Coordinator of the May 17 Movement, Thirumurugan Gandhi, was released last week from the Central prison in Vellore after almost eight weeks of imprisonment.

Having originally been arrested at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport in early August on sedition charges, the activist was since booked for having protested against the establishment of the 227-kilometer Chennai-Salem highway project under the National Highways Authority of India, among other charges.

A machete-wielding gang reportedly attack three different shops in Jaffna last week, as crime in the peninsula continues.

Three places were reportedly targeted by a gang on the night of October 5. The gang comprised of 6 people, vandalised shops and a vehicle in Nachchimar Kovilady, Oddumadam, and Thami Lane, between 8.45 pm and 9.30 pm that evening.

The Sri Lankan police were informed, by the time they had arrived the suspects were had left the scene. No arrests have been made.

Tamil National Alliance leader R Sampanthan warned British minister Mark Field that failure to include a “genuine power-sharing arrangement” in any new constitution for Sri Lanka “will lead this country once again towards violence,” in a meeting in Colombo last week.

Sampanthan told the minister that “we don’t want our young people to return to violence,” however pointed out that “the demands of the Tamil people for a genuine power-sharing arrangement must be addressed through a new Constitution”.

British Tamils staged a protest in Oxford yesterday evening, as Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe addressed the Oxford Union.

Sri Lanka’s prime minister has spoken out against international involvement in investigations, during his talk at the Oxford Union today.

“At the moment we don’t feel there is a need for foreign input into these investigations,” Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said, according to a tweet by the union.

The comments may refer to investigations into war-time atrocities, which Sri Lanka agreed to investigate with international involvement when co-sponsoring a UN Human Rights Council resolution on promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka, in March 2015.

A protest was held outside the union during Wickremesinghe’s talk.

A senior US State Department official will urge Sri Lanka to make progress on transitional justice and accountability, as well as on human rights, reconciliation and constitutional reform.

Alice Wells, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, will travel to Sri Lanka and the Maldives this week.

“In Colombo, she will meet with Sri Lankan officials and will emphasize the importance of the U.S.-Sri Lanka relationship to shared Indo-Pacific goals, with the growing bilateral defense relationship as an area of particular promise,” a State Department media note said.

The Tamil Youth Organisation UK (TYO) has condemned the Oxford Union’s invitation to Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is set to speak on the ‘geopolitics of the Indian Ocean region’ later today.

Dozens of protestors gathered in London yesterday to protest against Sri Lanka’s Northern Province Governor Reginald Cooray, who is visiting London this week.

Thousands of people have signed a petition that was delivered to the United Nations and Canadian parliament last week, calling for action to be taken over the disappearances of tens of thousands of Tamils as families of the disappeared continue to protest across the North-East.

The petitions gathered 3,324 signatures from 38 different countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Switzerland, Germany and the United States of America amongst others, and were submitted to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and before the Canadian parliament.

Vijayakala Maheswaran, a Tamil parliamentarian with the UNP, has been arrested by Sri Lankan police this morning over a speech she gave earlier this year which faced criticism from cross-party Sinhala politicians for calling for a resurgence of the LTTE in order to curb crime rates in North-East.

Maheswaran has since been released on a Rs 500,000 bail, after being produced before the Colombo Chief Magistrate.

Last month, Sri Lanka's Attorney General advised the Inspector General of Police (IGP) to file a case at the Court of Appeal against the UNP MP, after she was forced to resign her ministerial post following pressure from Sinhalese politicians.