A December 2024 Boiler Room music event held at the former Rio Cinema, a site set alight during the 1983 anti-Tamil pogroms, has drawn scrutiny over its corporate backing, promotional narrative, and ethical implications. The event, a collaboration between the global music platform Boiler Room, South Asian collective DialledIn, and Colombo based creative agency Fold Media, was publicly promoted as a post-war reconciliation initiative when content was released during July 2025’s Black July memorial period.

Sri Lanka’s former president and accused war criminal Mahinda Rajapaksa returned to his family residence in Tangalle today, after being forced to vacate his luxury state-funded mansion in Colombo under new legislation scrapping benefits for former heads of state.

Indian officials held talks in Jaffna last week on the long-delayed development of Point Pedro harbour, pledging financial assistance for the project that has repeatedly failed to materialise in the Tamil homeland.

A group of 16 Sri Lankan journalists has been flown to Israel on a five-day study programme arranged by the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi, in what critics have described as a propaganda exercise to whitewash Tel Aviv’s assault on Gaza.

The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) has condemned Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath’s address at the UN Human Rights Council this week, accusing Colombo of failing to deliver on promises of accountability, reconciliation and devolution, more than a year after Anura Kumara Dissanayake came to power.

India delivered its statement on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, where it once again stressed its support for Tamil aspirations of “equality, justice, dignity and peace”, but only within what it described as the island’s “unity, territorial integrity and sovereignty.”

At the UN Human Rights Council this week, there was a range of responses from member states over Sri Lanka’s human rights record and the UN’s evidence-gathering mandate, with the EU, UK and several partners reiterating the need for accountability whilst others including Russia, Belarus, Iran, Pakistan, Venezuela and others attacked international scrutiny and urged deference to Colombo’s “domestic processes”.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk delivered his report on Sri Lanka to the 60th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, where he urged Colombo to take “decisive action” on accountability and reforms but stopped short of calling for a fully international accountability mechanism, despite decades of impunity.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath addressed the 60th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, where he insisted that accountability for mass atrocities would only be pursued through domestic processes, once again rejecting longstanding calls for international accountability for the Tamil genocide.