The United National Party’s (UNP) presidential candidate, Sajith Premadasa, launched his campaign today, vowing to appoint former army commander, Sarath Fonseka, as Head of National Security if elected in the upcoming election. 

“At the moment, national security has become an issue that has drawn the attention of many in the country. After my victory, I will entrust the responsibility of national security to Sarath Fonseka,” Premadasa told the crowd.

Sudden searches and patrols by Sri Lankan military and police forces left Vavuniya residents alarmed over the weekend.

Military personnel blocked roads in Eechankulam, Pampaimadu and Maharambaikulam and carried out intensive searches of pedestrians and motorists.

Tamils in Jaffna protested on Saturday calling for the arrest of extremist Buddhist monk Gnanasara of the Sinhala nationalist Bodu Bala Sena organisation.

<p>Sri Lanka’s Election Commission (EC) says it has received 156 poll-related complaints, 153 relating to a violation of election laws and 3 relating to electoral violence.</p> <p>In the last 24 hours, the EC had received 92 of said complaints of law violations and one incident of violence.</p> <p>These complaints have been lodged by the EC's Election Complaint Management Unit and similar units set-up in all districts. The EC was set up in September in the lead up to the Presidential election with commission officials stressing that social media platforms such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Instagram would be closely monitored this year.</p>

Malaysian authorities have arrested two lawmakers and give other activists for alleged links to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which continues to be listed as a “terrorist organisation” in the country.

<p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Harini Sivalingam, lawyer, community activist and PhD candidate at York University, wrote about the arrival of the <em>Ocean Lady</em> and <em>Sun Sea </em>in Canada ten years ago, carrying Tamil refugees&nbsp;who "fled horrors in their homeland in search of safety, security and stability."</p>

Sri Lanka’s former defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa may evade accountability for war crimes if he wins next month’s presidential elections, warned Beth Van Schaack, stating that plaintiffs pursuing cases against him in the USA are “racing against time”.

Van Schaack, the former Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor of Human Rights at Stanford Law School and former Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the Office of Global Criminal Justice at the US State Department, went on to state,

Today marks thirty-two years since the death of 2nd Lt. Maalathy, the first female fighter of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to lose her life in the Tamil armed struggle.

Sri Lanka’s former defence secretary and a frontrunner in next month’s presidential elections, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has vowed to free all Sri Lankan soldiers that he claimed had been imprisoned on “absurd charges”.

Addressing a rally at Anuradhapura yesterday, Rajapaksa claimed that he had defeated “terrorism” and “a large number of soldiers who committed themselves to this cause have been falsely accused and put in prisons.”

Demonstrations were held by Tamil families of the disappeared across the North-East last week to mark Children’s Day.

Protestors held photographs of the Tamil children and babies who had disappeared when their families surrendered to the Sri Lankan army in May 2009.

The families also sent a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, urging her to investigate the fates of the disappeared children.

“Many hundreds of infants and children were killed by the Sri Lankan Army during the last phase of the war,” said the letter.