The Northern Provincial Council has called for the Sri Lankan government to open immediate investigations into the murder and assaulting of journalists across the North-East.

In a resolution passed on Thursday, the Council called upon Sri Lanka's Minister of Justice, Minister of Law and Order and the Attorney General to launch immediate inquiries into the murders of Tamil journalists in the North-East, as well as violent attacks against others.

The Sri Lankan Army is attempting to make its occupation of over 3000 acres of land in Mannar, permanent.

3,524 acres of Tamil owned-land in the village of Sannar was seized by the army during the Rajapaksa regime.

Reports from the area claim that the occupying army are attempting to gain legal rights over the land for permanent military use.

Villagers expressed their disappointment that instead of Tamil land being returned to the rightful owners, landgrabs continued under the new government.

Tamil political prisoners have announced their intention to fast unto death again unless they are granted amnesty.

Calling on the Sri Lankan president to secure their release before November 7th as promised in a letter, the prisoners said that unless a general amnesty was granted they would resume their hunger strike and refuse to call it off for any other reasons.

The prisoners are quoted in Ceylon Today as saying to their relatives,

Tamil judges are often too intimidated to pass the right judgements, the Chief Minister of the Northern Province has said.

Meeting with the Japanese ambassador, Kenichi Suganuma on Wednesday, Mr Wigneswaran said that a domestic accountability mechanism would be of no good to victims of atrocities, and that unbiased international judges would be crucial to the process.

A district court in Jaffna has announced that from January 2016 all cases will be conducted in Tamil.

District judge Srinthi Nanthasekaran told visiting Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe that despite the apparent recruitment of 600 Tamil police officers, police in the North did not conduct any cases in Tamil.

Testimonies were not recorded in Tamil, she said.

Sri Lankan Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Harsha De Silva met with officials from the United States State Department and World Bank to promote economic and business ties, reports the official government news portal of Sri Lanka.

The meetings were arranged “in the light of path breaking transformation taking place in Sri Lanka in terms of political reforms and addressing accountability issues”, reported the news portal.

Charges have been filed against six people for the 2006 murder of Jaffna MP Nadaraja Raviraj.

Colombo Telegraph reports that of the six against whom the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has filed charges, three are navy personnel and three are former LTTE cadres of the Karuna faction.