The new Sri Lankan government will produce a comprehensive national security plan covering all areas of security across the island to prevent 'terrorist' resurgence said President Sirisena on Sunday. Photograph:Colombo Page Speaking at a visit to the Eastern Security Forces Headquarters, Sirisena stressed the importance of ensuring that security measures were in place to prevent any resurgence of terrorist activity.

Photograph:Pierre Suu An independent film based on Tamil refugees starting a new life in France after fleeing Sri Lanka won the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d’Or. ‘Dheepan,’ directed by France’s most acclaimed film directors, Jacques Audiard, told the story of a former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighter, a Tamil woman and nine year old girl, who assumed the identities of a dead family to escape an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in Sri Lanka during the armed phase of the ethnic conflict. The lead actor, novelist Anthonythasan Jesuthasan, was an actual fighter for the LTTE when he was 16, and sought asylum in France in 1993. Speaking at an interview during the Cannes film festival on Friday, Mr Jesuthasan when asked if the situation in Sri Lanka had improved said “Officially in 2009 the war had come to an end. However even today there are still armed attacks against minorities in Sir Lanka. Even today, we don’t know how many prisoners of war were captured by the government, we have no real information.” Director Jacques Audiard, describing his thinking behind the film, said, “The intention was not to produce a documentary on the civil war in Sri Lanka or house estates. That violence is the backdrop. We wanted the characters to embody this whole story.” When asked if the film was intended to be a political statement that portrayed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as freedom fighters when they have been labelled as a terrorist organisation by the European Union, Mr Audiard, said, "I’m a coward in that respect. I didn’t want to make a political statement. However when I learnt about this horrible war, and that people are still suffering, I was deeply upset. Especially when I saw the pictures of the conflict. I can’t assess the conflict. I provide very little information about the background of the conflict because I think other people can do this better than I. It was very interesting to bring this conflict into a fiction for this film” See full interview below:

J Jayalalitha was sworn in again on Saturday as chief minister of Tamil Nadu, India, after her court sentence for corruption was overturned by an appeal court. Crowds cheered "Amma is back" as she arrived at the University of Madras for the swearing in ceremony, which was attended by 28 of her cabinet ministers. Ms Jayalalitha was sentenced to four years in prison last year charged with accumulating more than $10 m in unaccounted wealth.

Sri Lanka’s government should not be rewarded for progress it hasn’t made said the International Crisis Group (ICG) and Human Rights Watch (HRW), noting that Tamil demands for progress on accountability for mass atrocities had not been met by Sri Lanka’s new governance. The International Crisis Group (ICG), Human Rights Watch (HRW), Committee to Protect Jorunalsits (CPJ) and experts on torture briefed a US Congressional Caucus on Ethnic and Religious Freedom in Sri Lanka on human rights progress under Sri Lanka’s new regime, in Washington on Wednesday. Speaking at the status update on human rights in Sri Lanka under the new regime, Mark Schneider, noting that legitimate demands of Tamils in North-East had not been met, said that the new government was yet to produce a list of detainees held, establish a clear consultative process for release of military held land and take serious steps towards accountability for atrocities. Mr Schneider added that the recent appointment of Jegath Dias raised serious concerns about Sri Lanka’s commitment to accountability. Noting that the US should support international prosecutions, he added that domestic prosecutions using US law on potential war criminals that held dual citizenship in the US or green cards should also be pursued. The Asia director of Human Rights Watch, expressing concerns on issues of accountability, stressed that genuine accountability could not be traded for a truth seeking process and highlighted the need to ensure that there was strong international involvement in any domestic prosecution mechanism that Sri Lanka may implement. John Sifton added that human rights abuses continued in the North-East under the new regime wit arrests harassment intimidation and violence, noting that though there was a new regime the structure of the state police and security forces responsible for abuses had not changed.