The 33rd anniversary the Black July pogrom that claimed thousands of Tamil lives was commemorated in Jaffna this week.

 

Tamil fishermen have returned to setting up business in Kokkilai in Mullaitivu, over the weekend, braving threats from Sinhala Buddhist monks and police officers.

The fishermen were threated last week and had their equipment destroyed, forcing them to flee from Kokkilai, astensions rose in the area.

Following a complaint to the Sri Lankan government divisional secretary by Northern Provincial Council member T Ravikaran, a ‘Kottu’ permission deed was issued to the Tamil fishermen, reaffirming their right to conduct business in the area.

The International Committee of the Red Cross in a report released on Tuesday called on Sir Lankan authorities to “consolidate a national list of missing persons.”

“Living With uncertainty: Needs of The Families of Missing Persons in Sri Lanka,” outlined the findings of a Families’ Needs Assessments over the course of a year, and consisted of 395 semi structured interviews, 17 focus-group discussions in 11 different districts and meetings with stakeholders including government agencies.

The report found that 38% of the disappearances recorded happened between 2007 and 2009.

The events of Black July in 1983, where thousands of Tamils were killed by Sri Lankan government backed mobs, must be investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice, said Together Against Genocide (TAG).

In a statement released to mark thirty-three years since the pogrom, TAG drew on comments by the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera and reiterated “the need to investigate criminal liability for genocide arising from the Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict in the wake of evidence relating to the use of cluster munitions in the No Fire Zones”.

The Sri Lankan military placed a statue of Buddha inside the Tamil Hindu temple in Murunkan, Mannar.

Unemployed Tamil graduates from across the Northern Province protested against the lack of e government jobs available to them on Saturday.

The graduates staged their protest outside the Jaffna government secretariat.

Human rights violations continue to occur in the Tamil North-East with militarisation by Sri Lankan troops at its peak said co-spokesperson of the Tamil Civil Society Forum Father Elil Rajendram.

In an interview with Taylor Dibbert, Father Rajendram said that since Sri Lanka's new government came into power in January 2015, “Tamils speak about the “non-transition transition” while the Sinhalese people residing in the Sinhala-majority South claim it is a real transition”.

“Why I state that it is a non-transition transition is because militarization is at its peak,” he said.

“Abductions, arbitrary arrests and sexual violence perpetrated by the military have not decreased. Military involvement in the North and East is still strong. Most military camps have become permanent and Sinhala colonization is actually on the rise. Buddhist statues continue to be built in these locations.”

“However, as most human rights activists have noted, more space for public dissent is available now,” the spokesperson added.

Sri Lankan troops oversaw two charitable ceremonies last week, where school items were donated to Tamil children in the Kondavil region in Jaffna.

Sri Lanka's 551 Brigade troops were garlanded by Tamil schoolchildren from the Alvai Ambal Vidyalaya, as they organised a ceremony overseeing donations from the 'Old Anandians group of Southern Province' last Friday.