A mobile tribute to the victims of the May 2009 reached Nallur today, after setting off from Valvettithurai yesterday. 

The remembrance vehicle, which is to do a tour of the Northern province, is expected to reach Mullivaikkal on May 18. 

Crusaders for Democracy this week called on the Sri Lankan president to release all the Tamil political prisoners who continued to be held in detention ahead of May 18. 

Speaking to journalists at their Jaffna office on Tuesday the party's media spokesperson, Thulasi said that it would be appropriate to release the prisoners at this time as Tamils remember the genocide that took place in the final stages of the armed conflict in 2009. 

"All Tamils participated in the struggle. It is not reasonable to hold some Tamils in prisons for it," he added. 

US-based advocacy group PEARL has documented Sri Lanka’s failure to fulfil its transitional justice commitments and the international community’s complacency towards it, in the organisation’s new report “Delayed or Denied? Sri Lanka’s Failing Transitional Justice Process.”

Police officers across the Northern province this week had their leave cancelled until May 20 citing security fears ahead of May 18 Tamil genocide remembrance events. 

Senior officers said that extra police officers would be needed to prevent violence. 

Tamils across the North-East and worldwide will be commemorating the genocide of Tamils in the final stages of the armed conflict at remembrance events on May 18. 

Previous years have repeatedly seen increased military and police personnel in the North-East, citing the risk of violence. 

Police officers in Ilavalai, Jaffna warned locals against holding any remembrance events commemorating the those who were killed in the last stages of the armed conflict. 

Civil society groups and locals had planned to hold a remembrance event on May 18, at 5.30pm. 

Ordering the event to be cancelled, the Ilavalai police station's head officer warned, "if you hold any event on May 18 it will be considered as a commemoration of the LTTE therefore we will not allow this event to happen." 

The thirty-six Tamils massacred by Sri Lankan navy officers on board the Kumuthini boat on May 15, 1985 were remembered on Tuesday in Neduntheevu. 

Families of those who were killed came to the memorial to light candles and lay flowers in memory of their loved ones. 

Sri Lanka’s Major General Udaya Perera, the former Commander of the Security Force Headquarters in Killinochchi, vehemently denied the military was involved in disappearances and said those who believed the army was keeping anyone in detention should “go and see a psychiatrist”.

Maj Gen Perera, who also held the post of Director of Operations in the military during and after the war, denied the armed forces were complicit in any disappearances.

“I can vouch and say there was no policy of such nature,” he told Al Jazeera’s 101 East.

The International Truth and Justice Project released a list of 280 names of forcibly disappeared Tamils, including the names of at least 29 children today.

The list is corroborated from eyewitness in the North-East and abroad, is the start of a new project by the ITJP to build a list of all those that surrendered themselves to Sri Lanka’s armed forces at the end of the armed conflict in 2009. 

A resolution on the Tamil genocide on Sri Lanka was delivered in Canada's parliament, before a cross party group of parliamentarians earlier this month, as the ‘Second International Conference on Tamil Nationhood and Genocide in Sri Lanka’ concluded in Ottawa.

Members of the Northern Provincial Council including its chief minister, C V Wigneswaran met with families in Iranaitivu on Monday, who have returned to reclaim their homes on the island and provided them with food items.