Families of the disappeared in Vavuniya protested on Wednesday, condemning presidential candidate and former defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s denial of hundreds of cases of disappearances of surrendered Tamils from the end of the war.

Staging a rally at their roadside spot in Vavuniya town where they have been for over 970 days, families of the disappeared slammed the “various opinions that have been expressed with the aim of sabotaging [our] struggle in the run-up to the presidential election”.

Mangala Samaraweera, Sri Lanka’s finance minister and leading UNP member, called on Sri Lankan voters to reject Gotabaya Rajapaksa and warned that Sri Lankan soldiers may face prosecutions abroad through universal jurisdiction cases if “a Sri Lankan judicial mechanism” is not enacted.

Sri Lankan Prime Minster, Ranil Wickremesinghe, says Jaffna will return to normalcy and become an economic hub within five years.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of Jaffna International Airport yesterday, the Prime Minster said opening the airport was just the first step and several other steps are to follow. Once the runway is extended, “flights from the Middle East, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand will be available to Jaffna.”

“There is no doubt that in the next five years Jaffna will return to its original status and become and economic centre,” he added.

President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe declared Jaffna International Airport open yesterday.

The airport, formerly known as Palaly airport, landed its inaugural flight from Chennai, Tamil Nadu at its opening ceremony. Alliance Air will operate seven flights a week from Chennai to Palaly. Daily air operations will begin in November.

The Sri Lankan military occupied the airport and was used as an air force base for its fleets of jets which were extensively used in bombing raids throughout the armed conflict.

The Pirampadi massacre in Kokkuvil, when over fifty Tamil civilians were shot dead or crushed with an armoured vehicle by Indian Peacekeeping Forces (IPKF) was remembered in the village on Saturday, 32 years after the massacre.

The massacre is claimed to be the first of many by Indian troops during their occupation of the Tamil homeland in the late eighties.

Brigadier Priyanka Fernando, former Sri Lankan Defence Attaché to the United Kingdom, will face a new trial tomorrow at the Westminster Magistrates Court for motioning a death threat to Tamils in London, protesting Sri Lanka's celebration of Independence Day last year. 

The head of Sri Lanka’s army and accused war criminal Shavendra Silva, landed himself in trouble with the country’s election commission this week, after he endorsed former defence secretary and fellow accused war criminal Gotabaya Rajapaksa ahead of the island’s presidential elections.

“We highly regret this advertisement,” said Sri Lanka’s Election Commission Chairman Mahinda Deshapriya.