US soldiers in military uniform held a music concert in Trincomalee on Wednesday, as they marked their arrival on the island for this year’s Pacific Partnership exercise with the Sri Lankan navy

The exercise, set to take place over the next two weeks, will see at least 36 different events with personnel from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, France, Peru, and Japan, alongside Sri Lankan soldiers.

The Sri Lankan government announced that it will ban the sale of all meat, alongside the liquor and gambling, for the Buddhist festival of Vesak, which is due to be celebrated next month.

The latest move comes after Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena declared that International Workers’ Day, commonly marked as May Day, will now be shifted from May 1st to May 7^th due to the festival, after pressure from various Buddhist lobby groups. This is reportedly the first time in Sri Lanka’s history that May Day festivities had been shifted.

The head of Bodu Bala Sena, a Sinhala nationalist extremist group, met with a Sri Lankan government minister this week, despite the organisation’s history of hate speech and inciting racial violence.

Sri Lankan soldiers have begun constructing installations to celebrate the Buddhist festival of Vesak in the popular grounds where May Day rallies usually take place, forcing May Day rally organisers to find alternative locations this year.

Sri Lanka’s minister of Ports and Shipping Mahinda Samarasinghe said that the Sri Lanka Freedom Party will hold its party May day rally in Batticaloa. 

The SLFP Central Committee has taken this decision during the meeting headed by Persistent Maithripala Sirisena said the minister, reports the Sri Lanka Boradcasting Cooperation. 

Minister Nimal Siripala De Silva has been appointed to organise the May Day Rally, added Mr Samarasinghe.

The European Court of Justice has ruled that asylum seekers who faced risk of “significantly and irreversibly worsened” mental health upon return to their country of origin were due protection under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Using the case of a Tamil asylum seeker from Sri Lanka seeking protection in Britain, the ECJ said,

“It is established case-law that the “inadequacy” of Sri Lanka’s health system was not contested, and it was ‘solely’ up to a national (EU member nation) court to assess whether the man, if returned, would remain protected from ill-health in terms of European Convention on Human Rights.”

Villagers from Iranaitivu staged a massive protest this week, sailing to their island which is occupied by the Sri Lankan military and marching to their homes, refusing to leave until they are guaranteed their land will be returned to them.

In a striking and daring demonstration on Monday some 300 Tamils sailed to the island, which has been occupied by the Sri Lankan navy for years. Villagers marched from their protest site on the Kilinochchi district mainland to the coastline where their fishing boats had docked.

China has reiterated that there are no plans of militarising Sri Lanka’s southern Hambantota report reiterated Sri Lanka’s prime minister Ranil Wickrememsinghe after a meeting with the Chinese Ambassador to Sri Lanka Cheng Xueyuan.

Responding to press concerns about Chinese militarisation of the port, Ambassador Xueyuan said,

The blood of Sinhalese soldiers runs in Tamils that have received treatment at the Jaffna Teaching Hospital, the governor of the Northern Province said on Sunday.

Echoing previous statements he had made about Tamil blood being mixed with Sinhalese, the governor, Reginald Cooray, said that the armed forces donated blood to the Jaffna Teaching Hospital whenever the need arose.

The governor made the remarks at the opening of two new buildings at a Tamil-diaspora funded cultural centre in Punguduthivu.

14 Sri Lankan soldiers from the Vavuniya - Pampaimadu camp were admitted to hospital on Sunday with alleged breathing problems.

The soldiers reportedly developed sudden breathing problems during a training exercise on Sunday morning and were rushed to Vavuniya General Hospital.

Several soldiers were also reported to have received first aid at the camp.