Australian authorities have finally granted permanent residency to the Nadesalingams, an Eelam Tamil family of asylum seekers who have faced years of legal battles to avoid deportation to Sri Lanka.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the 2019 presidential election. It is no secret that it has succeeded in instilling Islamophobia among the Sinhalese population. 6.9 million voters – mostly Sinhalese Buddhists – elected him. They celebrated the victory with loud cheers and by serving milk rice, saying that they have got a solid leader for the country.

Demonstrations took place in Jaffna and Batticaloa today demanding the release of the General Secretary of the Ceylon Teachers’ Union Joseph Stalin and other protestors who have been arrested by Sri Lankan authorities in a crackdown that has taken place in the South in recent weeks.

Protests have been put up across Jaffna this week demanding that former Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa be arrested for genocide.

The posters, spotted at several points across the peninsula, were put up by the National Forum of Tamil Culture.

Hundreds of trade union members led by Coalition of Trade Unions & Mass Organisations protested in Colombo on August 4, demanding the release of General Secretary of Ceylon Teachers Union Joseph Stalin and all anti-government activists arrested by Sri Lankan police. 

Amidst Sri Lanka’s ongoing economic collapse, Britain’s High Commissioner, Sarah Hulton, met with Sri Lanka’s newly appointed Prime Minister, Dinesh Gunawardene and discussed a range of topics, including constitutional reform, trade, and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

India’s External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar, and US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, met with Sri Lanka’s recently appointed Foreign Minister, Ali Sabry, during the annual ASEAN regional forum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

On Twitter, the Indian minister tweeted:

Sri Lanka’s newly appointed president Ranil Wickremesinghe told Tamil National Alliance (TNA) lawmakers yesterday that he knew some of the parliamentarians had voted for him, despite the coalition announcing it was backing another candidate the night before the ballot.

Delivering his first speech in parliament as president of Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickremesinghe laid out a roadmap for Sri Lanka which vowed to upload Buddhism; authorised the police to “maintain law and order”; eliminate state enterprises; support controversial investments; tackle corruption; strength Sri Lanka’s export economy; and provide a “political solution” for Tamils.

Protestors in Vavuniya staged demonstrations calling for the release of Joseph Stalin, the General Secretary of the Ceylon Teachers Union, after he was arrested by Sri Lankan security forces yesterday.

In a recent statement, Human Rights Watch (HRW), condemned the Sri Lankan government for its use of emergency regulations to “harass and arbitrarily detain activists seeking political reform and accountability for the country’s economic crisis.”

Speaking in parliament, general secretary of the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF), Selvarasa Kajendran, slammed the abuse of power by Sri Lanka’s president and stressed the need to abolish the “unitary system of governance in Sri Lanka and bring in a Federal Constitution based on the recognition of the Tamil nation”.

In his speech, he further stressed the need to “immediately dissolve this parliament and go for fresh elections” as the president does not have “even an iota of trust in the current Parliament”.

In a letter to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, human rights groups and Tamil civil society organisations request for her to publicly, to call upon the government of Singapore to prosecute former Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

A spate of heavy rainfall has led to flooding across the in the Nawalapitiya area of Kandy, with at least three local Tamils swept away in the waters and still missing.