Sri Lankan soldiers disrupted services at the St Joseph Church in Koolamurippu this evening, blocking entry to the shrine and telling worshippers and the priests to move the service to another day because it could not be held today.

The incident created a tense situation in the area with locals reluctant to accept the army’s arbitrary prohibition.

Sri Lankan police and Criminal Investigations Department (CID) officers have shut down University of Jaffna campus after students cut a cake to celebrate the 67th birthday of LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran earlier today, in a secret ceremony held on the campus grounds.

“By the afternoon, everyone was chased out,” university sources told the Tamil Guardian. “The police told the [university] security not to allow anyone inside [and] CID and police are outside the university […] it’s a risky situation right now”

The Mullaitivu magistrate’s court revoked its ban on Maaveerar Naal and injunctions placed on dozens of Tamil politicians and civil society members, stating that the need to remember the dead was a fact of human nature.

On Thursday, the Magistrate T. Saravanabavan amended the court’s earlier judgement which had granted Mullaitivu police’s applications for bans on commemorations, and 72 individual injunctions against politicians, activists and community leaders.

Highlighting that representations of the leadership or insignia of banned organisations should not be used, the judge said that remembrance of the dead could be carried out regardless of their identity.

Students at the University of Jaffna cut a cake to celebrate the 67th birthday of LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran earlier today, in a secret ceremony held on the campus grounds.

Following high-profile meetings with the US State Department in Washington and New York, as well as meeting the British High Commissioner for Sri Lanka in Colombo, Tamil National Alliance spokesperson MA Sumanthiran met with Minister for South Asia, Tariq Ahmad.

During the meeting, Ahmad stated that two discussed "upholding human rights, post-conflict accountability and reconciliation, as well as the importance of respecting the rights of all minorities".

British MPs Elliot Colburn and Theresa Villiers have called on the British foreign secretary to impose Magnitsky style sanctions on Sri Lanka's army commander, Shavendra Silva, who has been credibly accused of war crimes.

In announcing the participant list for the virtual US “Summit for Democracy” democratic summit, which is to be held from 9-10 December, the State Department has excluded Sri Lanka amidst growing concerns over the island’s dire human rights record.

Sri Lanka is one of the few countries, alongside China and Russia, which have not been invited to participate in this summit. 110 countries have been invited including India, Pakistan, the Maldives and Nepal. Notably, Taiwan has also been invited to participate in this Summit.

An installation was set up in front of Britain's Houses of Parliament in Westminster, Central London earlier today, with thousands of Karthgaipoo flowers bearing messages of remembrance to mark Maaveerar Naal.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and Global Tamil Forum (GTF) have called on the US government to take on a “proactive” role on Sri Lanka and on “addressing the root cause of conflict and human rights violations, the denial of political rights to the Tamil people,” according to a press statement released after a series of meetings in Washington and New York.

Students at the University of Jaffna paid tribute to those who gave their lives to the Tamil liberation struggle today, despite a ban imposed by the Jaffna Magistrate Court on Maaveerar Naal commemorations.

Students gathered at the memorial situated inside the university campus, bent onto their knees and laid flowers beneath it. Their tribute comes after the Jaffna Magistrate Court imposed a ban on the commemoration of Maaveerar Naal by members of the University of Jaffna, following an injunction filed by Kopay police.