Sunila Abeysekera

Sunila Abeysekera (September 4 1952 – September 9, 2013) was a Sri Lankan human rights campaigner. She worked on women's rights in Sri Lanka and in the South Asia region for decades as an activist and scholar. Quitting a career as a singer, Abeysekera briefly joined the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and then founded the Women and Media Collective in 1984. As head of the INFORM Human Rights Documentation Centre, she monitored human rights violations by all parties in the civil war. She received the United Nations Human Rights Award in 1999 and the Didi Nirmala Deshpande South Asian Peace and Justice Award in 2013.

Early life Sunila was born on 4 September 1952, to Turin and Charles Abeysekera, a public servant and a leader of civil society in Sri Lanka. She first became involved in politics in the 1970s as a member of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM), which campaigned for political prisoners who had been involved in the 1971 Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) youth insurrection. She briefly joined the JVP in 1978, editing their newspaper Red Power but left in 1980 after a disagreement. Sunila first began her political work with women through The Socialist Women’s Front, the women’s wing of the JVP. Career

Work in Film and Theater Sunila developed a love for theater, film, song and art early in life.

Sunila was also a cultural critic, and published reviews of local and international films, including in cinema journals such as Cinesith, 14 - Prakashanayata Avakashayak, Chitrapata. She penned the longest running feminist film review column on Sinhala cinema; a column titled ‘Ape Esin’ through our eyes) under the pen name Vishwapriya, in the Sinhala language magazine Eya published by Women and Media Collective. She went back into exile between 2009 and 2010, supported by the Institute for Social Studies as part of their "Scholar At Risk".

In the 1990s, she participated in the executive committee of the Movement for Free and Fair Elections and became president of the Movement for Interracial Justice and Equality in Sri Lanka. From 1992 onwards, she worked with the Global Campaign for Women's Human Rights and attended the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna (1993) and Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995).

Her activism continued in the 2000s, when she formed an important role in setting up the international coalition of women human rights defenders. In 2002, Abeysekera joined the feminist International Initiative on Justice for Muslim women who were victims during the 2002 Gujarat riots. She played an important role in ensuring that women's needs were addressed in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Abeysekera also served as chair of the Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human Rights. She died from cancer at the age of 61 on September 9, 2013. Her funeral was attended by thousands of people. Human Rights Watch recognised her work with a Global Human Rights Defender Award in 2007. In 2013, she was given the inaugural Didi Nirmala Deshpande South Asian Peace and Justice Award.