Following the imposition of emergency regulations and skyrocketing food prices, Sri Lanka’s director of information denied that the country was facing a food shortage claiming that “there is no basis to these reports”.

The statement comes as Sri Lanka’s private banks have run out of foreign exchange reserves to finance imports and as the country has seen shortages in items such as milk powder, kerosene oil and cooking gas.

Member of Scottish Parliament, Mercedes Villalba, has demanded that the Scottish government provide full details of the activities offered by the International Development and Innovation Unit following calls for Police Scotland to end its training programme with Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankan opposition leader, Sajith Premadasa, is seeking a presidential pardon to release former United National Party (UNP) Parliamentarian, Ranjan Ramanayake. 

Ramanayake’s seat in Parliament was suspended in January 2020 following alleged statements he had made against Buddhism and Buddhist monks. He was also accused of conspiring to assassinate Sri Lankan government minister, Mahindananda Aluthgamage, along with former prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe.

^Recruits

More than 300 new Sri Lankan army recruits completed a four-month training programme at the Battalion Training School (BTS) in Vidaththalpalai, Jaffna, becoming the first batch of recruits to pass out in Jaffna as militarisation of the Tamil homeland intensifies.

People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) called for international action on Sri Lanka as it is "abdundantly clear that such accountability will not come from the state."

In a statement marking International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, PEARL expressed solidarity with the Tamil families of disappeared, who have been protesting continuously since 2017 despite facing threats and intimidation from Sri Lanka. 

A group of four Swiss guards have been acquitted over their roles in the death of a 28-year-old Tamil woman at a prison in 2018, after they delayed medical attention following a suicide attempt for 19 minutes.

The woman, identified only as “Kowshika”, had fled Sri Lanka but had her asylum application rejected by Swiss authorities who subsequently detained her at the Waaghof Prison in Basel.

Pragas Gnanapragasam, a 26-year-old Tamil journalist from Jaffna, passed away due to coronavirus earlier today.

Pragas, a native of Kodikamam, was an independent journalist writing for magazines and newspapers in the North-East. He also contributed to the Tamil Guardian, as a correspondent based in the North-East, sending updates from the Tamil homeland.

Marking International Day for the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, the Association for Relatives of the Enforced Disappearances have called on UN High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, to reject the Sri Lankan Government’s Office of Missing Persons (OMP) and instead pursue an international inquiry into the fate of those forcibly disappeared.

Former Scottish Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill, has urged Police Scotland to end all involvement in training Sri Lankan police warning that “Sri Lankan authorities are using Police Scotland as cover to deny repression and breaches of human rights”.

MacAskill’s intervention follows the sudden announcement from Police Scotland that they had temporarily suspended their training programme following a human rights review of their programme.

Marking International day for the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, a collection of Tamil diaspora organisations released a joint statement urging the international community to pursue accountability for the families of those forcibly disappeared in Sri Lanka and for a collation of evidence to provide an accurate account of those disappeared.