The Sri Lankan government must deliver on its promise of an internationalised justice process said Freedom from Torture (FFT) Chief Executive Sonya Sceats, in a statement released last week.

Responding to a UK Supreme Court judgement earlier this month that overturned the rejected asylum claim of a Tamil torture victim, Sceats said it was “a wake-up call for President Sirisena and others who continue to deny Sri Lanka’s responsibility for war crimes including torture”.

The Tamil National Peoples’ Front (TNPF) has reiterated calls for Sri Lanka to be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) or for an ad hoc international tribunal to be set up, in order to obtain justice for violations of international law, in a statement delivered to the UN Human Rights Council this week.

Teachers across the North-East protested on Wednesday demanding better provisions for education.

Mirroring a campaign which took place across the island calling for the Sri Lankan government to allocate more funding for schools, teachers and school staff protested outside their schools on Wednesday morning.

Sri Lanka’s president Maithripala Sirisena blamed “human rights” for hindering discipline at schools at a speech in Matara earlier this week.

Sirisena was quoted as stating that “the interference of the concept of human rights in the duty of teachers has made it a challenge for the task of building a better future generation”.

Muslims in Mannar have continued a protest for the release of their lands from Sri Lankan navy occupation for over three weeks.

Over 200 Muslim families from Silavathurai have been campaigning for the release of 35 acres of land from the Sri Lankan Navy. The protest passed 22 days on Wednesday.

The protesters had faced intimidation from navy personnel at the start of their protest but continued to demonstrate after appealing to the human rights commission for protection.

Lawyers representing Tamil families of the disappeared in Mannar have called for “caution in place of plain speculation”, after a report  dated bone fragments from a mass grave unearthed in the town.

Families of the disappeared appealed to members of the United Nations not to grant Sri Lanka any extension on implementing a resolution it had agreed to in 2015 and instead called for an international accountability mechanism, telling member states that “our lives are in your hands”.

A five member delegation of the Sri Lankan president is to head to Geneva in order to seek a withdrawal from the co-sponsored resolution at the UN Human Rights Council, the country's foreign affairs ministry said today. 

Families of the disappeared in Vavuniya, who launched a signature campaign calling for international intervention in Sri Lanka to ensure justice for Tamils, reached 100,000 signatures this week. 

Residents in Unnichchai and surronding villages protested on Monday, accusing the government of failing to provide an adequate supply of clean drinking water.