According to AidData, Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka remains a top option for China’s next naval base within the next few years, raising security concerns for the US and India.

Given its “strategic location, the popularity of China among elites and the population, and Sri Lanka’s alignment with China in UNGA voting, Hambantota is our top candidate for a future base” AidData reports.

A hartal was carried out across the North-East yesterday as Tamils across the homeland demand for an international investigation into the Kokkuthodavai mass grave. 

In rememberance of 40 years since the anti-Tamil pogroms of 1983, British Tamils assembled in Trafalgar Square.

Marking the 40^th anniversary of Black July, an anti-Tamil pogrom that saw the slaughter of over 3,000 Tamils, British MPs are calling on the British government and the international community to recognise the pogrom as an act of genocide.

The 40th anniversary of the Welikada prison massacre was commemorated at Valvettithurai, Jaffna. The massacre which resulted in the murder of 53 political prisoners was instigated during the Black July pogrom by prison officials.

This year marks four decades since the genocidal violence of Black July. With the backing of the Sinhala Buddhist State, Sinhala mobs, armed with electoral rolls and transported by government-owned vehicles, unleashed a torrent of bloodshed killing over 3,000 Tamils, burning down thousands of Tamil homes and businesses, and displacing an estimated 150,000.

Sinhala extremist group, Sinhala Ravaya, disrupted a Black July commemoration event in Colombo over the weekend. 

Video footage from the commemoration shows a member of Sinhala Ravaya calling those particiapting in the commemoration 'kottiya' - a Sinhala term used to describe the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). 

Students from the University of Jaffna held a commemoration event to remember the thousands of Tamils that were murdered by state-sponsored Sinhala mobs during the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom. 

In a statement marking 40 years since the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom, advocacy organisation People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) highlighted Sri Lanka's culture of impunity and the need for an independent, international accountability mechanism.

Marking the 40 years since the Black July pogrom, Eric Walsh Canada's High Commissioner to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, tweeted that the "wounds from July 1983 have yet to heal."

A Tamil freelance journalist, Vijayaratnam Saravanan, highlighted the ongoing media repression by Sri Lanka to Eric Walsh, the Canadian High Commissioner during his visit to Mullaitivu this week. 

The High Commissioner for Canada in Sri Lanka, Eric Walsh, visited Jaffna this week, where he met with Tamil politicians, visited the Jaffna library and attended a film screening organised by Jaffna Transgender Network.  

On July 12th, the families of the disappeared in Mullaitivu conducted a protest to demand international oversight during the ongoing excavation and exhumation of a mass grave discovered in Kokkuthoduvai, Mullaitivu.