Residents of Kepapilavu in Mullaitivu District launched a hunger strike on Wednesday, demanding the release of 171 acres of ancestral land that remain under the occupation of the Sri Lankan military more than 17 years after the end of the armed conflict.
Rohitha Rajapaksa, the son of former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, was questioned for nearly six hours by the Central Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB) on Thursday as part of an investigation into the source of funds allegedly used to invest Rs. 19 million in two private companies.
A newly published study has identified the earliest scientifically confirmed evidence of prehistoric human settlement on Velanai Island in the Jaffna Peninsula, dating back around 3,460 years and overturning an erroneous long-held Sri Lankan assumption that the region was largely uninhabited until much later.
The Committee for Protecting Rights of Prisoners has formally raised concerns with a visiting United Nations delegation over custodial deaths, prison overcrowding, alleged torture and deteriorating detention conditions in Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankan military has erected a signboard designating a military-run agricultural farm on privately owned land inside the Valikamam North High Security Zone (HSZ), entrenching its presence even as landowners campaign for the return of their property.
Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) leader and Member of Parliament Rauff Hakeem has said that the sovereignty of Katchatheevu is already settled under international law and bilateral agreements, warning that attempts to reopen the issue are not a practical solution to the long-running dispute between fishermen on both sides of the Palk Strait.
The Tamil Nadu chief minister, Vijay, made a brief reference to Eelam Tamils during a speech in the state legislative assembly on Tuesday, recalling his participation in a 2008 hunger strike in support of Tamils during the final stages of the armed conflict, in remarks that looked back to his own activism rather than to the realities facing Tamils in the North-East today.
Excavation work at the Chemmani mass grave, the largest uncovered on the island, has once again been temporarily halted, with officials planning to resume around 15 July.
The United States Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, S. Paul Kapur, met the Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake at the Presidential Secretariat during a three-day visit to the island, in talks centred on trade, investment and security cooperation.
The Association for Relatives of the Enforced Disappeared in the North-East (ARED) has appealed to the United Nations to ensure an international investigation into enforced disappearances and mass graves across the Tamil homeland, including the ongoing excavations at Chemmani, where more than 380 human skeletal remains have been uncovered.
The excavation of the Chemmani mass grave entered the 30th day of its third phase on Sunday, with seven sets of human skeletal remains exhumed and a further eleven sets newly identified at the site.
As Andy Burnham emerges as the frontrunner to succeed Keir Starmer as Labour leader and British prime minister, British Tamils are weighing a record on Tamil justice that is far thinner than the outgoing premier's, yet not quite the blank slate it might first appear.
Footage from in Umaiyalpuram, Kilinochchi, shows officers of Sri Lanka's Special Task Force (STF) assaulting a woman during a confrontation with residents, after which fourteen Tamil civilians, among them young children, schoolgirls and elderly residents, were remanded, in an operation that began over alleged illegal sand mining.
