Human Rights Watch urged the new UN Human Rights Commissioner to “not let victims of abuse down as it did in Sri Lanka,” in its opening statement at the 27th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

“Governments are primarily responsible for protecting human rights but when the fail the UN and its member states must act decisively and unequivocally to prevent abuse. Often the UN intervenes too late when a crisis is already underway or it fails to adequately confront perpetrators to secure the protection of civilians,” Human Rights Watch added.

Sri Lanka's prime minister D.M. Jayaratne accused western countries of trying to breach the peace on the island.

"Western countries are attempting to divide the peace achieved by Sri Lanka," he told the Cuban foreign minister, reports the state's news cooperation, SLBC.

The Chinese President Xi Jinping is to make an official visit to India, as well as the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Tajikistan, the country's foreign ministry said Tuesday.

The trip will commence in Tajikistan, where he will be attending a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a security coalition including Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, later this week.

The Sri Lankan government announced that it has banned the import of potatoes, in a bid to protect local farmers from going out of business this week.

The move comes after Sri Lanka announced that it would increase import taxes on both potatoes and onions last month, in a bid to increase vegetable prices.

Traders had complained that the falling prices of vegetables had left many of them unable to make a profit. Sameera Gurusingha, a potato grower from the South told the Sunday Times,

“We mortgage our properties to buy the components that we need for potato cultivation but we don’t get enough profits to pay the mortgage and regain our belongings. We have to use the income to begin the next cultivation.”

The government has made efforts to try and protect the Southern farmers, purchasing potatoes through state-owned Lanka Sathosa retail network as well as declaring a guaranteed price of Rs. 80 per kilo in March this year.

The Sri Lankan government is trying to change the ethnic demographics of the Tamil North-East said the leader of the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF).

Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, in an interview with the Sunday Leader, accused the government of using land appropriation, militarisation and Sinhala colonisation to change the ethnic demographics of the region.

“They are building towns within their military bases. Over time, when they take the military boundaries away there will be an entire Sinhala colonised village within that area,” he said.

Germany’s Ambassador to Sri Lanka Dr. Jurgen Morhard met with the Sri Lankan Army’s Commander of the Security Forces-Jaffna at their headquarters in Palali, reports Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Defence.

A Tamil student was found dead in Thalavaakkalai, near Nuwara Eliya, in the Central Province on Sunday, Ada Derana reported.

Yoganathan Sivatharshan, who disappeared from his house in Mattukalai on Friday, was found near the Melkothmalai reservoir.

People from his town protested and blockaded a road in Thalavaakalai, saying they suspected Sivatharshan’s death to be murder and charged that local police took insufficient action when he was reported missing.

The Northern Province Chief Minister CV Wigneswaran accused the Sri Lankan military of spying on northern Tamil civilians and even collecting data on their body language.

Speaking at the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi convention, Wigneswaran said that the military was using Israeli technology to collect all types of data on civilians in the North.