In a letter to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Human Rights Watch (HRW) calls upon the organisation to stress to Sri Lanka the importance of civil society and to abandon proposed legislation that would severly curtail their freedom.

The University of Jaffna's Teacher's Association has described last week's violence and arrests at Vedukkunaari Athi Sivan temple in Vavuniya as the "latest manifestations of the violence of Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism" as efforts to colonise the traditionally Tamil temple continue. 

Last Friday, as Tamils gathered at the temple to observe Shivarathri, Sri Lankan police aggressively disrupted the religious ceremony and arrested eight Tamil devotees. 

Sri Lanka’s Archbishop of Colombo delivered a statement at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva last week, where he called for an investigation into the Easter Sunday attacks and – for the first time – spoke of accountability “for the atrocities in the North-East.”

Lands that were being occupied by the Sri Lankan military were released to their original owners for the first time in years, with Tamils returning to the area finding their homes having been left in ruins.

Some of the families were visiting their homes for the first time in almost 30 years. Much of the land had been seized by the Sri Lankan military after it launched an offensive to capture the Jaffna peninsula in 1995, triggering an exodus of over half a million people.

Sri Lanka's archaeology department has claimed that the eight Tamil devotees at Vedukkunaari Hill Athi Sivan temple were arrested during the Shivarathri for damaging the temple's antiquities. 

Appearing on behalf of those arrested, lawyer Kanagaratnam Sugash said that the archaeology department has falsely accused the eight individuals of damaging historical monuments at the temple.  

Hundreds of women from all eight districts across the Tamil homeland 8 districts took to the streets in Kilinochchi today, demanding an end all forms of oppression, harassment, and militarisation across the North-East, including eliminating violence against women.

The rally was organized by the North-East Women’s Collective under the theme of “Let Us Eliminate Intersectional Oppressions against Women”.

The leader of the Crusaders for Democratic Party, C. Vendan, called on India to expedite the release of the remaining freed convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case who are presently detained in special camps.

The call to release the remaining freed convicts comes following the death of Santhan who was freed from the case over a year ago but died a few days before his return to Jaffna.

The remaining freed convicts are Murugan, Robert, and Jayakumar

Tamil families of the disappeared in Vavuniya are marking 2578 days of continuous roadside protest today. in pursuit of answers to the whereabouts of their forcibly disappeared loved ones.

Many of the families witnessed their relatives being taken into Sri Lankan military custody at the end of the armed conflict in 2009 or they were abducted in white vans. 

Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi parliamentarian M A Sumanthiran was the sole opposition lawmaker to attend a meeting convened by Sri Lanka’s president regarding engagment with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday, as he broke a boycott against the global body’s “hard reforms”.

The Opposition SJB and JVP parties had both declared they would boycott the meeting, which was organised by Ranil Wickremesinghe to discuss his government’s engagement with the IMF.

The residents of Pallimunai in Mannar and Pungudutivu in Jaffna took to the streets last week to protests over the Sri Lankan government’s failure to address their grievances on a range of issues, from Sinhala settlers disrupting their livelihood through sea cucumber farms to illegal sand mining.

The protest was led by the Pallimunai St.Lucia Fisherfolk Cooperative Society and galvanized the support of several residents in the area who marched up to the Mannar District Secretariat.