Several British Tamil diaspora organisations have called on the UK Foreign Office to declare Sri Lanka’s Defence Attaché Brigadier BDSN Bothota a ‘persona non grata’ and allow him to be arrested and investigated for atrocity crimes and genocide.

“Sri Lanka’s military stands accused of committing grave atrocity crimes and genocide during the decades-long civil war,” wrote the ten organisations. 

Writing for The Wire India, Mario Arulthas, Advocacy Director for PEARL, and Dr Madura Rasaratnam, professor of Comparative Politics at the City University of London, rebuke the argument that parliamentary elections indicate “a complete overhaul” of the political system with turn away from “Tamil nationalist politics and towards development”; instead they provide a more nuanced analysis that highlights that the “fundamentals of Sri Lanka’s politics will likely remain unchanged”.

The 217th victory day of Pandara Vanniyan, the last sovereign of the Vanni chieftaincy was commemorated last month with fanfare across the Tamil homeland in the North-East. 

Proceedings began early morning in Vavuniya in the presence of Urban Council Chairman E. Gowthaman who also organised the event last month. 

The body of a 75-year-old Tamil man was discovered in Kanagarayankulam area of Vavuniya last month, in what police suspect may have been a murder.

The Sri Lankan police in Kanagarayankulam were informed that a body had been lying in the vicinity of one of the houses in the neighbourhood and subsequently arrived to conduct an investigation. 

The police identified the deceased as K. Indrakumar and are conducting an investigation suspecting murder due to the severe bruises that were found on the body. 

The Chinese Embassy in Colombo criticised the US governments’ recent sanctions that ban over 20 Chinese companies from buying American products and called sanctions on countries including Sri Lanka “unilateral and unjust”.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy told reporters, 

“In recent years, the US has been abandoning multilateralism, and imposed dozens of unilateral sanctions on different countries including China, Sri Lanka and even its own allies, with typical hegemonic logic and power politics, which are strongly objected by the international community.”

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed four more monks to the all-Sinhala Task Force on Archaeological Management in the East, as concerns continue over the  

He stated that the guidance of the monks would be needed due to the significance of the sites in Sinhala Buddhism. 

Jaffna University music lecturer and former LTTE cadre Kanesasundaram Kannadasan, has been remanded under the heavily disputed Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), despite the Court of Appeal (CoA) overturning a life sentence last year. Kannadasan was charged for allegedly recruiting "child soldiers" and facilitating forced abductions and awaits a retrial hearing next week.

Sri Lanka’s cabinet has approved a new constitutional amendment that will see the presidential office of Gotabaya Rajapaksa expand its role and the scaling back of constitutional checks and balances on executive power.

Canadian Tamils gathered in Brampton’s City Hall to begin the “Walk for Justice,” where 5 dedicated men began their walk to Ottawa’s parliament hill to call for an international investigation into Tamil disappearances in Sri Lanka.

This is in solidarity with families of the disappeared who are making the same demand of the UN Human Right’s Commissioner.

Speaking with People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL), both Sivakami Rajamanoharan, PEARL’s senior Advocacy Officer and former Tamil Guardian Editor-in-Chief, as well as Roshni Raveenthiran, a Tamil educator and community organiser, delivered an enlightening discussion on the role of female Tamil activists; the difficulties they face; and the means of by which the Tamil community can empower women.