Vanni District Member of Parliament (MP) Durairasa Ravikaran reaffirmed his commitment to securing the resettlement of the displaced Tamil people from the villages of Thannimurippu and Andankulam in Mullaitivu, as residents have chalked up more than 40 years of displacement from their homes.

Anton Jesudasan Yathursika, a young athlete from Mannar, has achieved an extraordinary feat by setting a new all-island record for the category in the javelin throw, at the recently concluded National Athletics Championships for Schools with an impressive throw of 37.39 meters. 

A plain-clothed Sri Lankan intelligence officer videoed Tamil families of the disappeared as they marked Human Rights Day in Mullaitivu yesterday. 

Tamil families of the disappeared marked Human Rights Day with protests in Jaffna, Mannar, Vavuniya and Trincomalee as they continue to demand to know the fate of their loved ones who were forcibly disappeared by the Sri Lankan state.  Tamil families have been protesting across the North-East for years in a bid to find the truth about their loved ones, many of whom were forcibly disappeared when they surrendered to the Sri Lankan military at the end of the armed conflict in May 2009.

The United States has sanctioned two Sri Lankan officials and their immediate families over corruption, rendering them unable to enter the country in a move to mark International Human Rights Day. Sri Lanka’s former Ambassador to Russia Udayanga Weeratunga and the former CEO of Sri Lanka Airlines Kapila Chandrasena have both been sanctioned for their “involvement in significant corruption”.

The Sri Lankan military has refused to dismantle an occupying base in Karkovalam, Jaffna, despite a decision by the cabinet that the camp be removed.

Jaffna District MP Dr Ramanathan Archuna claimed that he was assaulted on December 3rd within the premises of the Opposition Leader’s office in the parliament by Sinhala parliamentarian Sujith Sanjaya Perera.

Speaking in Sri Lanka’s parliament last week Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) parliamentarian S Shritharan called on the Sri Lankan president to enact a political solution that respects the identity and rights of Eelam Tamils.

Bashar al-Assad has fled to Russia after opposition forces entered the capital Damascus.

The leader of the main Syrian opposition armed group that seized Syria’s capital, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, has said the Syrian people are the “rightful owners” of the country after the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad, and declared a “new history” has been written for the entire Middle East.