As Sri Lanka’s former defence secretary and accused war criminal Gotabaya Rajapaksa launches his campaign to become the island’s next president, 47 Roots looks back on his previous statements and his hardline Sinhala nationalist appeal.

Former Chief Minister of the Northern Province C V Wigneswaran denied claims he is backing any of the candidates in the upcoming Sri Lankan presidential election and said that with the exception of one outsider, all other Sinhala candidates have ignored demands put forward by Tamil political parties.

Releasing a statement earlier today, the former Supreme Court Justice also said he had not called for a boycott of the polls as reported in some Southern media outlets.

Wigneswaran’s TMK and four other Tamil political parties had put forward a set of 13 demands to all candidates in next month’s polls.

Sajith Premadasa, the United National Party’s candidate for Sri Lanka’s upcoming presidential polls, launched his election manifesto this morning, pledging to strengthen the military, increase UN Peacekeeping involvement, create a “National Intelligence Act” and implement a “Sri Lanka First” foreign policy.

The manifesto was launched after presented it to senior a Sinhala Buddhist monks including the Chief Prelate of Malwatta chapter, this morning.

The families of Tamil asylum seekers who have fled to the UK are being harassed, threatened and in some cases physically assaulted by Sri Lankan security forces, said the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) in a press release last week.

“Spouses and parents in the villages of the north of Sri Lanka are being visited by police and army within days of the person in London giving a media interview or participating in a protest,” said the ITJP.

An upscale Colombo cafe triggered outrage over social media and has launched a reported investigation from Sri Lanka’s official languages commission after it displayed a sign instructing its employees that “No Tamil” is to be spoken.

Today marks 24 years since over half a million Tamil men, women and children fled their homes in Jaffna, ahead of a major military offensive by the Sri Lankan government led by Chandrika Kumaratunga, in what became known as the Jaffna Exodus.

On October 30, 1995, the entire town of Jaffna, the largest Tamil population centre in Sri Lanka, streamed out in a mass exodus for the safety of the Vanni, which was then controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The General Secretary of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), a Sinhala extremist group in Sri Lanka, has vowed to settle in Mullaitivu at the site of a controversial Buddhist vihara, located in a Tamil majority district in the North-East.

The Sri Lankan government claimed it had achieved a “great victory” in securing a $480 million dollar grant from the United States as part of Millennium Challenge Corporation Grant.

Sri Lanka’s cabinet approved the grant on Tuesday, which will allow American funding of infrastructure and traffic management projects across the island.

"This is a great victory for the government and augurs well for the future," said Sri Lanka’s Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera in a statement after the grant was approved.

Implementation of the deal is set to being early next year.