Tamils in Jaffna and Mullaitivu marked 38 years since Lt Col Thileepan began his hunger strike at Nallur Kandaswamy temple in protest against the failure of the Indian government to honour the pledges made it to the Tamil people. 

Lt Col Thileepan, a political wing leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), began his fast on the 15th September 1987, surrounded by over 100,000 supporters. He died 11 days later on the 26th September 1987 after refusing food and water. 

Sri Lankan authorities have arrested a police officer, an army colonel, and a former local councillor in connection with aiding and supplying notorious underworld figures, who were recently apprehended in Indonesia.

A new draft resolution on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council has faced criticism for dropping explicit calls for foreign judges and instead endorses a domestic judicial mechanism backed by Colombo, despite repeated rejections by the Sri Lankan government of any international involvement in accountability.

Sri Lanka’s Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa this week denounced Israel’s assault on Gaza as a “genocide against the Palestinian people,” even as he continues to embrace Sri Lankan military commanders who conducted atrocities against Tamils during the final stages of the armed conflict.

A December 2024 Boiler Room music event held at the former Rio Cinema, a site set alight during the 1983 anti-Tamil pogroms, has drawn scrutiny over its corporate backing, promotional narrative, and ethical implications. The event, a collaboration between the global music platform Boiler Room, South Asian collective DialledIn, and Colombo based creative agency Fold Media, was publicly promoted as a post-war reconciliation initiative when content was released during July 2025’s Black July memorial period.

Sri Lanka’s former president and accused war criminal Mahinda Rajapaksa returned to his family residence in Tangalle today, after being forced to vacate his luxury state-funded mansion in Colombo under new legislation scrapping benefits for former heads of state.

Indian officials held talks in Jaffna last week on the long-delayed development of Point Pedro harbour, pledging financial assistance for the project that has repeatedly failed to materialise in the Tamil homeland.

A group of 16 Sri Lankan journalists has been flown to Israel on a five-day study programme arranged by the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi, in what critics have described as a propaganda exercise to whitewash Tel Aviv’s assault on Gaza.

The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) has condemned Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath’s address at the UN Human Rights Council this week, accusing Colombo of failing to deliver on promises of accountability, reconciliation and devolution, more than a year after Anura Kumara Dissanayake came to power.

India delivered its statement on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, where it once again stressed its support for Tamil aspirations of “equality, justice, dignity and peace”, but only within what it described as the island’s “unity, territorial integrity and sovereignty.”