A Sri Lankan minister said 'LTTE suspects' held on remand should be released, while speaking at the opening of a prison in Jaffna.

Law and Order and Prison Reforms Minister Tilak Marapana said he hoped that the LTTE detainees could be released before the Deepavali festival on November 10, 2015.

“The LTTE suspects on remand without charges being filed against them should be released. If they are considered a threat to law and order, they should be ordered to report to the police in the respective areas at regular intervals,

"The suspects in cases that have been pending for years could be released on bail. President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe have instructed the Attorney General’s Department to take a decision in this regard soon,"

The Sri Lankan government's plans to build 65,000 homes would go some way to solving the Northern province's homelessness crisis, according to Northern Province Chief Minister C. V. Wigneswaran.

Speaking at an event in Mannar, Mr Wigneswaran said that while the lack of housing in the North was a common complaint, the Northern Provincial Council did not have the funding to solve the crisis.

If the government's announcement about plans to build 65,000 homes were in fact implemented, this would resolve the housing crisis, Mr Wigneswaran said.

Remarks on Sri Lanka by US Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Samantha Power, who spoke at the Open Government Partnership Global Summit in Mexico City:

In January 2015, the people of Sri Lanka went to the polls to elect a new president. The incumbent Rajapaksa administration had governed largely through divisiveness and fear, and it had persecuted critics. Meanwhile, the challenger Sirisena ran on a platform of open government, anti-corruption and reconciliation. As you all know, the Sri Lankan people chose President Sirisena.

The new government moved swiftly to show it was serious about living up to its commitments, from stopping harassment of human rights defenders and journalists, to exposing rampant corruption. The impact was immediate. A labor organizer who had gone into hiding during the Rajapaksa administration's rule resumed his work, saying he no longer feared being targeted for what he was doing. A journalist who had been routinely harassed for his reporting said, "the fear has gone."

The Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) called for the Sri Lankan government to be “honest and truthful” about the aims of a accountability process in a meeting between civil society organisations and the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister in Colombo on Thursday.

In a discussion note circulated during the meeting, the TCSF raised concerns regarding the security situation for such a process, calling for a process to “prevent the interference of the armed forces, police and their intelligence”.