On this day 13  years ago, Stephen Sunthararaj, an activist who had exposed the trafficking of Tamil children into international prostitution rings, was abducted and forcibly disappeared in Colombo by armed men in military uniforms.

As part of his work he had told the then United States Ambassador in Colombo about prostitution rings run by government aligned paramilitaries in Jaffna. The paramilitaries were trafficking children into sex rings in India and Malaysia with the help of immigration officials.

Sri Lanka’s president has once more declared a state of emergency on the island, as police fired tear gas at anti-government protestors earlier today.

According to the President's Media Division, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has declared a state of emergency effective midnight on 6 May.

A Sri Lankan police officer opened fire as officers clashed with locals in Amparai last night, leaving at least two civilians hospitalised.

As many as 11 Sri Lankan policemen were also reported to have been injured in the incident yesterday evening.

Tamil families of the disappeared in Vavuniya marked their 1900th day of continuous roadside protest yesterday, in pursuit of answers to the whereabouts of their loved ones.

A summit that pulls together Tamils from across the globe has kicked off in London this morning, with professionals and academics from over 70 countries set to attend the three-day conference.

The summit, being held in South London, will bring together hundreds of Tamils with an aim “to imagine and to engineer collective trust, friendship, co-creations and shared prosperity”.

"When Tamils come together to synergize, we can envision and visualize larger and bigger initiatives,” said Father Jegath Gasper Raj.

The General Secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) has called for Sri Lankan police to open an investigation after a statute of SWRD Bandaranaike was temporarily blindfolded by protestors last week, claiming a Tamil Guardian article had inspired the move.

Tamil families of the disappeared are not protesting because of Sri Lanka’s economic collapse, but to find the whereabouts of their missing loved ones said the head of the association for enforced disappeared persons in Vavuniya in remarks to reporters last week.

Sarojini Shanmugampillai told journalists that the Tamil families “are not protesting because of the shortage of food, water, fuel or match boxes”.

In 2008, Thangarasa Selvarani’s son Thangarasa Thayaparan, then aged 28, was taken by the Sri Lankan army in front of her eyes.

It was 7 days after the birth of his child. He was sleeping outside their home in Cheddikulam, Vavuniya, after a day of wage labour, loading sand into trucks.

Selvarani told him to sleep inside, it was dark and the barking of the street dogs was out of character.

He said it was too hot, and he wanted to sleep outside.

At around 9pm, Selvarani heard a cry and went outside to see that around 30 or 40 soldiers had rounded the house and were carrying her son off.

Sri Lanka's Finance minister has announced his intent to increase the country's sales tax, after conceding the government made a mistake when It almost halved the rate of value-added tax to 8% in 2019.

Ali Sabry, who is also the acting justice minister, told the BBC in a recent interview that he has no notice but to raise the country's sales tax in order to try and bridge the gap between revenue and expenditure.

"We have to increase the taxes. We need to find a way to bridge the revenue gap and expenditure which we have," he said.

Batticaloa journalists marked World Press Freedom Day with a vigil to pay tribute to the media workers that have been killed in Sri Lanka.

The journalists lit candles and laid flowers in tribute to their murdered colleagues.