Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian Selvam Adaikalanathan warned last week that Sri Lanka’s Minister of Public Security Sarath Weerasekara “is acting towards eliminating Tamil people in the North-East”, after the minister threatened to arrest Tamil protestors and said Tamil lawmakers should have been teargassed.

Sri Lanka has finally ended it's forced cremation policy but has proposed to introduce laws to ban wearing face veils in public, continuing the ongoing discrimination faced by Muslims on the island. 

_{File photo : Gopalakrishnan Rajkumar at a protest last year.} 

The Sri Lankan Terrorism Investigation Division (TID) summoned the secretary of the Vavuniya Families of the Disappeared Association for investigation on Monday.

Responding to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet’s, damning report on Sri Lanka, members of the Core Group (UK, Canada, Germany, Montenegro, and North Macedonia) expressed alarm over the deteriorating human rights conditions in Sri Lanka whilst Sri Lanka allies accuse the UNHRC of political bias.

Alongside the Core Group, the EU, Australia, and Switzerland alongside a number of other countries voiced concern over the worsening human rights situation in Sri Lanka. Russia, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, and China, among others, alleged faith in Sri Lanka’s domestic mechanisms and accused the UN report baseless allegations.

Today marks the 16th anniversary of the assassination of Tamil politician Joseph Pararajasingham, who was shot dead by armed government paramilitary men in 2005.

Sri Lanka's Minister of Public Security Sarath Weerasekara criticised the UNHRC sessions and the institution itself as being a weapon used by the Tamil diaspora and the Western world to weaken Sri Lanka, in an interview conducted by the Daily Mirror this week. 

Pakistan's prime minister Imran Khan concluded a visit to Sri Lanka today, where he met with both Sri Lanka’s president and prime minister to “explore new avenues of enhancing bilateral trade and investment between the two countries”, and held a last minute meeting with Muslim lawmakers on the island.

However, the issue of Sri Lanka’s forcible cremation of Muslims – a topic that has generated international outrage and led to protests as Khan visited – was seemingly not discussed at all.

Speaking at the 46^th session of the UN Human Rights Council, Canada’s Foreign Minister, H.E. Mr Marc Garneau, expressed “deep concern” about the deteriorating human rights situation in Sri Lanka and emphasised the need to hold Sri Lanka accountable for crimes committed.

“Canada is deeply concerned at the deteriorating human rights situation in Sri Lanka, which include threats to human rights defenders and civil society organizations, suppression of memorialization, forced cremations of religious minorities and the deterioration of the rule of law” Garneau stated.

A coalition of 22 organisations have called on member states at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to pass a “strong resolution" that affirms an international commitment to protect human rights in Sri Lanka with the prioritisation of victims and their families.

The US Ambassador to Sri Lanka met with Tamil families of the disappeared this week, as she highlighted their struggle to find the whereabouts of their missing loves ones in a set of tweets.

“Imagine losing your son or your husband,” tweeted Ambassador Teplitz. “Now imagine never knowing what happened to him.”

“That’s the heartbreak experienced by families of the disappeared,” she continued. “A responsible govt must respect victims’ families and the recommendations of their own commissions for the sake of #healing.”