Picture: @Mari_deSilva

Activists and journalists who were at the meeting, reported via Twitter, that the mob charged into the meeting and shouted abuse at the Tamil relatives of the disappeared.

Members of the mob took photographs of the Tamils at the meeting.

“You are selling our motherland for dollars. You are supported by the USA to give evidence at [the] war crimes panel,” the protestors shouted, an independent journalist, Dushi Yanthini, reported.

Diplomats from the US, UK and the EU, including the Acting Deputy Chief of the US mission, Mike Honigstein, witnessed the incident.

Condemning the incidents of mob intimidation, the Deputy Chief of the US Mission consoled Tamil families and said that he would raise the issue with the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister, tweeted Dushi Yanthini.

The Sri Lankan Defence Secretary, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has told NewsFirst that he is ready to enter parliamentary politics if President Mahinda Rajapaksa tells him to.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the brother of the president, was one of the key figures behind the Sri Lankan military’s onslaught on the Vanni, and is thought to be one of the individuals holding command responsibility for atrocities committed during the armed conflict.

A Tamil student has been attacked at the Sabaragamuwa University in the south of the island, as posters appeared across the campus warning all Tamil and Muslim students to leave the town immediately.

Santhirakumar Sutharshan from Mukamalai was attacked with wooden logs by persons wearing masks, early on Sunday morning, reports Global Tamil News.

The victim said he went to use the toilet at around 2am, when a person wearing a mask covered his mouth from behind whilst another beat him on the head with a wooden log, causing him to fall unconscious.

When he regained consciousness, he found himself outside the hostel in woods, with a rope fastened around his neck.

After managing to make his way back to the hostel, he was spotted by fellow students, who took him to Balangoda hospital where he has been admitted for treatment.

The attack comes as the names of Tamil and Muslim first year students were published on posters posted across the university campus ordering the students to leave the town or else be killed.

In broken Tamil, one poster (photograph above) listed the names of students on the left side, with a death threat warning on the right:

"Muslim, Tamil students do not study here, if you do, we will shoot and kill. Women - rape you and kill.. otherwise shoot and kill"

"Do not study here, if you do, you will be killed" reads poster.

“I don’t believe merely having the President changed at the top is going to solve anything. But merely removing the individual at the top, without the prospective new President having concrete proposals to solve the Tamil national question, is not going to be a ‘Regime Change’ but merely a ‘Personality Change.’ Such an exercise is going to be irrelevant to the Tamils.”

“So far we are yet to see all the prospective common opposition candidates saying anything on the ethnic question and what they see as a solution,”