The British Tamil Conservatives (BTC) hosted their annual reception at the Conservative Party Conference on this weekend, where ministers and parliamentarians came and pledged to work towards justice in Sri Lanka.

Forty political prisoners at Colombo’s Magazine prison have begun a hunger strike, Daily Mirror reports.

The 40 detainees held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act began striking on Wednesday, calling for their cases to be expedited, according to the prisons spokesperson.

Ten Tamil political prisoners at Anuradhapura prison have been hunger striking for over two weeks and refusing medical treatment since last week, demanding their release.

Sri Lanka’s pace of progress on a number of key issues, including accountability, remains slower than the UK had hoped for, a British minister has said.

Writing in Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror, FCO minister for Asia, Mark Field, said:

The Sri Lankan navy is accused of breaking the nets of Indian fishermen who they accused of entering Sri Lankan waters, and chased away a group of approximately 1,000 fishermen on Monday morning.

The PTI reports that the fishermen, who had ventured into sea in 200 boats, were from Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu. The Sri Lankan troops had cut the nets of at least ten boats according to Rameswaram Fishermen Association President S Emerit.

Sri Lanka’s prime minister Ranil Wickeremsinghe is set to address the Oxford Union next week, as part of a visit to the United Kingdom.

Wickremesinghe will reportedly be “discussing the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean region”.

The head of the Sri Lankan army said the military remained “cautious and concerned” over commemorations for fallen Tamil fighters, due to take place next month.

Sri Lankan army commander Lieutenant General Mahesh Senanayake said that the commemorations were a cause for concern, but brushed off accusations that the military was not well equipped to deal with "security" threats.

"If anyone does things like these, we have to be concerned as a country,” he said, adding that commemorating “civilians… is no issue”

A Sri Lankan minister declared that his government would increase police spy services across the island, in a press conference this week.

Sri Lanka’s Law and Order minister Ranjith Madduma Bandara said “steps will be taken to increase police spy services” in response to increased criminal activity, particularly in the Tamil North-East.

He also announced that Sri Lanka’s notorious Special Task Force, a unit reported to have committed serious human rights abuses, will  be instructed to increase operations across the island.

Students of the Eastern University in Batticaloa protested on Tuesday in solidarity with Tamil political prisoners currently hunger striking for their release.

Sri Lanka’s forest department has appropriated 100 acres of cultivation land belonging to around 50 families in Mullaitivu. The department appropriated the land in Puliyamunai, a village in Semmalai East, designating it as protected conservation land.

The affected landowners said they rely on agriculture for livelihood and that the land-grab has thrown their lives into disarray.

The current families of Puliyamunai had been cultivating there in the 1970s but were displaced due to the war between 1983 and 2015.

Granting permission for Buddhist monks to carry out ‘research’ on a Mullaitivu mountain was an abuse of power by the Sri Lankan archaeology department, the Mullaitivu court has warned. The court also said that devotees were free to access the mountain to worship at the existing Hindu temple.

The warning was in relation to an incident on September 4 when a group of Sinhalese people, including two Buddhist monks, arrived in Kurunthurmalai in Mullaitivu with a Buddha statue and installation equipment, angering locals who believed they had come to erect a Buddhist shrine. The group were apprehended by locals and handed over to Oddusuddan police.