Elected parliamentarians from the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) and Thamizh Makkal Thesiya Kootani (TMTK) paid tribute at Mullivaikal this week, in poignant ceremonies ahead of the lawmakers taking up office.

TMTK leader and former Chief Minister C V Wigneswaran paid his respects at the site last week, where tens of thousands of Tamils were killed in a Sri Lankan military offensive in 2009. 

In memory of the 53 Tamil schoolgirls who were killed in the Sencholai massacre, a private tuition centre in Mullaitivu has christened its classrooms after their names. 

As the anniversary of the bombing by the Sri Lankan air force of a building that housed a children’s home is being commemorated across the Tamil homeland and abroad, the tuition centre conducted the event of opening up the name boards of each class on Friday. 

Sri Lanka’s State Minister of Provincial Councils and Local Government Sarath Weerasekara pledged to strip the 13th Amendment of clauses that would be crucial to establishing local control and provincial councils, just days after he assumed office this week. 

Weerasekara, who is a retired rear admiral in the military, took his position as State Minister in an elaborate Buddhist ceremony, alongside the rest of Sri Lanka’s cabinet.

A woman's skeleton and clothes have been found in Jaffna. The discovery was made on Friday morning when a pit was being dug to set up a tent at the ground of the fishery factory in Jaffna.

Local witnesses reported the sighting to the police and the Jaffna municipal health department were informed.

A woman has been found dead with serious injury wounds in a salt marsh in Mannar on Thursday. 

Photo of Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi,

Following the appointment of reappointment of Dinesh Gunawardena as Sri Lanka’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, congratulated the Minister on his successful reappointment and called for a strengthening of ties between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, despite human rights concerns.

The statue of former Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian and human rights lawyer, Nadarajah Raviraj was vandalised on Sunday. The decorative pottery placed in front of the statue was broken and the cloths that were placed across the statue was removed.

Remembrance events for the victims of the Sencholai massacre, in which 53 female students and three of their teachers were viciously slaughtered by the Sri Lankan air force, took place in Mullaitivu this morning, despite a ban announced by Sri Lankan police earlier this week, and heavy military surveillance.

Commemoration events are usually held annually at the memorial arch at the Vallipunam Junction near the site of the bombed home. This year, while arrangements were being made to hold a remembrance this morning (14^th August 2020); organisers were called to the Puthukudiyirippu police station on Wednesday, and informed that the commemoration events could not be held. The police also threatened the organisers with arrest if they went ahead and organised the event.

Following a parliamentary election which has further empowered the Rajapaksa regime, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils (APPGT) in the UK has called upon Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, to implement sanctions against senior Sri Lankan officials.

The officials listed are former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga; Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka; Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva; and, Staff Sergeant Sunil Ratnayake.

The leader of the Thamizh Makkal Thesiya Kootani (TMTK) and former Chief Minister of the Northern Province, C. V. Wigneswaran said that “Tamils and Muslims should work together” to resist the “Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism that has infiltrated the parliament.”

Wigneswaran, who was newly-elected as a parliamentarian in the Jaffna district, claimed that Tamils and Muslims face “Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism in a never seen before unparalleled level” in a press release issued by him last week.