Industries in Colombo have warned that Chinese companies are taking over local industry and this would bring about the "collapse of local construction companies within years", the Sunday Times reports. 

Stating that Chinese companies were handling around 40 percent of construction projects, the Construction Industry Development Authority (CIDA) claims the China International Construction (CHINCA) intends to take over 70 percent. 

CIDA has called on the government to approve legislation to protect local construction companies, the paper reported.  

Sri Lankan police increased their security presence in Nayaru, Mullaitivu, citing security concerns for Sinhala fishermen who continue to fish the region. 

Tensions have continued in the area after locals protested this month over police and local government inaction over illegal fishing by Sinhala fishermen. 

Three Sinhala fishermen were arrested this week over the torching of Tamil fishermen's boats and huts in Mullaitivu on Monday, which destroyed hundreds of thousands of rupees worth of fishing equipment. 

Whilst some of the Sinhalese settlers left the area on Thursday under heavy police escort, some have remained. 

A Tamil journalist has been summoned by Sri Lanka's Criminal Investigation Division (CID) on August 24. 

The journalist, Nadarajah Kuharajah was working for a private television station based in Jaffna

The investigation is in relation to the arrest and bail of 'Swiss Kumar', a suspect in the case of the murder of a Pungudutivu school girl. 

Sivaloganathan Vithiya, 18, was raped and murdered in May 2015. 

The violence and brutality of the crime shocked the North-East, with widespread protests calling for her perpetrators to face justice. 

Last year a tribunal sentenced seven men for the crime. 

The Tamil UNP MP, Vijayakala Maheswaran, who was forced to resign from her ministerial post after Sinhala politicians objected to her call last month for a resurgence of the LTTE to control the violent crime in the North-East, said she was not sorry for her comments. 

“I will not succumb to others’ sentiments or pay a price that I am not entitled to settle," she told Ceylon Today in an interview. 

“I was born on Tamil soil and if the people from the South had lived with us they will have the same sentiments I have expressed."

500 acres of military-occupied land in the North-East is to be released at a cost of Rs 780 million to relocate the camps, the Sunday Times reports.

Around 500 acres of privately-owned land including some located in High Security Zones are to be released before December, the resettlement ministry secretary told the newspaper.

The Government would allocate Rs 780 million to relocate the camps, the secretary said.

A memorial for a 1984 massacre of Tamil co-operative workers was opened on Saturday in Chavakachcheri.

On 13th August 1984, ten civilians including workers from the Thenmarachchi West Multipurpose Co-operative Society were killed by Sri Lankan soldiers.

The Sri Lankan military took students from a college in the south of the island on a tour of the Palali High Security Zone (HSZ) in Jaffna this week, an area that the army has blocked off to local Tamils that own private land there.

The Global Tamil Forum (GTF) called on the newly appointed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to ensure there is accountability for human rights violations committed in Sri Lanka, warning that not doing so would be “an undesirable failure the UN system cannot afford”.

In a statement released to welcome the appointment of former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet as the new UN human rights chief, the GTF called for Sri Lanka to continue “to be under the purview” of the UN Human Rights Council.

The Sri Lankan navy claims to have recovered parcels containing 83.5kg of Kerala cannabis, at Kankesanthurai in Jaffna earlier today.

The Manthai East Divisional Council has passed a resolution to remove a Sri Lankan military camp that has been set up in front of a Tamil school.

The Divisional Council passed the resolution at a meeting this week following a proposal from Northern Provincial Council member T Ravikaran.

Teachers at the Manthai Paalinagar Vithiyalayam in Mullaitivu had told the NPC member that the presence of the camp was having an impact on the children’s education, with schoolchildren in fear of attending.

The resolution comes as the Sri Lankan military consolidates its presence in the North-East, with ongoing military involvement in activities in Tamil schools.