The US Congressional Caucus on Ethnic and Religious Freedom in Sri Lanka was given an update on the current situation in Sri Lanka and on developments in the UN Human Rights Council, during a briefing in the Longworth House Office Building in Washington DC earlier this month.

The briefing, attended by staff from the State Department, Congress, the Foreign Relations Committee, as well as interested members of the public, started with caucus co-chair Congressman Bill Johnson's introductory remarks, who said it was critical that the international community remained vigilant about Sri Lanka's new government's progress on accountability and political reform.

Mario Arulthas, advocacy director for PEARL, a DC-based NGO, spoke about his recent trip to Sri Lanka's North-East and shared his experiences speaking to survivors of the armed conflict, families of the disappeared and victims of landgrabs. Mr Arulthas said he was able to document ongoing violations of human rights in all 8 districts, especially around security forces harassment. 

A Sri Lankan army brigadier testified before a magistrate on Wednesday that a list of all those who surrendered during the end of the armed conflict in May 2009, has been kept by security forces.

Tamils in the North-East should be allowed to remember their war dead, including militants and civilians killed in the armed conflict, said the vicar general of Jaffna Diocese in a submission to the Sri Lankan government’s Public Representations Committee on Constitutional Reforms.

In a statement delivered to the committee as it met in Jaffna this week, Father Pathinathan Josephdas Jebaratnam said:

"Just as the families of the Sri Lankan soldiers remember their loved ones who died in the war, the people in the North and East should be allowed to remember their dead in an appropriate, decent, free and dignified manner."

"These militants who died in the war and a big number of civilians especially those who died in the final stages of the war in 2009, were in some way related or connected to the people in the North and East," he added.

The head of the Tamil Coordinating Committee (TCC) in France has been seriously injured after being shot by gunmen in a Parisian suburb on Wednesday night.

Mr Paramalingam, who heads the French Tamil diaspora group, was returning to his home on Wednesday night, when the shooting took place reports Sankathi24.

He was the victim of a stabbing attack last year, carried out by assailants though to be linked to the Sri Lankan government according to diaspora sources.

The shooting has shocked the Tamil diaspora, and bears the hallmark of the murder of Mr Paramalingam's predecessor in 2012. 

The leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) R. Sampanthan called for power to be shared to the North-East in order to reach a solution to the island’s enduring ethnic conflict.

Speaking to the Sinhala language daily newspaper Divaina, in a piece headlined ‘We ask for the Tamil kingdom that the British handed over to the Sinhalese’ , Mr Sampanthan detailed the history of the Tamils in the North-East. “There was a separate kingdom in the North,” said the TNA leader. “The Sinhala people should know the truth. Sinhala leaders should tell the Sinhala people the truth.”

Calling for the devolution of power, Mr Sampanthan said:

“We all have to come together and share power... It is good for the country and also its people. The Tamil people mostly lived in the North and East. We ask power to be shared to that region.”

He also spoke about his recent trip to Scotland, where he and other TNA members attended a constitutional workshop. “A lot of things have happened in Scotland,” he said. “A referendum was held in 2014. It [the referendum] was to decide if Scotland was to be part of the United Kingdom or not.”

“We gained awareness about it,” added the TNA leader. “It [having awareness] is good.”

Mr Sampanthan also emphasised his support to implement a UN Human Rights Council resolution on an accountability mechanism in full, which included the participation of international judges. The topic filled “most” of his discussion with UN human rights chief Zeid Al Hussein recently, he said, adding “we discussed the need to fulfil completely the matters agreed to in that resolution”.