A hunger strike urging the Sri Lankan government to be brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) commenced in Nallur, Jaffna today morning.  

Ambihai K Selvakumar, a director of the International Centre for the Prevention of Genocide (ICPPG) is in the second day of her hunger strike, as she continues her demand that the UK refer Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court.

Jaffna fishermen have expressed their concerns against the Sri Lankan government’s move to permit Chinese firms to establish a renewable energy system in three islands located off the Jaffna peninsula. 

The Sri Lankan Terrorism Investigation Department (TID) summoned the secretary of the North-East Relatives of the Missing Persons Association for interrogation, just days after questioning the Vavuniya Families of the Disappeared Association secretary and president.

Families of the disappeared (FOD) across the North-East marked 4 years of continuous roadside protests this week.

For 4 years the FOD’s demands of the whereabouts of their family members, the majority of whom had been handed over to the Sri Lankan Army at the end of the armed conflict in May 2009, continues to be ignored by the Sri Lankan government.

Speaking at an awareness protest marking 4 years of protest, Jeyavanitha Kaasipillai, head of the FOD in Vavuniya stated

The official Sri Lankan state celebration of Vesak will be held in Jaffna this year, following instructions from Prime Minister, and accused war criminal Mahinda Rajapaksa to “focus on the North and East during Vesak this year”.

Whilst accusing the UNHRC of being bias towards the state, Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary Kamal Gunaratne has denied allegations that he and the Sri Lankan armed forces committed war crimes during the armed struggle against the LTTE which ended in May 2009. 

“We are not war criminals”, said Gunaratne in an interview conducted by Ceylon Today. Addressing the interviewer, he claimed to have served his “country and its people and even you are walking freely today because I spent my entire youth in the jungle fighting the terrorists”. 

^{File photo: Sri Lankan soldiers listen to an address by Shavendra Silva on cyber warfare}

Sri Lanka’s Terrorist Investigations Division (TID) arrested a Tamil youth in Wattala last week claiming that he had posted content about the LTTE on Tik Tok, which was being monitored by the authorities ‘cyber patrol unit’.

The 25-year-old Tamil youth, who was born in Mullaitivu and living in Hatton, has since been detained by counter terror police under the widely criticised Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).

The Sri Lankan navy’s efforts to occupy private land in Karainagar, Jaffna was thwarted by the protests of Tamil locals and politicians, last Friday (19^th February).

Following the presentation of the damning report on Sri Lanka by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet’s damning on report on Sri Lanka, several NGO’s highlighted the prevailing impunity and lack of accountability for human rights violations in Sri Lanka and the failed domestic mechanisms; urging the council to take steps to refer Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and impose sanctions on known perpetrators.

Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada