Sri Lankan soldiers took part in a religious ceremony last week to unveil a newly constructed Buddhist stupa in Jaffna, reports official military media.

Sri Lanka’s government has ordered the Security Forces Headquarters in Jaffna to facilitate the visit of a high level delegation from the Buddhist Maha Sangha to Jaffna reports island.lk.

Sources from the military said that they wanted to assure the Buddhist delegation that the security forces and government were "firmly in control" of the situation in Jaffna.

The visiting Buddhist delegation is expected to meet senior armed forces deployed in Jaffna at their army headquarters in Pallaly.

Civilian lands in Trincomalee occupied by the Sri Lankan Port Authority for decades, should be returned immediately to its owners, an Eastern Provincial Council member has stressed.

The Minister for Ports and Shipping, Arjuna Ranatunga, had promised that lends held by the authority would be released quickly, the EPC representative for Trincomalee, Jegatheesan Jenarthanan highlighted during a public meeting at the District Secretariat.

“That promise is yet to be fulfilled,” Mr Jenarthanan said.

A 14-year-old Tamil boy from Mannar has been missing since Thursday.

Sebastian Saliyan Mark of Vankalai, did not return home on Thursday after going for class at a private tutorial centre.

His father filed a report with Vankalai police and said he was last wearing a white shirt with blue sleeves and denim jeans.

Young Tamil artists from across Europe last month remembered the 1983 pogrom against the Tamils, Black July with an exhibition at the City University in London. 

The exhibition, which was organised by the Tamil Youth Organisation UK, featured artists from the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland and Denmark. 

The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) worked alongside the Sri Lankan navy on an environmental project in the south this week, reports official military media.

The PHU leader, Udaya Gammanpila filed a petition in the Supreme Court on Friday against the proposed 20th Amendment to the constitution. 

Mr Gammanpila said the Amendment should only be passed following a public referendum.

Sri Lanka's new navy commander, visited Kandy on Friday to pay homage to Buddhism's Sacred Tooth Relic and seek the blessings of senior Buddhist clergy from the Mahanayakes of the Malwatte and Asgiriya Chapters. 

Vice Admiral Travis Sinniah was the senior most naval officer in active combat operations at sea during Sri Lanka’s war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

For months relatives of the forcibly disappeared have been protesting on the streets across the North-East, demanding to know the whereabouts of their loved ones. Despite years, sometimes decades, of various government mechanisms and pledges, their search for answers continues.

In this series of interviews conducted since May 2017, Tamil Guardian goes behind the protest to the individual stories that make up this unyielding movement of Tamil families of the disappeared.

Sri Lanka's National Polls Observation Centre criticised the government's proposed 20th Amendment to the constitution, stating that it could lead to "a pool of blood". 

"The 20th Amendment to the Constitution, that seeks to give parliament the powers of Provincial Councils, when they are dissolved and to decide on the date of the dissolution of Provincial Councils, is undemocratic," National Coordinator of NPOC Rasanga Harischandra was quoted by Ceylon Today as saying. 

"When such undemocratic Bills have been passed, the country has ended up in a pool of blood," he added.