The DMK leader M Karunanidhi has called for the Indian government to boycott the forthcoming Commonwealth heads of government Meeting in Colombo.

The failed Mattale Rajapakse International Airport will become a Maintenance and Repair Centre, reported The Sunday Leader.

Chairman of Airport and Aviation Services (Sri Lanka) Limited, Prasanna J. Wickramasuriya, claimed that the centre was needed in order to make Sri Lanka a regional aviation hub.

“We are very disturbed by the repeated use of violence against journalists in Sri Lanka,”

“At best, the police take no action when journalists report that they have been the targets of violence. At worst, the army itself, equipped with lethal weapons, organizes and executes these attacks, as it did in Weliweriya.”

“These unacceptable incidents show that, although the civil war is now over in Sri Lanka, violence by the armed forces is still far from being brought to an end and that freedom of information is still in great danger.”

A mass movement in Sri Lanka, the People’s Movement for Democracy (PMD), has organised a demonstration to show discontent over the killings of civilians at Weliweriya.

The leader of the movement, parliamentarian Vijitha Herath said,

"The TNA's decision to contest the Northern Provincial Council election cannot even be described as a low-risk, speculative venture – harmlessly undertaken on the off-chance that it succeeds. Rather, TNA participation in the Council poses significant risks. Complicity in propping up a Provincial Council system that provides token benefits – perhaps a bicycle here and a rice sack there – while perpetuating the Sri Lankan state's structural genocide of Tamils, could strike a devastating blow to the decades-long struggle by the Tamil people for their rights and freedom. There is a real danger of unwittingly playing stooge in the Sri Lankan state's campaign to regain legitimacy on the world stage: if Tamil participation in the Provincial Council is used to provide a distraction that undermines global campaigns for an international independent inquiry into the crimes committed by the Sri Lankan state and recognition of the Tamil people’s right to self-determination.