(Police patrolling Vavuniya)

Sri Lankan police have attempted to break the hartal being carried out across the North-East by threatening and intimidating participants into reopening their stores.

A hartal is being carried out across the North-East today, as Tamils were joined by Muslims and others across the region as they protested Sri Lankan attempts to ban the commemoration of those who gave their lives for Tamil rights and ongoing intimidation.

The hartal - a day long shutdown - took place despite intimdation from the Sri Lankan security forces, with reports that traders were threatened to continue business as normal.

Sri Lanka’s president has wasted little time in getting to work. Within weeks of his party sweeping parliamentary polls, Gotabaya Rajapaksa rapidly produced the long-promised 20^th Amendment to Sri Lanka’s constitution, which seeks to further concentrate power into the executive presidency he occupies. As expected, there are few checks on his power and with a super-majority in parliament, a determined Rajapaksa looks set to steamroll it through.

Tamil political parties and civil society actors have planned a hartal across the North-East in protest of a Sri Lankan court ban and intimidation from the security forces, preventing them from commemorating those who gave their lives for Tamil rights.

A coalition of Tamil diaspora groups around the world released a joint statement commemorating Thiyagi Thileepan’s sacrifice, calling for action “demanding that the militarised Sri Lankan dictatorship recognise international conventions on the right to remember the dead”. 

The British Tamils Forum (BTF), Australian Tamil Congress (ATC), Solidarity Group for Peace and Justice in Sri Lanka (SGPJ), Irish Tamils Forum (ITF) and United States Tamil Action Group (USTAG) statement details Thiyagi Thileepan’s hunger strike and his demands for the self-determination of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. 

Former Inspector General of the Police, Pujith Jayasundara, testifying before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry probing the 2019 April attacks, claimed that the bomber of the Tropical Inn in Dehiwela had met with an intelligence official 45 minutes before he blew himself up.

Mohan Peiris, former attorney general and legal advisor to Mahinda Rajapaksa has been appointed as the new permanent representative of Sri Lanka to the UN in New York.

Peiris was congratulated by the UN representative in Sri Lanka, Hanaa Singer, in a tweet despite Peiris being found on record to have misled the UN Committee against Torture (CAT). Singer’s tweet has been met with backlash from activists critical of Peiris’s record. His appointment is seen as an expansion of the Rajapaksa’s inner circle.

Events were held by Tamils across the globe to mark the 33rd anniversary of the death of Lt Col Thileepan, a political wing leader of the LTTE who fasted to death in 198

Students at Jaffna University took a knee to commemorate the death of Lt Col Thileepan this morning, despite intimidation from the Sri Lankan security forces a day earlier.

Dozens of students gathered at a memorial at the Jaffna University campus, where they took to their knees and bowed their heads to pay respect to Thileepan’s sacrifice.

Indian Prime minister Narendra Modi told Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister that implementation of the 13th Amendment - which devolves power to a merged North-East - was “essential”, as the two leaders met in a virtual summit today.

Modi told Mahinda Rajapaksa that Sri Lanka must “work towards realizing the expectations of Tamils for equality, justice, peace and dignity within a united Sri Lanka by achieving reconciliation nurtured by implementation of the Constitutional provisions”.