Tamils across Europe have been marking the 11 day hunger strike by the LTTE’s Lt. Col. Thileepan in ceremonies at their homes, with many countries on the continent continuing to have tight restrictions in place due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As coronavirus infections begin to rise many governments have put restrictions on large gatherings in place. Tamil organisations across the continent however have called on the public to mark Thileepan’s sacrifice in their home or with socially distanced events.

Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa vowed to send in troops from the notorious Special Task Force if tea plantations continued to produce “garbage tea”, in a warning to factory owners on the island.

Speaking to factory owners last week, the war crimes accused head of state said there had been reports of “instances of adulterating the quality tea by mixing sugar, glucose, sodium bicarbonate and ferrous sulphate”.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to meet virtually for a bilateral summit on 26 September, for the first time since the Rajapaksa regime’s parliamentary election victory last month, where defence, security and other “international issues of mutual interest” are to be discussed.

Writing in Jacobin, Abarna Selvarajah and Brannavy Jeyasundara highlight the growing authoritarianism in Sri Lanka as President Gotabaya Rajapaksa plans to bring forwards a 20^th amendment to the constitution which will “expands the role of the presidential office and scales back constitutional checks and balances on executive powers”.

Sri Lanka’s former president Maithripala Sirisena is alleged to have offered a senior police chief a “pension and a position as an ambassador in any country he wished to serve,” if he accepted blame for a series of security lapses that led to the Easter Sunday bombings according to the former Defense Secretary Hemasiri Fernando, as controversy continued at a President Commission looking into the attacks.

A trove of one thousand nine hundred and four coins was unearthed in Mannar on the 18 September.

The discovery was made as a landowner dug foundations for the construction of a house. The coins bore the distinctive symbol of the fish and sword which are attributed to the Pandya dynasty.

Sri Lankan lawyer, Indika Gallage, has filed a petition with the Supreme Court challenging the draft of the 20th Amendment to the constitution and requesting a public referendum on the bill.

This petition comes, on Tuesday, after the amendment was presented in parliament for a first reading. It argues that the draft amendment violates basic rights enshrined in the Constitution. If passed by the Supreme Court, the public referendum would be required in addition to the two-thirds majority in parliament.

Threats posed by Sri Lanka’s intelligence forces prevented the remembrance of the Manmunai massacre which took place on September 21, 1990, in which 18 Tamil civilians were killed by the Sri Lankan Army and Muslim Home Guards in Puthukudiyiruppu in Manmunai North, Batticaloa.

Speaking at a high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly, marking the 75^th anniversary of the UN, Sri Lankan President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, claimed to reaffirm commitments to the organisation whilst simultaneously insisting on need importance of “the sovereign equality of States, respect for territorial integrity and non-interference in their domestic affairs”.

Rajapaksa further stated that the UN works best “when no country is held hostage to the interests of a few”.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Nagarkovil massacre, where the Sri Lankan air force bombed a school in Jaffna killing dozens of Tamil schoolchildren.