With the 2024 UK General Election set to take place on July 4, more British Tamils than ever before have been named as candidates with a range of Britain’s political parties.

The Tamil Guardian caught up with the candidates this month, as they vie to become one of the UK’s first-ever British Tamil parliamentarians.

Senior figures within the Labour Party addressed an event to mark Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day at the Houses of Parliament this month, where they reiterated pledges to British Tamils and called for Sri Lanka to be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The 2024 Gwangju Prize for Human Rights by the South Korean May 18 Memorial Foundation has been awarded to Tamil women's rights activist Suganthini Mathiyamuthan Thangaras.

Suganthini, who is with the "Amara" organization , has been fighting for the rights and empowerment of war-affected women in Tamil Eelam against the repression and suffering caused by the Sri Lankan government and its security forces. 

Thousands of Tamils have gathered in Mullivaikkal, Mullaitivu, the area where tens of thousands were massacred by the Sri Lankan government in the final days of the armed conflict fifteen years ago.

The Sri Lankan military overruns the last remaining ‘No Fire Zone’.

TamilNet receives a final phone call before it loses all communication with its correspondents in the field.

Members of the US Congress reiterated their support for a landmark resolution this week, calling for an independence referendum for Eelam Tamils and recognising the genocide committed against them by the Sri Lankan state.

Shortly after introducing the resolution and speeches on the Congress floor, members addressed an event at the Library of Congress. Over 100 Tamils from across the United States and around the world were in attendance to mark the occasion.

A landmark resolution was introduced to the US Congress calling on the United States to work towards an independence referendum for Eelam Tamils and recognise the genocide committed against them by the Sri Lankan state.

The resolution, introduced by Representative Wiley Nickel, is the first of its kind to be brought to the US Congress. It comes as Tamils marked 15 years since the Mullivaikkal genocide this week, with May 18 commemorated as Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day worldwide.

On May 10, 2009, Catholic Priest Father Francis Joseph wrote to the Pope from inside the No Fire Zone, calling on the Church to break its silence on the massacre of Tamils.

On this day 15 years ago, Stephen Sunthararaj, an activist who had exposed the trafficking of Tamil children into international prostitution rings, was abducted and forcibly disappeared in Colombo by armed men in military uniforms.

As part of his work he had told the then United States Ambassador in Colombo about prostitution rings run by government aligned paramilitaries in Jaffna. The paramilitaries were trafficking children into sex rings in India and Malaysia with the help of immigration officials.

Nagalingam Ethirveerasingam, the Jaffna-born activist and athlete, who competed in the 1952 Olympics and won the first Gold Medal in any sport for Ceylon passed away on Thursday, 18 April 2024, aged 89 years old.