The Vatican’s ‘Justitia-et-Pax’ (Justice and Peace) commission in the Jaffna diocese has denounced the genocide against the Tamil people and called on The Holy See to exert political pressure on the government of Sri Lanka.

An Australian activist was detained during a raid by immigration authorities on a meeting of journalists on Wednesday.

Jacqui Park, the Asia-Pacific representative for the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), was accused of working without a visa.

NPC Chief Minister CV Wigneswaran said it was unlikely that he would attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo, according to Sri Lanka’s Financial Times.

“I do not think I will be going,” Wigneswaran said.

“I will ask the TNA to advise me on whether or not to attend CHOGM. I will go along with the party’s decision,”

Issuing the report of the Commonwealth Observer Mission to Sri Lanka’s Northern provincial Elections,  Commonwealth Secretary-general Kamalesh Sharma, commended the Sri Lankan state’s running of the Northern Provincial council elections.

Writing an opinion about ‘Forgotten heroes of the Eelam war’  for the Weekend Leader, political researcher and member of Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), Sinthujan Varatharajah, outlined the reasons behind the organisation’s forthcoming report, “Silencing the Press: An analysis of Violence against the Media in Sri Lanka.”

Sinthujan Varatharajah, works as a London based researcher at Euro-Islam.info and teaching assistant at the University College London (UCL) Political Geography Department.

Sri Lankan government attempts to demolish Tamil places of residence caused commotion today as Northern Provincial Tamil Parliamentarians protested the destruction.

According to journalists on the ground, the Tamil Parliamentarians were rounded up by the Sri Lankan military, and threatened at gunpoint.

Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, today reiterated that increasing demands for the removal of army camps from the North-East, would never become a reality.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa labelled Facebook a 'plague' which was affecting the younger generation, at a speech given at a school in the south of the island, earlier this month.

Despite this, the ruling government have refused to state whether they will ban Facebook, after it was brought up in the Sri Lankan parliament by UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe.

A thirty-year-old Hindu temple in the Central Provincial town of Dambulla, was demolished overnight reports Colombo Telegraph.

The shrine to Badhrakaali Amman was razed to the ground, despite appeals made to the President by Tamil politicians, and joins a long list of non-Buddhist places of worship that have come under attack.

Western Provincial Councillor N Kumar Guruparan, who had personally taken up the matter said:

The third documentary by Director Callum Macrae about the final months of the armed conflict in Sri Lanka, No Fire Zone, will be screened on British television by Channel 4 on Sunday at 22:50.

Macrae, who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his movies on the conflict, announced the broadcast at a panel discussion on Sri Lanka in Parliament last week, saying that there would be new, previously unseen material.