The Sri Lankan military consolidated its presence in Jaffna this week, announcing the completed construction of yet another building at the army headquarters.

The Church of St Peter at Navaly commemorated over 140 Tamil civilians killed in its premises by Sri Lankan Air Force bombs 24 years ago during the presidency of Chandrika Kumaratunga.

On July 9 1995, the Sri Lankan Air Force bombed the St Peter’s Church in Navaly and the nearby Sri Kathirgama Murugan Kovil, which were both sheltering displaced Tamils from army bombardment.

Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigations Department (CID) concluded that there is “no justification” for the arrest of a Muslim doctor accused of sterilising Sinhala women, yet the man continues to be held in custody.

Court documents seen by AFP show that Sri Lanka’s CID found no evidence to support any of the allegations against Mohamed Shafi and instead said that Deputy Inspector General of Police Kithsiri Jayalath, chief in Shafi's home region of Kurunegala, fabricated evidence and fed it to Sinhalese newspapers.

"There is no justification for the arrest of Dr. Shafi," the CID concluded.

The acquittal of Sri Lankan Special Task Force (STF) troops over the murder of five Tamil students in 2006 demonstrates the need for “a court with international participation” said Human Rights Watch in a joint statement with Amnesty International on Monday.

Both Sri Lanka and Myanmar are “on the forefront of a radical religious-nationalist movement,” said Hannah Beech, the Southeast Asia Bureau Chief for The New York Times this week, in a piece that looked at the growing “militant Buddhism” in both regions. 

In Sri Lanka “over the past few years, Buddhist mobs have waged deadly attacks against minority Muslim populations,” said the piece. “Buddhist nationalist ideologues are using the spiritual authority of extremist monks to bolster their support.”

A Sri Lankan navy officer accused of aiding a key suspect involved in the abduction and murder of 11 Tamil youths was the guest of honour at the passing out ceremony of hundreds of Sri Lankan Special Forces troops last month.

Admiral Ravindra C. Wijegunaratne, Sri Lanka’s Chief of Defence Staff, was given a special guard of honour at the ceremony and awarded Special Forces badges and Colours to troops, before addressing the crowd.

Sri Lanka’s most notorious hardline Buddhist monk, the recently pardoned from jail Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, has called on Sri Lanka’s 10,000 Buddhist temples to campaign for a Sinhala government to protect Sinhala interests.

Around 1000 Sinhala Buddhist monks and thousands of hardline supporters reportedly gathered in Kandy on Sunday for a convention called by Gnanasara, the head of the Sinhala supremacist Bodu Bala Sena group.

Hundreds of Tamils flocked to Mullaitivu on Saturday as a Hindu temple, formerly on the verge of being colonised by Buddhist monks, held a festival for the first time in over a decade.

The Neeraviyadi Pillaiyaar temple in Semmalai has been at the centre of a local dispute about land-grabs and Sinhalisation, as a Buddhist monk has spent the last ten years establishing a vihara on the temple’s premises, culminating in the building of a massive Buddha statue.