A Sri Lankan police officer assaulted two Tamil schoolchildren and their father, a former LTTE cadre, leaving all three hospitalised on Sunday.

The children, 16-year-old Kirupakaran and 14-year-old Sharmila, were with their father P Vasanthakumar and the rest of the family at home when the Sri Lankan police officer arrived at their residence in the evening.

A human skeleton has been found by the Kankesanthurai railway station in Jaffna this morning.

Residents of Cheddikulam, Vavuniya reported a tense situation last week after Sri Lankan authorities stepped up a campaign to evict Muslim farmers from the area by arresting one farmer and seizing his tractor.

The incident took place last Thursday in Suduventha Pilavu where Muslim farmers have been resisting attempts by the Sri Lankan forest department to evict them from their cultivation lands.

Tensions came to a head when STF troops arrested one farmer and seized his tractor, causing locals to confront forest department officials.

A school in Myliddy, Jaffna was released after 27 years of military occupation, with most of the buildings demolished and a well-maintained Buddhist shrine and piles of discarded alcohol bottles in their place.

Northern Provincial Council member, T Ravikaran has rubbished claims that the current Sri Lankan government does not participate in Sinhalisation of the North, saying that Sinhala settlements have continued with the current government and that the Sri Lankan President was anyway complicit in his role as Mahaweli development minister the previous regimes.

The Northern Provincial Council (NPC) today called on the UN Human Rights Council to refer Sri Lanka to the UN General Assembly and to the UN Security Council in order "to be referred to the International Criminal Court or to a specially created international criminal tribunal set up by the UN". 

In a resolution passed today, the NPC also urged the UNHRC, which is currently holding its 39th session in Geneva, to appoint a UN Special Rapporteur for Sri Lanka and to urge the UN to impose military sanctions on Sri Lanka. 

The organiser of a hartal in Batticaloa this week, Kanapathipillai Mohan, has been arrested by Eravur police for allegedly inciting the hartal and damaging public property. 

The hartal was organised by local businesses and residents to demonstrate against the construction of a bottled water company. 

Mohan was called in to the police station for an inquiry regarding the hartal and was arrested at the station.

The hartal follows a protest last month in Eravur, where residents expressed concern the factory would take excessive amounts of water from Batticaloa's local water supplies. 

Chunnakam police on Sunday arrested three Tamil youths for allegedly carrying swords whilst travelling on the roadside. 

The youths are understood to be from Uduvil, Jaffna and are in their early twenties. 

Chunnakam police state two swords and the youths' motorbikes were confiscated. 

Britain, Germany, Macedonia and Montenegro said that Sri Lanka’s lack of progress in important areas of reform “risks undermining reconciliation efforts” in a statement delivered to the 39^th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) today.

The joint statement by the states, which make up the Sri Lanka core group, said that in co-sponsoring a resolution that called for an accountability mechanism with international judges, “Sri Lanka recognised that national accountability mechanisms are essential to dealing with the past, and to restoring confidence among its communities”.

However, the core group went on to state “these have yet to be established”.

Sri Lanka’s state minister of defence said “arrangements are being made to strengthen security at all times," as he sought to reiterate his government’s commitment to strengthening the military this week.

"I must stress that under the advice of President Maithripala Sirisena, the guidance of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and all security chiefs of security, arrangements are being made to strengthen security at all times," Ruwan Wijewardene told a meeting in Biyagama.