Members of the UNP held a candlelight protest, calling on the government to scrap the recent electricity tariff increases, forcing the sitting to be adjourned. TNA MPs MA Sumanthiran and S Yogeshwaran also supported the opposition in their protest. While UNP and other opposition members shouted slogans, members of the ruling coalition threw water bottles at them, reported The Island : “One of the bottles hurled by MP Ratwatte hit MP Ranjan Ramanayake, who advanced towards the government side challening MP Ratwatte for a fight. MP Ratwatte however retreated while Minister Vasudeva Nanayakkara...

Sri Lanka’s Sunday Times has reported increased incidents of sexual harassment and other attacks on tourists. The paper reported that police sources said local politicians are behind the attacks. See excerpts below: “Police are recording frequent complaints of sexual harassment of tourists in the South, with the latest report of sexual harassment of an Israeli female tourist by a local. On Sinhala and Tamil New Year’s day, a 32-year-old Israeli tourist was sexually harassed while on the beach, when her husband had gone to the nearby beach resort in Mirissa, where they were staying. “According...

In an asylum appeal case last month, a UK judge deemed that the asylum seeker - a Tamil man who had taken part in numerous protests in the UK - was at risk on deportation purely due to his participation in anti-Sri Lankan government protests, and was granted asylum one this alone, not due to any association with the LTTE. The First Tier Tribunal Judge Mailer in the Immigration and Asylum Chamber considered: “The evidence relating to Sri Lanka is clear. Those who seek to appose the government by way of demonstrations, contending that the leaders should be implicated and charged for war crimes, would be treated harshly”. “Having considered the background material produced as well as the evidence from the report of TAG, we find that the submissions relating to the potentially hostile treatment meted out by the Sri Lankan authorities in respect of a person perceived to have been involved in anti government protests in the diaspora, to be made out.” See here for a report by Tamils Against Genocide (TAG) on the case. Extract reproduced below: "The ruling is especially perspicacious in recognizing that risk is related not to facts alone but to perceptions. It was put to the appellant that his being part of protests did not amount to his being a member of the LTTE. The appellant concurred, “He said that it was not he who was saying that. The government might think that.” It is the question of perception that matters and that needs to be considered when assessing risk. There are several sources for unearthing the Sri Lankan State perception with regards to protesters. In her evidence before the Tribunal, TAG Director, Janani Jananayagam enumerated many of these sources. She was quoted in the determination, speaking of a “history of hostility to and demonisation of diaspora organisations supporting a secession of the Tamil homelands in Sri Lanka” – indeed the GoSL attitude and actions today against those who call for accountability for crimes is not without precedent.

Photograph ABC A Tamil man from Australia who returned to Sri Lanka last month to visit a sick family member was raped and tortured by Sri Lanka’s security forces. Speaking to Australia’s ABC , the man, only identified as Kumar, made shocking claims regarding the treatment he was subjected to on return. See video of news report here . Kumar was abducted by a white van, soon after his arrival and taken to a blood-stained room by army intelligence officers. "I was naked and no place to sleep, except the floor like a dog. I felt like dying but I thought of my kids and family back here, "They came back and again started hitting me with a log at my back and now I've got a spine problem as well, "The two guys were drunk and they came to me and they just put their hand on my body and they just rubbed me and I had some sexual torture as well,” Kumar said.