Warning that there continued to be a "threat", Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka's Defence Secretary, speaking at a lecture on ‘Future Challenges of National Security in Sri Lanka’ on Tuesday, said,

“LTTE front organisations can encourage and facilitate ex LTTE cadres and those who escaped from the military during the war and pave way for a re-emergence.

Those who did not surrender are probably following the ideology of the LTTE. Even though 11,000 of them were rehabilitated there must be cadres who are not 100 per cent rehabilitated."

“We cannot forget everything just because we defeated them militarily. Still the threat is there. There are lots of enemies in the international front taking active steps to derail the path the government is taking to achieve economic development.”

Despite renewed calls for Sri Lanka to curtail its ever increasing militarisation of the North-East, the Defence Secretary justified the military's sweeping reach, saying,

“That is why we still maintain a strong military and that is why a considerable portion of the budget is given to the military. Still it is only two and a half years after defeating the LTTE militarily."

“To establish a camp anywhere in Sri Lanka is a decision and concern of the country as it is a sovereign state."

“In 2011, Sri Lanka ranked fourth worst in the world in terms of allowing murders of journalists to go unpunished, according to our global Impunity Index. As we noted in our report, "President Mahinda Rajapaksa has presided over a dark era of targeted media killings and complete law-enforcement failure in addressing the crimes. All nine journalist murders in the past decade have gone unsolved, leaving persistent questions as to whether authorities have been complicit in some of the crimes."

Paramilitary groups are threatening private cable TV operators in Jaffna, into surrendering their businesses to a paramilitary monopoly - MBL Cable Network, reported Tamilnet.

Citing "government permission" the paramilitary groups have told private cable TV operators that their businesses were now illegal and they must now buy channels from the paramilitary network.

The network is backed by 'the Sri Lankan establishment through the forces aligned with Douglas Devananda and Selvarasa Pathmanathan alias KP', Tamilnet reports.

Sri Lanka will refuse to share territorial waters with India, said the Fisheries Minister, Rajitha Senaratne, on Tuesday.

India had proposed such an arrangement in an attempt to avoid disputes over fishing.

Senaratne said,

“On several occasions, Sri Lankan fishermen had been arrested by the Indian coast guards. We will oppose the idea of the sharing the territorial waters by Indian and Sri Lankan fishermen.

"We are trying for a political solution that recognises Tamils as a nation and South Africa's help will be vital for both the TNA and the government in achieving that."