Responding to a US intelligence report, which maintains that China may seek to establish a military presence on Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka's Defence Minister, Premitha Bandara Tennakoon dismissed the claims and told reporters that they have been no discussion "with any foreign government including China for a possible establishment of a military base here in Sri Lanka”.

The Sri Lankan navy has been accused of being complict in the murder of a man in Jaffna, after they were seen in dramatic CCTV footage refusing to help the man and his wife as they were being chased and beating the couple as they were abducted by unidentified assailants.

Five out of the eight Tamils who were arrested last week at Vedukkunaari Hill Athi Sivan temple have launched a hunger strike to demand their immediate release.  

Marking 2,200 days of protest the Association for the relatives of the enforced disappearances, representing 8 districts across the North East, called on UN member states to recognise the Tamil genocide and bring Sri Lanka before the International Criminal Court.

Indigo Airlines, a budget airline from India is tipped to operate direct flights between Chennai and Jaffna later this year.

In a letter to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Human Rights Watch (HRW) calls upon the organisation to stress to Sri Lanka the importance of civil society and to abandon proposed legislation that would severly curtail their freedom.

The University of Jaffna's Teacher's Association has described last week's violence and arrests at Vedukkunaari Athi Sivan temple in Vavuniya as the "latest manifestations of the violence of Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism" as efforts to colonise the traditionally Tamil temple continue. 

Last Friday, as Tamils gathered at the temple to observe Shivarathri, Sri Lankan police aggressively disrupted the religious ceremony and arrested eight Tamil devotees. 

Sri Lanka’s Archbishop of Colombo delivered a statement at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva last week, where he called for an investigation into the Easter Sunday attacks and – for the first time – spoke of accountability “for the atrocities in the North-East.”

Lands that were being occupied by the Sri Lankan military were released to their original owners for the first time in years, with Tamils returning to the area finding their homes having been left in ruins.

Some of the families were visiting their homes for the first time in almost 30 years. Much of the land had been seized by the Sri Lankan military after it launched an offensive to capture the Jaffna peninsula in 1995, triggering an exodus of over half a million people.

Sri Lanka's archaeology department has claimed that the eight Tamil devotees at Vedukkunaari Hill Athi Sivan temple were arrested during the Shivarathri for damaging the temple's antiquities. 

Appearing on behalf of those arrested, lawyer Kanagaratnam Sugash said that the archaeology department has falsely accused the eight individuals of damaging historical monuments at the temple.