Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister, Dinesh Gunawardena, has met with the Ambassador of the Netherlands, Tanja Gonggrijp, and Ambassador of Turkey, R. Demet Sekercioglu, this past week to discuss areas of assistance including tourism, archaeology, and responding to the coronavirus.

Following growing domestic and international condemnation of the Sri Lankan government’s decision to forcibly cremate Muslim victims of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) demanded the government to “immediately halt this cruelty” and emphasised that “the numerically smaller communities of this country for far too long have been treated as second or third class citizens”.

In a statement released last week, the TCSF stated it “condemns the Government of Sri Lanka most vehemently for denying Muslim families their right to bury their loved one who died owing to COVID-19.”

The parents of a 20-day-old infant who was forcibly cremated earlier this month, have filed a Fundamental Rights petition according to Daily Mirror, after their son was cremated without their consent and they were denied from seeing him.

Sri Lankan police have filed a case under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) against the Jaffna-based Uthayan newspaper, for publishing images and quotes of Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), on his birthday, November 26.

The case, which was filed by the police earlier this month in the Jaffna Magistrate's Court, has been adjourned till March 21.

^{_{File photo: Welikada (Magazine) Prison, Colombo}} 

Defence attachés of Seven High Commissions met with Jaffna and Vanni Security force commanders at their respective headquarters earlier this month.

A delegation of Defence attachés from the embassies of Australia, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States toured Jaffna and the Vanni. A meeting was held with the Jaffna security commander, Major General Senarath Bandara where issues related to COVID-19, general security and civil-military projects were discussed.

Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Kamal Gunaratne and accused war criminal has told the public that it may take some time to eliminate the coronavirus and stressed the role of the military in this.

Responding to a question posed by Baroness Richie of Downpatrick, Lord Ahmad, Britain's Minister of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth, maintained that Sri Lanka is a “human rights priority country for the UK.

His statement highlighted issues of “increased harassment of civil society, the militarisation of civilian functions, and the government's withdrawal of support for the UN Human Rights Council resolution”.

The European Union has announced that it will provide Sri Lanka 22 million euros in aid, targeting the health, agriculture, and tourism industries, despite concerns that Sri Lanka has abandoned its commitments to human rights under the co-sponsored UNHRC resolution 30/1.

This aid was agreed upon following a meeting on the 8 April 2020 between the Ambassador of France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, and Sri Lanka’s Task Force Chair Basil Rajapaksa.