Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, Sri Lanka’s top Catholic official, has backed calls for a ban on all political parties “based on religion and language,” a move that has previously been proposed by Sri Lanka’s prime minister and one that may have dire consequences for the island’s Tamils and Muslims.
“I urge the government to ban all parties based on religion and language,” Ranjith said in a homily last week. “This is not a matter of politics, this is a matter of humanity,” he continued, adding, “It is wrong to base a political party on religion and language.”
Former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad said that Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) should be removed from the country’s list of terrorist groups.
Sinhala Buddhist monk Ellawala Medhananda stated that “tenant” Tamils shouldn’t cause hassle for the “landlord” Sinhalese, in response to a speech by TMTK MP C V Wigneswaran in parliament last month, claiming there is “no proof that the North and East are historical Tamil provinces”.
The General Secretary of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) G L Peiris slammed the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) for meeting with the Indian High Commission and discussing the 13th Amendment to Sri Lanka’s constitution, claiming it would “spread racism in the country”.
The speaker of Sri Lanka’s parliament announced that a speech by TMTK MP C V Wigneswaran, referencing the indigenous nature of Tamil to the island, would not be expunged from Hansard after uproar from both government and opposition Sinhala parliamentarians.
In Wigneswaran’s speech, he opened with some sentiments in Tamil and then said in English,
The families of the disappeared in the North-East have called on the international community to “accelerate the process to proclaim a meaning justice” in an “appropriate and timely manner” for those who were forcibly disappeared, in a letter sent to the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC).
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake reportedly supported the abolition of the Provincial Council system in Sri Lanka in remarks made this week, according to News Wire.
Last month marked 10 years since the MV Sun Sea docked in Esquimalt, B.C., carrying 380 men, 63 women and 49 Tamil children fleeing a genocide perpetrated against them by the Sri Lankan government. However, a decade on from the arrival of the boat, many of the refugees still face a precarious situation in Canada.
An event was held in Victoria to mark its anniversary outside the legislature last month, with dozens of Tamils gathered. Speeches were given by those who came on the boat and their children, with a candle lit vigil in the evening.
Several British Tamil diaspora organisations have called on the UK Foreign Office to declare Sri Lanka’s Defence Attaché Brigadier BDSN Bothota a ‘persona non grata’ and allow him to be arrested and investigated for atrocity crimes and genocide.
“Sri Lanka’s military stands accused of committing grave atrocity crimes and genocide during the decades-long civil war,” wrote the ten organisations.
Writing for The Wire India, Mario Arulthas, Advocacy Director for PEARL, and Dr Madura Rasaratnam, professor of Comparative Politics at the City University of London, rebuke the argument that parliamentary elections indicate “a complete overhaul” of the political system with turn away from “Tamil nationalist politics and towards development”; instead they provide a more nuanced analysis that highlights that the “fundamentals of Sri Lanka’s politics will likely remain unchanged”.
The 217th victory day of Pandara Vanniyan, the last sovereign of the Vanni chieftaincy was commemorated last month with fanfare across the Tamil homeland in the North-East.
Proceedings began early morning in Vavuniya in the presence of Urban Council Chairman E. Gowthaman who also organised the event last month.
The body of a 75-year-old Tamil man was discovered in Kanagarayankulam area of Vavuniya last month, in what police suspect may have been a murder.
The Sri Lankan police in Kanagarayankulam were informed that a body had been lying in the vicinity of one of the houses in the neighbourhood and subsequently arrived to conduct an investigation.
The Chinese Embassy in Colombo criticised the US governments’ recent sanctions that ban over 20 Chinese companies from buying American products and called sanctions on countries including Sri Lanka “unilateral and unjust”.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy told reporters,
The families of the disappeared in the North-East have called on the international community to “accelerate the process to proclaim a meaning justice” in an “appropriate and timely manner” for those who were forcibly disappeared, in a letter sent to the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC).
