India’s leading low-cost airline, IndiGo, launched its newest international route from Chennai to Jaffna this week, becoming the second Indian airline to operate the route.

The new route is a daily non-stop flight lasting 75 minutes, and is the 34^th international destination for IndiGo. This route holds significant potential to further strengthen ties between the Eelam Tamil and Indian Tamil communities. 

The European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) will send 26 long-term observers to Sri Lanka by tomorrow, intending to increase observers closer to the presidential elections.

Observations will take place before, during and after elections, monitoring activities such as the opening of polling stations, the voting process, the counting of ballots, and the tabulation of results around election day.

The EU EOM has also announced it will recruit 32 short-term observers from the EU diplomatic community and other partner countries.

Sri Lankan police officers of Chunnakam Police Division assaulted and tortured a Tamil man last week, in yet another cause of ongoing police brutality in the North-East.

Sri Lankan policemen broke into the man’s home in Chunnakam, Jaffna, on 28 August to arrest him without apparent cause before assaulting him with various weapons.

Namal Rajapaksa released his manifesto as he vies to become president of Sri Lanka this month, pledging to continue the legacy of his father, accused war criminal Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The younger Rajapaksa asserts that the "Mahinda Chinthana," the title of his father’s 2005 manifesto, had set a progressive plan for Sri Lanka.

Justice C V Wigneswaran, a Member of Parliament from the Jaffna District, expressed his support for the common Tamil candidate Pakkiyaselvam Ariyanenthiran at the upcoming presidential polls, urging Eelam Tamils across the island to seize the opportunity to assert their aspirations and undeniable rights as a united force.

“The Tamil people fought non-violently and engaged in the armed struggle when the Sri Lankan government began its genocidal war with the intent of destroying the very existence and individuality of the Tamils,” the manifesto states. “This ongoing state of terror is aimed at the extermination and ethnic cleansing of the Tamils.”

The election manifesto for Pakkiyaselvam Ariyanenthiran, the common Tamil candidate endorsed by a coalition of Tamil political parties and civil society, was launched in Jaffna on Tuesday.

Ajith Doval, India's National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, reportedly encouraged Tamil political parties to back a Sinhala candidate, according to a report in the Sunday Times.

The Tamil Guardian recently sat down with Rathika Sitsabaiesan, human rights activist and former Canadian Member of Parliament, to discuss her new documentary “Ray of Hope”. Sitasbaiesan, the first ever Tamil Canadian MP, discussed resistance, intergenerational trauma, and the future of Tamil Eelam.

Pakkiyaselvam Ariyanenthiran, a former lawmaker who was put forward by a range of Tamil political parties as a candidate for the upcoming Sri Lankan presidential elections, stepped up his campaign in recent weeks, as he visited the site of an LTTE cemetery, the Mullivaiikkal memorial and met with a range of civil society activists.

This week, Ariyanenthiran continued his election campaign in Mallavi, meeting with representatives of the Mallavi Trade Association and former LTTE cadres.

The leader-elect of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) Sivagnanam Shritharan, called on Tamils to vote in favour of the common candidate Pakkiyaselvam Ariyanenthiran, as he praised and recalled the sacrifices of LTTE fighters from the Eastern Province.

“We are at a key juncture in our history,” Shritharan told an audience in London this week, with Sri Lankan presidential elections scheduled for this month.