A 73-year-old Tamil man who had spent over a decade searching for his forcibly disappeared son, has passed away in Mannar last week.

Locals in Mannar commemorated the 35th anniversary of the Vankalai church massacre this week, where Sri Lankan soldiers shot dead a Christian father and other Tamils.

The Sri Lankan government has announced it will “review” the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) Act, which was brought in by the previous regime as part of its commitments to a UN Human Rights Council resolution on accountability.

United National Party (UNP) parliamentarian Ranjan Ramanayake has been released on bail after having been arrested by Sri Lankan police, for allegedly not having renewed the license of a weapon that had been provided by the government. 

Ramanayake’s arrest makes him the third opposition leader to have been detained since Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency began in November last year. 

S. Mahendran

Prison Number Y-13139 “G” Ward,

New Magazine Prison,

Borella Colombo-09.

September 16, 2007

Brother, even when I was 17, when I used to eat breakfast, I made rice balls out of the old rice, curd, sugar, salt and banana.

EU Ambassadors met with Sri Lanka’s President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, to discuss economic and political development in Sri Lanka; where, Gotabaya rejected the possibility of devolving police control to the provincial councils.

Detainees in Batticaloa Prison protested following the death of a fellow prisoner on Sunday.

Jamaldeen Mohamadu Najeem, a 28-year-old who was serving a prison sentence for failure to pay maintenance died on Sunday morning at Batticaloa Hospital, where he had been taken after contracting a fever.

Sri Lanka’s police headquarters have launched a ‘special investigation’ into the departure of top organised crime investigator Nishantha Silva from the island following the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Several weeks into Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency, journalists on the island are coming under increasing threat. Whilst the island has always been a dangerous place for the press, and for Tamil journalists in particular, over the last month there has been a worrying rise in intimidation, harassment and even physical assaults of media workers, alongside political activists and human rights defenders.

The longest serving Tamil political prisoner who was arrested at the age of 17 in 1993 has died.

Sellapillai Mahendran was arrested during a round-up in Batticaloa on September 27, 1993. Two years later, he was sentenced to 70 years in prison and life imprisonment based on a confession produced following a month of torture in detention. After appealing the conviction at Sri Lanka's Supreme Court, the 70-year sentence was reduced to 10 years but the life sentence was upheld.

While some sources claim that his 1995 conviction was in connection with the alleged killing of 600 police officers in the East - an incident which took place three years prior when Mahendran was aged just 14 - his family said that they were never told the reason for his conviction.

Sinamkol, a film shot entirely in parts of Tamil Eelam has widely received rave reviews and is currently playing at a number of screens.

Tamil Eelam FA will be among the 16 teams competing in the 2020 Confederation of Independent Football Associations (CONIFA) World Football Cup, after an impressing double victory in the qualifiers powered the team through to the tournament. 

The team played two CONIFA World Football 2020 qualifiers in December against East Turkistan and West Papua. Victory in both games saw Tamil Eelam gain enough points to qualify for the 2020 World Football Cup taking place between 30 May - 7 June 2020 in Skopje, Republic of North Macedonia.

Iran’s Ambassador to Sri Lanka Mohammad Zaeri Amirani met with Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary Kamal Gunaratne at his office, to discuss possible training opportunities that could be offered to Sri Lankan Police and Armed Forces personnel in Iran, on Thursday.

Families of the disappeared in Vavuniya paid tribute to a Tamil political prisoner who passed away after 26 years of imprisonment, as they marked over 1,050 days of protest last week.

Sellapillai Mahendran was arrested as a teenager during a round-up in Batticaloa on September 27, 1993. He passed away last week after 26 years of imprisonment, based on a false confession produced following a month of torture in detention.