The head of the Sri Lankan army said the military remained “cautious and concerned” over commemorations for fallen Tamil fighters, due to take place next month.

Sri Lankan army commander Lieutenant General Mahesh Senanayake said that the commemorations were a cause for concern, but brushed off accusations that the military was not well equipped to deal with "security" threats.

"If anyone does things like these, we have to be concerned as a country,” he said, adding that commemorating “civilians… is no issue”

A Sri Lankan minister declared that his government would increase police spy services across the island, in a press conference this week.

Sri Lanka’s Law and Order minister Ranjith Madduma Bandara said “steps will be taken to increase police spy services” in response to increased criminal activity, particularly in the Tamil North-East.

He also announced that Sri Lanka’s notorious Special Task Force, a unit reported to have committed serious human rights abuses, will  be instructed to increase operations across the island.

Students of the Eastern University in Batticaloa protested on Tuesday in solidarity with Tamil political prisoners currently hunger striking for their release.

Sri Lanka’s forest department has appropriated 100 acres of cultivation land belonging to around 50 families in Mullaitivu. The department appropriated the land in Puliyamunai, a village in Semmalai East, designating it as protected conservation land.

The affected landowners said they rely on agriculture for livelihood and that the land-grab has thrown their lives into disarray.

The current families of Puliyamunai had been cultivating there in the 1970s but were displaced due to the war between 1983 and 2015.

Granting permission for Buddhist monks to carry out ‘research’ on a Mullaitivu mountain was an abuse of power by the Sri Lankan archaeology department, the Mullaitivu court has warned. The court also said that devotees were free to access the mountain to worship at the existing Hindu temple.

The warning was in relation to an incident on September 4 when a group of Sinhalese people, including two Buddhist monks, arrived in Kurunthurmalai in Mullaitivu with a Buddha statue and installation equipment, angering locals who believed they had come to erect a Buddhist shrine. The group were apprehended by locals and handed over to Oddusuddan police.

A Tamil woman was arrested for possession of cannabis in Vavuniya according to police.

Vavuniya said the 25-year-old was found to have 650g of cannabis in her possession during a random search operation at Vavuniya railway station on Monday night.

Families of the disappeared demonstrated in Batticaloa on Monday to mark International Children’s Day.

A Tamil man was arrested in Valvettithurai accused of being in possession of cannabis.

Valvettithurai police said the 27-year-old was arrested after a random stop-and-search in which they discovered 5g of cannabis on his person.

Protests in solidarity with hunger striking Tamil political prisoners have continued across the Tamil homeland.

Ships from the Japanese navy arrived in Colombo this weekend as part of a goodwill visit to the island.

The ships, ‘Kaga’ and ‘Inazuma’, docked on Sunday and will stay for 5 days, as Japanese troops “take part in a wide range of sporting and several other programmes,” reportedly organised by the Sri Lanka navy.