Families of the disappeared in Mannar conveyed their disappointment in both the Sri Lankan government and the international community’s response to their struggle to find their missing loved ones, stating that the recent Children’s day was marked as a "day of mourning” without their children.

Writing in “The Caravan”, Amita Arudpragasam, highlights how increasing militarisation, war loss, and social pressures are increasing the burden on “Tamil women [...] to marry at any cost, which usually means an expensive dowry”

Gotabaya Rajapaksa has an issued a new gazette notification taking over several state institutions.

1.Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka and Allied Institutions

2. Information and Communication Technology Agency and Allied Institutions

3. Sri Lanka Computer Emergency Readiness Team

4. Colombo Port City Project

6. Sri Lanka Telecom and its Subsidiaries and Allied Institutions

7. All Information Technology Parks.

A recent discovery of one thousand nine hundred and four Ancient Pandyan coins in Mannar has brought up archaeological interest from Tamil academics and professionals on the island, but has led to some Sinhalese archaeologists claiming that they coins are from a Sinhala-based lineage.

An archaeology field study of the coins was carried out by Jaffna University senior History professor P. Pushparatnam, Jaffna Fort Reconstruction Officer P. Kapilan, Jaffna Fort Excavation Officer V.Manimaran and archaeology graduates S. Dasinthan and K. Kirikaran.

Sri Lankan army officials threatened Tamil families of the disappeared in Mullaitivu, as they prepared to stage a protest to mark Children’s Day on Thursday.

As preparations were being made for the Children’s day protest the night before (September 30^th), two military officials threatened the head of the Mullaitivu Missing Persons' Association, Mariyasuresh Easwary at her house and demanded information about the protest.

Eleven years since Mullivaikal, the end of Sri Lanka’s armed conflict in which tens of thousands of Tamils were massacred by the military at the behest of the state authorities, Sri Lanka is no closer to delivering transitional justice to the Tamil people or bringing war criminals to justice, writes Professor Kate Cronin-Furman, in the Foreign Affairs magazine.

“In its rush to celebrate Sirisena’s election as the dawn of a new democratic era in Sri Lanka, international actors facilitated the entrenchment of impunity and squandered a chance to protect vulnerable people,” writes Cronin-Furman.

Whilst the previous government led by Sirisena put up a veneer of commitment towards ensuring accountability, the current Rajapaksa administration with their “unassailable mandate for their Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist politics and militaristic governing style spells disaster for human rights in Sri Lanka,” she adds.

Tamil families of children who disappeared during the 2009 Mullivaikkal massacres, organised protests across the North-East urging the Sri Lankan government to deliver information on the whereabouts of their children. 

Today marks the birthday of Balachandran Prabhakaran, the third child of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, who was executed by the Sri Lankan military during the final days of the Mullivaikkal massacre.

Balachandran, who was born on the 1^st of October 1996, would be 25 years old today.

Aged just 12 years old, he was one of thousands of children killed by the Sri Lankan military. Leaked trophy photographs taken by Sri Lankan soldiers, show the child in their custody sitting with a snack in his hand, sitting on a bench surrounded by sandbags, in what looks like a fortified army position.

The United Nations Secretary General António Guterres raised concerns over the Sri Lankan government’s intimidation of human rights activists, including those that had travelled to the UN Human Rights Council earlier this year, labelling any such activities “absolutely unacceptable”.