Maaveerar Naal commemorations started off early in the Jaffna District as tributes were paid at the family home of the first Maaveerar Lt. Shankar.

A heavy Sri Lankan military presence blocked mourners across the North, with security forces arresting at least one prominent activist and assaulting a journalist, as a crackdown was launched today whilst Tamils attempted to mark Maaveerar Naal.

Despite a flurry of court orders across the North that rejected appeals from the Sri Lankan security forces to block remembrance events, the Sri Lankan military presence was out in full force across the North-East.

An installation was set up in front of Britain's Houses of Parliament in Westminster, Central London earlier today, with thousands of Karthgaipoo flowers bearing messages of remembrance to mark Maaveerar Naal.

Police Scotland has informed the UK High Commission in Sri Lanka that they will not extend their training contract with Sri Lanka’s police force in March 2022, when it is set to expire, due to ongoing human rights concerns.

Making this announcement Iain Livingstone, Chief Constable of Police Scotland, told Scottish authorities:

Earlier today at least four schoolchildren and two others died after a makeshift ferry capsized in Trincomalee.

Enraged locals attacked the home of a local parliamentarian, furious at construction delays of a new bridge that is supposedly being built in the area which led to the makeshift ferry being used.

These photographs from Kanapathipillai Kumanan capture scenes of the aftermath in Trincomalee.

The former head of Sri Lanka’s army has been inducted into the US Army Command and General Staff College’s “International Hall of Fame” this week, an appointment that has led to widespread outcry from Tamil victims around the world.

Mahesh Senanayake, who has had a long Sri Lankan military career and once ran for president, was awarded in a ceremony held in the US this week.

More than a decade since the end of the armed conflict, the Sri Lankan military has raised a deadly new unit in Kilinochchi, the heart of the Tamil homeland, reportedly to “eliminate the internal and external threats”.

A flashy new video from the newly raised 1 Corps states that the new unit "is the highest tactical organization” in the Sri Lankan army, with a range of units including the war crimes accused 58 and 53 Divisions.

Sri Lanka’s finance minister presented the 2022 budget in Parliament today with a bombastic speech that praised the ruling regime and continued with the government's increased focus on military spending and 'national security'.

Basil Rajapaksa, a brother of both president Gotabaya Rajapaksa and prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, was full of praise for his siblings.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for an end to Instagram’s censorship of the Tamil Guardian and for Facebook to be “more transparent”, after the news website had its account disabled last month.

“The London-based English-language website is one of the main sources of news about the Tamil community in Sri Lanka and the rest of the world and has more than 19,000 followers on Instagram, and yet it was censored in the most brutal manner, with no prior warning and no explanation,” said RSF in a statement released this morning.

Former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and secretary-general of the Global Campus of Human Rights, Professor Manfred Nowark, has urged Holyrood to launch an inquiry into allegations of Sri Lankan police brutality against Tamil refugees who fled the island for Scotland.