Human Rights Watch (HRW) drew attention to rising police brutality, custodial and extra-judicial killings in Sri Lanka in a report released on Friday. “Sri Lanka’s police are increasingly killing and abusing people under cover of the Covid-19 pandemic measures and an anti-drug campaign,” it said. 

^{File photo: Basil Rajapaksa - Minister of Finance}

Sri Lanka’s Minister of Finance, Basil Rajapaksa issued a gazette notification re-authorising the import of several types of fertilisers, but the President’s office maintained that it was not taking a U-turn on a previous policy and insisted it was only enabling the importation of “specialised fertilisers”.

Health workers gathered in front of the Northern Provincial Council office to demand the Sri Lankan government to improve working conditions, including higher allowances.

Workers have been engaged in a series of continuous protests for the past 155 days. The demonstrations prompted Agriculture Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage to visit the Jaffna district and meet with the protesters and arranged for them to meet the President in Colombo.

Amnesty International has slammed Sri Lankan Attorney General's decision not to proceed with charges against Navy commander Wasantha Karannagoda in connection with the torture, extortion, abduction and conspiracy to murder 11 youths in 2008-2009.

Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court has ordered for prison authorities to permit lawyers access to jailed Muslim poet, Ahnaf Jazeem, who remains detained at Colombo Remand Prison under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Sri Lankan Minister Nimal Siripala De Silva has called for the banning or “reforming” of social media platforms including Facebook in parliament today.

In his address, he drew upon China’s as a model for Sri Lanka highlighting those social media platforms are prohibited from operating in China.

Speaking in parliament yesterday, Tamil Makkal Thesiya Kootani (TMTK) leader C.V. Wigneswaran criticised the government’s handling of the economic crisis and highlighted how Tamil communities in the North-East have suffered due to their policies and the military occupation of their land.

Sri Lankan debt

Commenting on Sri Lanka’s mounting debt, Wigneswaran warns that the country errs towards a financial default which would “trigger cross-defaults across all our loans”.

^{Petition sent to the Mannar Divisional Secretary}

Hundreds of locals in the village of Uppukulam in Mannar have been left without their state-designated COVID-19 relief items after they were handed out to a select few favoured personnel instead.  

Image courtesy of Action Contre la Faim (ACF)

On this day 15 years ago, Sri Lankan security forces summarily executed 17 aid workers from the French NGO, Action la Contre Faim (ACF), in Muttur, Trincomalee. 

A collection of organisations representing the interests of university education protested against the controversial Kotelawala National Defence University (KNDU) Bill in front of Jaffna University earlier today. 

The organisations included, among others, Universities’ Lecturers Association, Universities’ Trade Union Joint Committee and People’s Movement Against Militarisation of Education.