A team of Sri Lankan Air Force personnel are to be deployed to Central Africa next month to undertake United Nations (UN) peacekeeping duties.

The Passing Out Parade of the No 5 contingent of the Aviation Unit under the UN helicopter deployment was held yesterday at the Sri Lankan Air Force Base in Katunayake.

The helicopter deployment includes 18 officers and 92 airmen and are scheduled to start in September 2019.

A Tamil think-tank based in Jaffna was visited and its staff questioned by Sri Lankan terrorism police.

Kumaravadivel Guruparan, executive director of Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research (ACPR) and senior law lecturer at Jaffna University, reported that the office of ACPR were visited by three TID (Terrorism Investigation Division) officials who claimed to have been sent by their superiors in Colombo to inquire into the human rights policy-think tank.

The massacre of 63 Tamils in cold-blood by Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) in Valvai on August 2, 1989 was remembered on Friday, 30 years on.

A prominent Tamil disappearances activist and her daughter were attacked and hospitalised in Batticaloa on Sunday evening.

Amala Nayagi, the vice-president of the North East Families of the Disappeared Association and the president of the Batticaloa District Association, and her daughter were deliberately hit and knocked off their motorcycle by an oncoming motorcycle with three men.

Security booths have been installed in Jaffna ahead of the Nallur Kandasamy Kovil’s annual festival, with Jaffna police ordering that all devotees must be searched before entry.

The orders came following the Easter Sunday bombings in Colombo and Batticaloa earlier this year.

With at least two booths installed at each of the temple’s four gates, and more at bigger gates, the scheme is reported to have cost Jaffna Municipal Council around 3 lakh rupees.

Displaced Muslims who were forced from their homes in the wake of anti-Muslim violence in Sri Lanka following the Easter Sunday attacks, are still to be resettled more than three months after the bombs, reports The New Humanitarian.

Some 228 people are still searching for safe shelter according to the UN’s refugee agency, which has been attempting to relocate the displaced.

“Every effort that was made to relocate people was received with a lot of hostility,” said Menique, the head of UNHCR’s Sri Lanka office.

Approximately 90 people are living in a “government-run facility in Vavuniya… where they are under armed military guard,” said The New Humanitarian.

The European Union (EU) expressed its willingness to support Sri Lanka in countering violent extremism and to support improvements in coordinating the country's counter terrorism efforts.  . 

Federica Mogherini, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, met with Sri Lanka's Foreign Affairs Minister Tilak Marapana in Thailand and expressed the EU's solidarity with Sri Lanka following the Easter Sunday bombings. 

Sahathevan Nilakshan, journalist and popular student leader, murdered aged 22 while still a media student, was remembered in Jaffna on the twelth anniversary of his death on Thursday.

On August 1 2007, Nilakshan, an up and coming Tamil journalist was shot and killed by suspected Sri Lankan military intelligence personnel.

Sri Lanka’s Minister of Fiannce and Media Mangala Samaraweera admitted that the island “has been in crisis, remains in crisis and will continue to be in crisis until we can create a just and equal Sri Lanka,” in a speech to parliament last week, where he called for federalism.

“Following the attempted coup and Easter Sunday bombings, many of our fellow citizens ask why our country continues to veer from one crisis to another,” said Samaraweera. “They are right to do so. The history of Sri Lanka is a history of crisis.”

He went on to add,

Mullaitivu locals protested in front of the National Housing Development Authority this week, after a much touted housing scheme has left residents mired in debt.