An incident of religious disruption was reported on 24 July at the historic Kanniya Hot Springs Shivan Temple in Trincomalee, where a Sinhala-Buddhist monk attempted to impose unauthorised restrictions during Aadi Amavasai observances.

A peaceful march demanding justice for mass graves uncovered across the North-East was held on Thursday, 24 July, by the Union of Mass Organisations in Mannar.

Sri Lanka’s National Police Commission (NPC) has dismissed former State Intelligence Service (SIS) chief and Deputy Inspector General of Police Nilantha Jayawardena from service, following a disciplinary inquiry into his role in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed more than 270 people.

Retired Senior Deputy Inspector General (SDIG) of Police Priyantha Jayakody has been remanded until 6 August by the Mahara Magistrate’s Court, following his arrest by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on allegations of filing a false complaint involving an underworld threat.

A commemoration was held in Karaitivu, Amparai this week to mark 42 years since the 1983 Black July pogrom, with local officials and residents paying tribute to the thousands of Tamils who were killed during the state-orchestrated violence.

Sri Lanka is preparing to launch a new licensing round for offshore oil exploration in the Mannar Basin, Energy Minister Kumar Jayakody announced in parliament on Thursday.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has issued a detailed statement calling on the Sri Lankan government to ensure that ongoing excavations at the Chemmani mass grave site in Jaffna are conducted in full compliance with international human rights standards, including the Minnesota Protocol.

The Sri Lankan military continues coordinated strategy employing large-scale community and social welfare programmes to infiltrate and dominate civilian infrastructure - particularly schools within the Tamil homeland. These operations disproportionately target Tamil-majority regions and implicitly subjugate civilian institutions. Many of these programmes are led by Sri Lankan army units implicated in war crimes.

Tamils in Canberra, Australia, demonstrated on July 22 to demand an international investigation into the mass grave sites in Chemmani, Jaffna. 

Protesters in Canberra started their rally outside the Sri Lankan High Commission and marched to the United Nations office, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as well as several other embassies, where they delivered briefings to officials about the Chemmani mass grave site. 

(All photos by Zebedee Parkes)

A memorial event was held in Jaffna on Saturday to mark the 42nd anniversary of the massacre of key members of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) inside Welikada Prison in 1983 - a massacre widely remembered as one of the darkest chapters in Sri Lanka’s treatment of Tamil political prisoners.