The Jesuit priest, Rev Fr Benjamin Henry Miller S J passed away yesterday on January 1 in Batticaloa. 

Rev Miller was a human rights defender, who was pivotal in documenting the tens of thousands of disappeared in the area. 

His funeral was held today, with colleagues and locals, including local school students and teachers turning out to pay their respects. 

The United States ambassador, Alaina Teplitz sent a condolence message, which was read out by the Bishop of Batticaloa.

<p>The Sri Lankan government has not given the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) any promises that are ‘harmful’ to Sri Lanka in exchange for its support, a United National Party (UNP) minister has said.</p> <p>Minister Arjuna Ranatunga said that even he would not be prepared to work with the government anymore if it paved the way for separatism or ‘ethnic division’, according to Daily News.</p>

<p>A new Sri Lankan constitution, the focus of the Tamil National Alliance’s (TNA) efforts since 2015 will still ensure foremost place given to Buddhism, and will feature the Sinhala term for unitary state in all three languages (Sinhala, Tamil and English).</p> <p>The decision to preserve the article which prioritises Buddhism was taken unanimously by the United National Party (UNP), the United National Front (UNF) and Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.</p>

<p>Sri Lanka’s former president Mahinda Rajapaksa called on people to “protect our motherland from enemy forces” in a New Year’s message released yesterday.</p>

<p>A Sri Lankan minister has admitted that the country’s cricket board has been ranked the world’s most corrupt by the sport’s governing body, after a series of scandals have rocked the administration.</p> <p>The International Cricket Council (ICC) feels "Sri Lanka's cricket administration is corrupt from top to bottom", said sports minister Harin Fernando said, after meeting with officials, including ICC anti-corruption chief Alex Marshall, in Dubai.</p>

<p>Political turmoil in Sri Lanka looks set to continue in the year ahead, warned analysts from consultancy groups this week, with worries that investors may have underestimated the crisis on the island.</p> <p>Sasha Riser-Kositsky, senior analyst at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, told CNBC that the current impasse is “at best an uneasy and fragile truce”.</p>

On this day 13 years ago, five Tamil students were summarily executed by Sri Lanka's Special Task Force, whilst they spent an afternoon on the beach in Trincomalee.

To date no one has been held accountable for the murder.

The case – known as the 'Trinco 5' – remains one of the highest profile killings in Sri Lanka to receive international attention, listed in 2014 by the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' report on the island as one of four ‘emblematic cases’ of the government's failure to ensure accountability and having been raised repeatedly in international forums.

We look back at 2018's top news stories and significant issues through images from throughout the year. 

A US embassy delegation met with the Sri Lankan military in Jaffna earlier this week, in a reported discussion about further training opportunities between the two militaries.

<p>Sri Lanka’s prime minister has pledged to take action against those who vandalised Buddha statues in the Kegalle district earlier this month, according to a report in The Island.</p> <p>Ranil Wickremesinghe reportedly told a group of senior Buddhist monks from the Asigiriya and Malwathu chapters on Friday that his government would take stern action against the "real culprits" who had damaged the Buddha statues in Mawanella last week.</p>

The Canadian government has issued a travel advisory for tourists heading to Sri Lanka, urging visitors to “exercise a high degree of caution at all times” when on the island and added that Tamil Canadians have faced arrests and detention by security forces.

“The Sri Lankan military continues to maintain a strong presence in the country’s north and east, including the Jaffna Peninsula,” said the official travel advisory this week.

<p>Despite its admirable conduct during the island's political crisis, Sri Lanka's judiciary is not capable of delivering justice for the atrocities perpetrated against Tamils, former Chief Minister of the Northern Province and former Supreme Court judge C V Wigneswaran has said.</p>

A confrontation occurred in Jaffna between locals and a group of Sinhalese people who illegally harvested aloe vera plants from the coast of Ponnalai.

The group were seen harvesting the plants and loading them into a pickup truck by a group of Tamil youths at the seaside.

The Tamil youths confronted the group and contacted a member of the Valikamam West divisional council, who also came to the scene.

<p>Land release activists in the Amparai District have highlighted that despite Sri Lankan military forces’ highly publicised rapid release of pockets of lands in the North-East, there have been no indications that those within Amparai will be released.</p>