Sri Lanka is set to borrow the equivalent of US$500 million in Chinese yuan from the Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM) to resume work on the long-delayed Central Expressway (CEP 1).

The Sri Lankan government has vested fresh powers in the navy to run a maritime security operation project, reviving a role once mired in controversy and corruption under Avant Garde Maritime Services (Pvt).

The United States State Department’s 2024 Country Report on Human Rights Practices: Sri Lanka has detailed a litany of human rights violations – from extrajudicial killings and torture to press suppression and prolonged detention – underscoring that the government has taken “minimal steps to identify and punish officials who committed human rights abuses.”

Ongoing intimidation and repression 

Somaratne Rajapakse, the Sri Lankan soldier convicted in the 1996 rape and murder of Tamil schoolgirl Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, has revealed further details of mass graves in Jaffna, implicating senior politicians and the army in a systematic cover-up.

Mannar protest against wind towers and sand mining enters 17th day

The Movement for Self-Determination of Tamil Eelam (MSDTE) has submitted a petition to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer urging the United Kingdom to pass a parliamentary resolution recognising the crimes committed in Chemmani and referring Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The Mayor of Vavuniya Municipal Council, S. Kandipan, has strongly condemned the suffocating militarisation of the Tamil homeland, declaring that while “camps can be seen in almost every corner of the North,” the South of the island remains entirely free of such entrenched occupation.

Tamil journalist, Kanapathipillai Kumanan, was subjected to an almost seven-hour interrogation by Sri Lanka’s Counter Terrorism and Investigation Division (CTID) on Sunday, in what press freedom advocates have denounced as part of a continuing campaign of harassment against Tamil media workers.

The people of Mannar have entered their sixteenth consecutive day of satyagraha against the erection of wind power towers and mineral sand mining projects, vowing that their agitation will not end until the projects are brought to a complete halt.