A Sri Lankan military soldier has been admitted to hospital in critical condition after attempting to take his own life by shooting himself in Jaffna last week. The injured soldier has been identified as H. M. W. P. Bandara, a resident of Kurunegala, who was attached to the 523rd Army Camp located in Chavakachcheri. He is currently receiving treatment at Jaffna Teaching Hospital, where medical staff have described his condition as critical.

A large protest was held in Nedunkerni in Vavuniya against the Sri Lankan government’s proposed Kivul Oya Reservoir Project, with demonstrators warning that the scheme is being used to colonise the Tamil homeland with Sinhala settlers and push demographic change in the area.

Shiranthi Rajapaksa, the wife of former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, appeared before the Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID) to provide a statement in connection with investigations into alleged financial irregularities linked to the ‘Siriliya’ organisation, a firm she founded and ran during the time her husband was president.

Journalists in Mullaitivu commemorated Black January last week, with a remembrance ceremony and the distribution of leaflets, honouring media workers who were killed or forcibly disappeared by the Sri Lankan state.

S. Bavanandarajah, a National People’s Power (NPP) Member of Parliament from Jaffna, has stated that he has formally requested the Sri Lankan military to vacate an army camp located on privately owned land in the Sanganai area and to return the land to its rightful owners.

When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney acknowledged that the global order is in a state of “rupture” last month, he gave voice to what many across the world have already felt for some time. The old certainties of the West are collapsing and longstanding alliances are being recalibrated. The world is changing. Where does that leave Eelam Tamils and the ongoing struggle for liberation? 

British Tamils staged a demonstration outside the Sri Lankan High Commission in London this month, condemning ongoing repression in Sri Lanka and demanding the immediate repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).

Sri Lankan military personnel who had been stationed on land in Pandatharippu belonging to the Manipay Pradeshiya Sabha have fully vacated the premises, with the land formally handed back to civilian authorities last week.

The Sri Lankan government has continued to deny access to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to more than 100 Rohingya refugees, including women and children, who have been held under military custody for over a year at an occupying air force base in Mullaitivu.

The National People’s Power (NPP) Government that was elected to effect ‘system change’ is recycling drafts of former governments that the NPP themselves, when in opposition, said they would scrap if they were to be elected. 

While New Delhi and Brussels have framed the agreement as a historic partnership covering nearly a quarter of global GDP, the implications for Sri Lanka are far more troubling, with risks of Colombo being further marginalised within an already fragile economic landscape.

A memorial tribute for the late Thambithurai Muthukumarasamy, also known as T Kumar, a pioneering figure of the Eelam liberation struggle and a long-standing international human rights activist, was held in Batticaloa last week.

The 39th anniversary of the Kokkadichcholai massacre, one of the most brutal mass killings to scar the Eastern Province, was commemorated yesterday, 28 January 2026, in Batticaloa, as families and representatives once again demanded justice for the victims.