A protest was held in Jaffna today marking International Women's Day, demanding international justice for human rights abuses against women by the Sri Lankan government.

Writing to Minister of State for Asia, Nigel Adams, UK Shadow Minister for Asia and the Pacific, Stephen Kinnock, has called on the government to ‘comprehensively rewrite’ the current proposed UN resolution and questioned why the government’s review of its Global Human Rights sanctions regime does not include “a single senior Sri Lankan government minister, official or military officer”.

In his statement Kinnock criticised the government's refusal to consider referring Sri Lanka to the ICC, maintain that Britain’s position, “should not be determined simply by the veto-wielding intentions of two of its permanent members”.

Tamil families of the disappeared braved military intimidation and marched across Mullaitivu this morning, as they marked International Women’s Day with another rally demanding justice for their disappeared loved ones.

The families dressed in black for their rally as a sign of protest. They have been demonstrating for more than 4 years on the roadsides of the North-East, demanding information on the whereabouts of their loved ones and justice for their disappearances.

The United Nations Department of Peace Operations should "immediately suspend the deployment of Sri Lankan peacekeepers" over Sri Lanka's failure to investigate and prosecute international crimes and the promotion of "alleged war criminals to perform high-level state functions," Yasmin Sooka, Executive Director at the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) wrote for Just Security. 

Ambihai K Selvakumar, a director of the International Centre for the Prevention of Genocide (ICPPG), is on her ninth day of hunger-striking as she continues to demand justice for the genocide of Tamils carried out by the Sri Lankan state.

Famed Eelam Tamil and Dalit writer Dominic Jeeva passed away on 28 January 2021.

Jeeva was the editor of Mallikai, a monthly journal on Tamil literature for more than four decades, and courageously narrated intersectioning tales of oppression and marginalisation on the island.

We share below some excerpts of his work and words as a tribute to the renowned writer.

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Responding to a petition with over 13,500 signatures, calling on the British government to refer Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court, the UK government has responded citing “insufficient UN Security Council support”.

Responding to the British statement, Tasha Manoranjan, Executive Director of PEARL stated: “We are disappointed that the UK Government has shied away from pursuing international criminal accountability for the mass atrocities against the Tamil people in Sri Lanka”.

A Tamil man who arrived in the UK almost 40 years ago remains in immigration limbo due to a series of Home Office failures and delays, The Guardian reports. The man’s solicitor has written to the Home Office stating that judicial review proceedings will follow if the case is not resolved speedily.

Ponnambalam Jothibala, 69, came to the UK as a student in 1983. Though he was granted periods of temporary leave to remain in the 1980s, his studies were halted after he was the victim of a traumatic arson attack in which three people died but which he survived by jumping out of a first-floor window.

Writing in Just Security, Laurel E. Fletcher, Clinical Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, highlights the urgency for members of the Human Rights Council to exercise its power to “establish a mechanism that builds on prior U.N. efforts to investigate atrocity crimes committed during Sri Lanka’s armed conflict and collects and preserves evidence to support international and foreign prosecutions”.