Tamil Nadu Fisherman and local trade union members staged a protest against the Sri Lankan navy for seizing the fisherman’s boats, on Friday.

The protest, which took place on Pamban beach in Rameswaram, called on the Sri Lankan navy to return the 19 boats that were seized from Tamil Nadu fisherman in 2016 and has as a result impacted the livelihoods of families of fisherman in villages across Rameswaram.

A senior Sri Lankan official claimed that The Elders, a group of senior luminaries founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007, have “become senile” or “deliberately twisted the facts about Sri Lanka” in a statement that lashed out at the organisation this week.

US Congressmen Brad Sherman and Jamie Raskin introduced a House Resolution calling for an end to enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka, across Asia and around the world and also calls upon the United States to ratify the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

The resolution highlights that "Tamil families of the disappeared have demonstrated tremendous courage in conducting continuing protests, lasting over 1,300 days to demand answers from the Sri Lankan state, despite being met with threats, intimidation, and harrassment by state security forces."

It also noted that Sri Lanka has "promoted high-ranking military officials suspected of forcibly disappearing persons and bearing responsibility for war crimes, incuding Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva, and has failed to hold accountable other current military officials accused of war crimes."

Amidst a Sri Lankan state crackdown of commemoration activities for Maaveerar Naal, Tamil families of the disappeared have asserted families' rights to remember their war dead.

‘‘No one can stop individuals from participating in the remembrance. The mothers will also commemorate in the same way’’ a representative of families protesting in Vavuniya said.

‘By bringing the war to an end, we have created a situation where the people in Northern Province are eating pizzas whereas they earlier used to eat Puttu, Vadai and Soru [Rice],’ Jaffna Headquarters Inspector Prasad Fernando said to the Jaffna Magistrate Court in a hearing last week.

Sri Lankan police stopped and interrogated a divisional council member in Mullaitivu for over three hours in connection with the upcoming anniversary of the Iyankulam massacre carried out by the Sri Lankan army's Deep Penetration Unit (DPU).

Sri Lanka's army commander saw off a group of soldiers earlier this week, who are off to join a UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, despite human rights concerns. 

The United Nations failed to “prevent ethnic slaughter in places like Sri Lanka” said former US president Barack Obama in his memoir, ‘A Promised Land’, reflecting on his time at the White House.

“I read the U.N.’s 1945 founding charter and was struck by how its mission matched my mother’s optimism,” wrote Obama, reflecting on his early conversations as a child about the global body. “Needless to say, the U.N. hadn’t always lived up to these lofty intentions.”

“In the middle of the Cold War, the chances of reaching any consensus had been slim, which is why the U.N. had stood idle as Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary or U.S. planes dropped napalm on the Vietnamese countryside. Even after the Cold War, divisions within the Security Council continued to hamstring the U.N.’s ability to tackle problems. Its member states lacked either the means or the collective will to reconstruct failing states like Somalia, or prevent ethnic slaughter in places like Sri Lanka.”

The Sri Lankan state has intensified its crackdown on commemorations of Maaveerar Naal, the Tamil national remembrance day for fallen LTTE fighters, with police obtaining court injunctions against commemorations in several districts and both police and Sri Lankan army setting up roadblocks and checkpoints around LTTE cemeteries.

The Jaffna High Court on Friday rejected petitions against a number of injunctions, with the judge ruling that the court had no jurisdiction to issue such an order. The court however further stated that no one can prevent the petitioners from commemorating individually, but that collective commemoration was a matter related to national security.

The UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), has published an updated report on 30 countries of human rights concerns, noting that the “human rights environment in Sri Lanka worsened”.

Human rights under attack

Tamils across London are showcasing their unity by flying the Tamil Eelam flag outside homes and businesses in the build-up to Maaveerar Naal, which takes place on 27 November.

Tamil National Alliance parliamentarian M A Sumanthiran paid tribute to the LTTE’s Captain Pandithar at the fighter's family home this morning, as part of events leading up to Maaveerar Naal this week.

The Kayts Magistrate's Court has imposed a ban on observing Maaveerar Naal and other remembrance events in Jaffna from today until November 27.

An order was was issued by the court yesterday evening under the Covid-19 Isolation Act after Kayts police filed a case to ban any commemoration events. The police said they had received information that arrangements were being made to observe Maaveerar Naal in Velanani and Pungudutivu.