Students at the University of Jaffna raised black flags across campus this morning, as Tamils across the North-East marked Sri Lanka’s Independence Day as a day of protest.

Commemoration events have been held in London and Vavuniya for Thikshika Sribalakrishnan, a co-ordinator of the Tamil Youth Organisation in the UK who passed away last week.

Families of the disappeared in Vavuniya lit candles before a portrait of Sribalakrishnan, as they paid tribute to her life during their 1078th day of protest.

The former chief minister of the Northern Province C V Wignewaran has called on the UN Human Rights Council to take up the issue of Tamils who have been forcibly disappeared, after Sri Lanka’s president claimed that missing Tamils “are actually dead”.

The Eelam Tamil family detained at Christmas Island as they fight deportation to Sri Lanka now face a new risk, with the Australian government using the same island to quarantine those who may have been exposed to coronavirus.

Advocates of the family are demanding that they are removed from Christmas Island before it becomes a “quarantine zone” for evacuees from Wuhan in China, where the virus is reported to have originated from.

The Sri Lankan government’s proposed ambassador to Geneva is a known member of a government death squad, responsible for the murder of hundreds, including school children, said the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) and Journalists for Democracy Sri Lanka (JDS) in a joint press release this morning.

C. A. Chandraprema was a key member of the PRRA, the People’s Revolutionary Red Army - a group that worked with the Sri Lankan military during the late eighties to quell a Sinhala uprising, said the groups. Nicknamed “Thadi Priyantha”, Chandraprema was involved with the squad that is responsible for “the murders of hundreds of people, including human rights lawyers, journalists, university students and school children”.

Families of the disappeared in Mannar have submitted a list of demands to the United Nations, including the appointing of a Special Rapporteur and referring Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court, as it approaches a deadline at the Human Rights Council. 

“The Sri Lankan government is not going to punish itself for its crimes,” said the leaders of the protest at a press conference last week. 

A Sri Lankan police officer was arrested in possession of cannabis in Vavuniya.

The drugs were found in the officer’s car when he was stopped at a checkpoint while travelling to Polonnaruwa from Jaffna.

Kanakarayankulam police said that over 8kg of cannabis was seized and that the car was also confiscated.

The arrested officer was identified as belonging to a police station in Hambantota in the south.

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is meeting with Sri Lanka’s Minister of Justice to discuss legislation which aims to curb the propagation of hate speech through social media platforms.

During this meeting consisted of the OHCHR's Chief of the Rule of Law, Equality and Non-Discrimination, Mona Rishmawi, as well as Sri Lanka's Minister of Justice, Human Rights and Law Reform Nimal Siripala de Silva as well as Rory Mungoven, Francesca Marotta and Raghu Menon.

Following growing concerns over Sri Lanka's human rights record, four new ambassadors as a High Commissioner have been appointed to Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka's President's Media Division reports that the "ambassadors of the State of Qatar and Republic of Turkey, as well as the Pakistan High Commissioner, will be based in Colombo. The ambassadors to the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg and Slovenia will be based in New Delhi".