo and is made up of 12 dioceses including one archdiocese. There are approximately 1.2 million Catholics in Sri Lanka representing around 6.1% of the total population. Later estimates suggest that there are over 1.6 million in 2020.
The Navaly Church bombing refers to the bombing of the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Navaly in the Jaffna Peninsula by the Sri Lankan Air Force during the Sri Lankan Civil War on 9 July 1995. It is estimated that at least 147 Tamil civilians, who had taken refuge from the fighting inside the church, died as a result of this incident. The victims included men, women and children.
Kathiravelu Nythiananda Devananda, commonly known as Douglas Devananda, is a Sri Lankan Tamil politician, Cabinet Minister and leader of the Eelam People's Democratic Party. Originally a Sri Lanka Tamil militant who fought against the Sri Lankan government for an independent Tamil Eelam, he became a pro-government paramilitary leader and politician. Due to his strong opposition to and vocal criticism of the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, they unsuccessfully tried to assassinate him over 10 times. Devananda is a proclaimed offender in India and is wanted on charges of murder, attempt to murder, rioting, unlawful assembly and kidnapping. He was sworn in as Minister of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources on 22 November 2019.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Sri Lanka face significant challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents.
Thiyagarajah Maheswaran was a Tamil Sri Lankan Member of Parliament (MP) from Colombo. He belonged to the main opposition United National Party and was critic of Rajapakse government's war against Tamil rebels. He was the former Hindu Affairs minister and a former Member of Parliament for Colombo District, escaped an assassination attempt on the final day of the 2004 election campaign in Colombo. He was assassinated by a gunman on 1 January 2008 while worshipping at a Hindu temple with his family.
British Sri Lankans are an ethnic group referring to British people who can trace their ancestry to Sri Lanka. It can refer to a variety of ethnicities and races, including Sinhalese, Tamils, Moors/Muslims and Burghers.
St. Lucia's Cathedral is the seat of the Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Colombo in Sri Lanka. The cathedral is located at Kotahena, in the north east of Colombo, on 18,240 sq. ft. of land. It traces its origins to a small structure for worship built during the Dutch occupation.
Mariampillai Thaddeus Sarathjeevan was a Catholic priest from Jaffna, Sri Lanka. He was one of the few priests who remained with the refugees until the end of war in northern parts of Sri Lanka. He died while he was leading the last batch of refugees to safety from war zone.
Sexual minorities in Sri Lanka have been counted in recent times as consisting of as little as 0.035% of the population to as high as 19.6%. It is likely that there are around 1,100,000 according to current mapping conventions.
The history of sexual minorities in Sri Lanka covered in this article dates back to a couple of centuries before the start of the Vikram Samvat era, although it is highly likely that archaeology predating this period exists. There are virtually zero historical records of sexual minorities in the Latin script dating prior to colonialism. The concept of Sri Lanka did not exist prior to colonialism, and the term 'lanka' translates to 'island'.
On 21 April 2019, Easter Sunday, three churches in Sri Lanka and three luxury hotels in the commercial capital, Colombo, were targeted in a series of coordinated ISIS-related terrorist suicide bombings. Later that day, two smaller explosions occurred at a housing complex in Dematagoda and a guest house in Dehiwala. A total of 269 people were killed, including at least 45 foreign nationals, three police officers, and eight suicide bombers. An additional 500 were injured. The church bombings were carried out during Easter services in Negombo, Batticaloa and Colombo; the hotels bombed included the Shangri-La, Cinnamon Grand, Kingsbury and Tropical Inn. According to the State Intelligence Service, a second wave of attacks was planned, but was prevented due to government raids.
Herbert W. H. Weerasinghe was the 21st Inspector General of the Sri Lanka Police (IGP).
Poruthotage Raymond Ernest Alexander Fernando, often known simply as Ernest Poruthota, was a Catholic priest. Popularly known as "Priest of the Sinhala Cinema", Poruthota rendered a yeoman service to Sri Lanka's cinema industry and was the founder of Sri Lanka OCIC organization.
The Women's Support Group (WSG) is a Sri Lankan organisation dedicated to helping lesbian, bisexual and transgender women. It was set up in 1999 by amongst others Rosanna Flamer-Caldera. It has won the Felipa de Souza Award twice.
Companions on a Journey (CoJ) is a Sri Lankan LGBT support group founded in 1995. It campaigns to change the laws which criminalise homosexuality and to educate people about sexuality. The Women's Support Group grew out of CoJ, the two organisations sharing the Felipa de Souza Award in 2001. By 2014, CoJ had over 1,400 members and branches across the country.