Following the appointment of Britain’s first non-white Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, Sri Lanka’s President, Ranil Wickremesinghe, rushed to congratulate the UK’s new leader and claimed confidence that British-Sri Lankan relations would strengthen.

“I look forward to enhancing this partnership, particularly through the ‘Global Britain’ policy and the UK’s new ‘Platinum Partnership’ scheme with the Commonwealth countries,” Wickremesinghe wrote.

During his visit to Jaffna, the US embassy's deputy chief of mission, Doug Sonnek, met with the Families of the Disappeared and Tamil politicians from across the North-East.

Tamil Families of the Disappeared have protested for over 2,000 days to demand an account for their loved ones who forcibly disappeared by the Sri Lankan military. An estimated 138 protesters have died without knowing the fate of their loved ones.

The US embassy marked the meeting stating on Twitter:
 

As a new British Prime minster takes office, Tamils across the country will be watching closely. It is indeed historic that Rishi Sunak will be the first person of South Asian office to hold the highest office in the country. However, both domestically and internationally, he will have his work cut out for him.

Today marks 26 years since two Tamil activists were shot dead in a Parisian neighbourhood, a murder that shocked the Tamil diaspora worldwide and remains unsolved to this day.

Kandiah Gajendran, also known as Gajan, was the editor of Paris based Tamil weekly 'Eelamurasu' and Kandiah Perinpanathan, known as Nathan, was in-charge of LTTE's international finance. The two men aged 30 and 32-years old respectively, were strolling down Boulevard de La Chapelle on the 26th of October 1996 - a neighbourhood which had a long established and thriving Eelam Tamil community.

China’s Ambassador to Bangladesh attempted to calm concerns over the country’s troubled economic situation, by stating it was “much better” than what was happening in Sri Lanka.

"We foresee a promising outlook [in terms of relations with Bangladesh],” Li Jiming told the Jatiya Press Club in Dhaka. “We are ready to work with Bangladesh for a brighter future."

Tamil families of the disappeared have spoken about the pain they continue to feel, including suicide attempts, as they continue to search for their abducted loved ones.

Speaking to Reuters, government employee Valantina Daniel said her 66-year-old injured mother was forcibly disappeared in 2009.

Reuters also spoke to Arumuga Lakshmi, whose daughter Ranjinithervy went missing in 2004, followed three years later by her son Sivakumar.

See extracts from the Reuters piece below:

The head of Sri Lanka’s Office of Missing Persons (OMP) told Reuters that a genocide of Tamils did not take place and instead claimed the military had “rescued 60,000 civilians” during a 2009 offensive that was littered with massacres.

Mahesh Katundala, chairman of the much criticised OMP claimed “there was no evidence” that the many thousands of Tamils who had surrendered to the Sri Lankan military in 2009 had been abducted by the security forces.

The leader of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), Rauf Hakeem, has spoken out against any international accountability mechanism for mass atrocities and instead advocated for a wholly domestic Sri Lankan process.

Responding to a tweet by disgraced former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, congratulating Xi Jinping for his re-election as the CPC’s General Secretary, China’s embassy in Sri Lanka thanked the accused war criminal and noted their ambition to enhance the relationship between the CPC and the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP).

Sri Lanka’s economic crisis has seen more people turn to sex work, said a leading doctor on the island, which in turn has led to a growing number of sexually transmitted diseases being detected.

According to Sri Lanka’s National STD/AIDS Control Programme, 4,556 HIV patients were recorded in the first quarter of 2022, up 11.8 percent from 4,073 in 2021 first quarter.

In the second quarter of 2022, 4,686 HIV patients have been identified, up 13.2 percent from 4,142 in 2021.