The Madras High Court orally observed on Wednesday that the State Governor should make a decision on Tamil Nadu Government’s recommendation to release the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.

 The bench consisting of Justices N Kirubakaran and V.M. Velumani was hearing a habeas corpus plea by Arputham Ammal, the mother of the convict Perarivalan. Ms. Arputham urged the court to intervene and grant her son parole for 90 days due to his deteriorating health condition.

Two Tamil Nadu fishermen from Nagapattinam were arrested by the Q Branch Police for allegedly ferrying on a fibre boat two Eelam Tamil refugees from the state to Sri Lanka, The Hindu reported.

Tamilvannan and Chanthiran, fishermen belonging to Seruthur in Nagapattinam, were arrested by the Q Branch based on information passed to them by the Sri Lankan Embassy.

Sri Lanka police have lodged a complaint for electoral fraud using a recorded testimony against former Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP and Kilinochchi candidate Sivagnanam Sritharan. Sritharan who confessed in a video interview last month that he “had illegally cast 75 fraudulent votes in one day in the 2004 elections”, has come under sharp criticism.

Several complaints, including one from Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) candidate and lawyer, Stanislaus Celestine earlier this month, were made against his confession. Celestine filed a complaint at the Jaffna District Elections Complaint Unit and at the Kilinochchi police station. 

The Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) leader, Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, expressed his concerns and “sadness at Jaffna University turning a blind eye” to Jaffna-based lawyer Dr Kumaravadivel Guruparan’s resignation as Senior Lecturer of the Department of Law at the University of Jaffna, last week. 

Following months of state-led harassment, Dr Kumaravadivel Guruparan handed in his resignation to the University of Jaffna last week. Not only is this a massive loss to academia on the island, but it is a stark and dangerous marker of the road that Sri Lanka is hurtling down, writes Thusiyan Nandakumar.

Canada’s prime minister joined politicians across the aisle in commemorating the anniversary of Black July today, a week of anti-Tamil pogroms thirty-seven years ago that killed thousands of people across the island.

Canada shares an important history with Tamils, housing the largest fraction of Eelam Tamils outside of South Asia. Approximating 140,720 residents who identify as “Tamil” according to a census released by Statistics Canada in 2016.

Following a downgrading of Sri Lanka’s sovereign credit to ‘-B’, Fitch warns that Sri Lanka’s GDP will contract 1.3 per cent in 2020 and has stated that bad loans will continue to increase from the reported 5.1 per cent stated for the first quarter of 2020.

 Commenting on their rating, Fitch stated that;

“There is a strong link between the sovereign credit profile and the operating conditions for banks in Sri Lanka”.

With an opening ceremony replete with Sinhala Buddhist monks, military officials and Sinhalese musicians and dancers, the Sri Lankan army facilitated the opening of a Buddhist school in Batticaloa, in another move abetting the Sinhalisation of the Eastern province.

This was my father’s lorry that he used for his business, he actually owned two of them and would deliver goods across Sabaragamuwa Province in Sri Lanka. He also owned two shops in Ratnapura. He was doing well in life. 

In 1981, the anti Tamil violence by Sinhala mobs reached Ratnapura and my father’s lorries and shops were looted and burnt to the ground. People were killed, businesses destroyed and women raped.

Students at the University of Jaffna held a remembrance event to mark 37 years since the pogrom of Black July in 1983.