US Secretary of State Antony Blinked paid tribute to Ranitha Gnanarajah this week, as he awarded her the Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award for 2021 in a virtual ceremony.

Gnanarajah, a Tamil lawyer who has worked with the Centre for Human Rights and Development (CHRD), was praised by Blinken as he spoke at the ceremony.

Dr Jill Biden, the US First Lady, also paid tribute to the women from around the world who received the award.

A British Tamil woman who has been on hunger strike in London, demanding the international community deliver justice for the Tamil genocide, has entered her 12^th day of protest this morning.

“I studied Tamil ma’am.” This seemingly innocuous statement poleaxed my new history teacher. I had just completed Class 10 (the Indian equivalent of GCSE) and recently joined the Kendriya Vidyalaya, a system of schools run by the central Ministry of Education, for the final two years of my schooling. My history tutor was shocked because the school did not offer the language I said I studied until the previous year. And it was compulsory to do a language in addition to English in order to be eligible to sit the final exams (A Levels). One might presume that I’d have moved out of Tamil Nadu for high school. I kid you not, I still lived in the heart of Chennai, the capital of the only Tamil-speaking state in the Indian union! 

Protests were held in Paris, which called on the international community to refer Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the war crimes and genocide the state had perpetrated against Tamil people during the peak of the armed struggle in 2009. 

Twelve lawyers, all Presidents’ Counsels, have made a written complaint that some of the recommendations in the report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI), which was appointed to probe incidents of Political Victimisation of public servants, may be undermining the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, and maybe eroding the impartial and efficient functioning of the Attorney General’s Department. 

Pavunraj Sulaxan, who was one of the two Jaffna University students to be shot dead by Sri Lankan police on 21 October 2016, was commemorated on his 28^th birthday by students at the University. 

Nadarasa Kajan, 23, and Pavunraj Sulaxan, 24, were students from the university's arts faculty when they were murdered. Five Sri Lankan policemen were later suspended and arrested over the deaths in 2016.

(Photos provided by HomeToBiloa)

Former community members and friends of the Tamil asylum-seeking family gathered for a dawn vigil at Lions Park in the early hours of 5 March 2021 to mark the three-year anniversary since the family was detained by immigration officers from their home in Biloela. A number of events were held across Australia, including on Christmas Island, on Friday. 

Protests were held in Switzerland, demanding international justice for human rights abuses against Tamils by the Sri Lankan government and calling on the international community to refer Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court (ICC). 

TNA leader, R Sampanthan emphasised the need for international intervention in achieving a political solution to the Tamil people at a conference with the US delegation led by the Chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee on Asia and the Pacific, Ami Bera, in Colombo last week. 

Writing in The Wire this week, Tamil Guardian features editor Thusiyan Nandakumar said the Indian government must “do more than pay lip service to Tamil concerns”.

Describing escalating tensions between India and Sri Lanka, Nandakumar said it “follows a long history of Sri Lankan ‘Indo-phobia’, driven by a protectionist, Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism that has been central to the island’s politics since independence”.

In India, as elections loom in Tamil Nadu, “outrage over Sri Lanka’s actions has been growing,” he added.  

“These are sentiments that Modi will be acutely aware of, having raised them himself during a trip to Tamil Nadu’s capital earlier this month. In an address where he lauded the southern state, he took care to mention the plight of Indian fishermen arrested by Sri Lankan security forces and reaffirmed his commitment to “the welfare and aspirations of our Tamil brothers and sisters in Sri Lanka”. “We are always committed to ensuring that they live with equality, justice, peace and dignity,” he said.”