^Recruits

More than 300 new Sri Lankan army recruits completed a four-month training programme at the Battalion Training School (BTS) in Vidaththalpalai, Jaffna, becoming the first batch of recruits to pass out in Jaffna as militarisation of the Tamil homeland intensifies.

People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) called for international action on Sri Lanka as it is "abdundantly clear that such accountability will not come from the state."

In a statement marking International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, PEARL expressed solidarity with the Tamil families of disappeared, who have been protesting continuously since 2017 despite facing threats and intimidation from Sri Lanka. 

A group of four Swiss guards have been acquitted over their roles in the death of a 28-year-old Tamil woman at a prison in 2018, after they delayed medical attention following a suicide attempt for 19 minutes.

The woman, identified only as “Kowshika”, had fled Sri Lanka but had her asylum application rejected by Swiss authorities who subsequently detained her at the Waaghof Prison in Basel.

Pragas Gnanapragasam, a 26-year-old Tamil journalist from Jaffna, passed away due to coronavirus earlier today.

Pragas, a native of Kodikamam, was an independent journalist writing for magazines and newspapers in the North-East. He also contributed to the Tamil Guardian, as a correspondent based in the North-East, sending updates from the Tamil homeland.

Marking International Day for the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, the Association for Relatives of the Enforced Disappearances have called on UN High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, to reject the Sri Lankan Government’s Office of Missing Persons (OMP) and instead pursue an international inquiry into the fate of those forcibly disappeared.

Former Scottish Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill, has urged Police Scotland to end all involvement in training Sri Lankan police warning that “Sri Lankan authorities are using Police Scotland as cover to deny repression and breaches of human rights”.

MacAskill’s intervention follows the sudden announcement from Police Scotland that they had temporarily suspended their training programme following a human rights review of their programme.

Marking International day for the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, a collection of Tamil diaspora organisations released a joint statement urging the international community to pursue accountability for the families of those forcibly disappeared in Sri Lanka and for a collation of evidence to provide an accurate account of those disappeared.

A former Sri Lankan soldier who won a gold medal at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo this week has been granted a military promotion, according to the Sri Lankan army.

Sergeant Dinesh Priyantha Herath has been praised by Sri Lankan government and military officials, and by the British High Commission in Colombo, for his performance at the games.

Sri Lanka's president Gotabaya Rajapaksa has imposed emergency regulations this week as the country’s private banks ran out of foreign exchange reserves to finance imports and a food shortage crisis strikes.

Tamil families of the disappeared held sit in protests in their homes yesterday to mark International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. 

The families who have been demanding answers about the fate of their loved ones, lit lamps in their homes as a curfew has been imposed due to the spread of Covid-19 across the island.

It has been 1,635 days since the Tamil families began their roadside protests across the eight districts in the North-East. Despite multiple pledges from various Sri Lankan administrations, there has not been any accountability for those who were forcibly disappeared at the hands of the Sri Lankan state.