In an opinion piece for abc News, the director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict at the University of Sydney, Professor James Lynch, outlined the need to boycott the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting due to take place in Colombo later this year.

Excerpts follow below,

Photographs Uthayan

The office of the Tamil newspaper, Uthayan, was attacked during the early hours of Sunday morning, with equipment set fire to and employees assaulted.

Six masked men are reported to have entered the building in Kilinochchi, and opened fire injuring two staff members and setting equipment ablaze.

The owner of the Uthayan, and TNP MP, E. Saravanapavan, his staff informed him that the masked men had been shouting in Sinhala and possessed cricket stumps.

Saravanapavan said:

“This morning at around 4.45am three people with arms – two were carrying pistols and one was carrying what looked like an AK-47 – came into the building and scared away the security staff."

“They shot at the panel board and put kerosene all over the place. Four printing wheels got burned. The main part of the machine was destroyed. They also threw press oil everywhere.”

Speaking to the BBC, he added:

"In the office the manager was sleeping on the floor. They hammered him,"

"Another boy was badly hit - he needed stitches between his ear and his jaw."

The Sri Lanka meanwhile accused the Uthayan newspaper of an insider job in order to "tarnish the government's image".

The Director General of the Media Center for National Security Lakshman Hulugalla was quoted on the MOD website as saying:

“The setting fire to Uthayan newspaper printing office has been an inside job to tarnish the government’s image,”

Tamil politicians and activists in the North-East told the visiting Indian delegation to drop with "obsession" with the 13th Amendment.

K. Guruparan, lecturer of Law, at the Jaffna University, was quoted by The Hindu as saying:

A request by the US embassy in Colombo to discuss electricity tariffs has been rejected by the Sri Lankan government.

Ms. Allison V. Areias-Vogel, the Economic and Commercial Affairs Chief of the embassy, is reported to have written to the chairman of the Ceylon Electricity Board W B Ganegala to discuss issues regarding the refusal of the Petroleum Corporation to continue to issue fuel to the CEB on a deferred payment basis.
Ganegala is reported to have felt that this was interference in the internal matters of the government and sought instructions from his seniors.

Sri Lankan government-owned airline Mihin Lanka has decided to stop all its operations in Tamil Nadu, cancelling all flights from Colombo to Tiruchi.

The decision comes as state-run airlines Mihin Lanka and SriLankan Airlines posted widening year-on-year losses, earlier this month.

SriLankan airlines, which have received US$100 million of tax payer capital injections to stay afloat over the last 2 years, posted losses of 20.5 billion rupees in 2012.

Mihin Lanka meanwhile lost 1.0 billion rupees in 2012, compared to 455.3 million rupees in 2011.

S K Mittal, executive director of Trans Lanka Air Travels, the Chennai-based general sales agency (GSA) for the airline, stated the decision was made after a steep fall passengers flying to and from Colombo. Mittal stated,

"We have taken a decision to ground the four flights to Colombo because of lack of patronage on this sector".

19 refugees stranded in Dubai will not be deported back to Sri Lanka stated an official from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, amid fears that they face torture on their return.

The Times of India reported Babar Baloch, spokesperson for UNHCR in Geneva, as saying,

"UNHCR is looking for a solution to resettle the 19 refugees in other countries. We have full cooperation from the UAE government and there is no threat of the refugees being sent back to Sri Lanka".

"We have been working sincerely to settle them in other countries. Fifteen of the 39 recognized refugees left UAE and 12 are in the process of departing. Resettlement for others may take time. The UAE government has been supporting UNHCR in sheltering the refugees."

Several groups including Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Journalists for Democracy have expressed concern over their return and urged for the group not to be deported (See here and here).

One of the refugees is a former presenter for the National Television of Tamileelam (NTT), Rathimohan Lokini. Ramanan, another of the group stated,

"She (Lokini) is depressed. She knows what happened to Isaipriya, another TV presenter with the LTTE channel, who was brutally killed by the Sri Lankan Army".

Tamil journalist Rathimohan Lokini, currently stranded in Dubai, told the Independent that she is 'terrified' of being sent back to Sri Lanka, saying:

“I am in a situation where I could be sent back and killed. My colleagues who worked with me have been persecuted and one person, Isaipriya, was raped and killed during the war.”

TNA leader Sampanthan made a special statement in Parliament about attacks targeting TNA members and meetings, and the complicity of the Sri Lankan security forces in violence in the North.

Sampanthan asked the Speaker to observe that:

"the common feature of all these attacks is that they have been carried out by or with the connivance of the security forces and the police and even though the assailants were identifiable, no arrests have been made. These are also carried out under the watchful eyes of the police. This is clearly indicative of the complicity of the authorities."

The Sri Lankan army's report absolving themselves of any crime is a "joke" said the TNA MP Suresh Premachandran on Wednesday. Premachandran went onto to dismiss the government's claims that India was responsible for the protracted war as "absurd".

"It's absurd to blame India. All the mistakes are those made by the successive governments in Sri Lankam," said Premachandran.