Keir Starmer's announcement that he will resign as Labour leader, and remain in Downing Street only until his successor is chosen, brings to an end a premiership that began on the back of some of the strongest pledges a British party leader had ever made to Tamils.

The Sri Lanka Air Force has carried out the first test flight of its upgraded Israeli-made Kfir C12 fighter aircraft at SLAF Base Katunayake, renewing scrutiny of a warplane closely associated with Sri Lanka’s bombing campaigns across the Tamil homeland.

When officers of the Jaffna District Crime Prevention Division arrested a 24-year-old rapper from Kilinochchi on 2 June over videos of a music performance, they invoked one of the most feared pieces of legislation on the island: the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).

Today marks 52 years since the death of Ponnuthurai Sivakumaran, the first Tamil to die in the liberation struggle. 

Sivakumaran was a member of the Tamil Manavar Peravai (or Tamil Student Federation, TSF) and a leading militant in the early armed Tamil struggle. With decades of Sri Lankan state repression and deadly anti-Tamil pogroms already having taken place, Tamil militant movements began to form. Sivakumaran was involved in assassination attempts on both Somaweera Chandrasiri and Alfred Duraiappah.