Responding to a petition with over 13,500 signatures, calling on the British government to refer Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court, the UK government has responded citing “insufficient UN Security Council support”.

Responding to the British statement, Tasha Manoranjan, Executive Director of PEARL stated: “We are disappointed that the UK Government has shied away from pursuing international criminal accountability for the mass atrocities against the Tamil people in Sri Lanka”.

A Tamil man who arrived in the UK almost 40 years ago remains in immigration limbo due to a series of Home Office failures and delays, The Guardian reports. The man’s solicitor has written to the Home Office stating that judicial review proceedings will follow if the case is not resolved speedily.

Ponnambalam Jothibala, 69, came to the UK as a student in 1983. Though he was granted periods of temporary leave to remain in the 1980s, his studies were halted after he was the victim of a traumatic arson attack in which three people died but which he survived by jumping out of a first-floor window.

Writing in Just Security, Laurel E. Fletcher, Clinical Professor of Law at UC Berkeley, highlights the urgency for members of the Human Rights Council to exercise its power to “establish a mechanism that builds on prior U.N. efforts to investigate atrocity crimes committed during Sri Lanka’s armed conflict and collects and preserves evidence to support international and foreign prosecutions”.

A debate on Sri Lanka was held in the UK House of Commons on March 2, with three Labour MPs questioning the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) on the UK’s engagement with and on Sri Lanka, including on the UK’s ‘extensive support’ to the Sri Lankan police and military.

Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Defence has issued a ban on importing Islamic religious books except for those that the ministry approve.

Ranitha Gnanarajah, a Tamil lawyer who has campaigned years against Sri Lanka’s draconian Prevention of Terrorism act, is to be awarded the United States’ International Women of Courage award during a virtual ceremony on 8 March, hosted by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.

Vavuniya police of Puliyankulam town brutally assaulted a Tamil man in custody on Thursday, causing severe injuries.  

The police went to the house of Arumugam Balakrishnan, 50, who lives in the Puliyankulam-Ramanoor area on March 4 and asked him whether he possessed a gun. 

Following an interrogation, the police arrested Arumugam and took him to the police station where he was assaulted by the police. 

Arumugam was released by midnight after the police inflicted injuries on him. His relatives said that he has been admitted to Vavuniya Hospital for medical assistance. 

Alan Keenan, senior consultant for the International Crisis Group, has called for the UN Human Rights Council must go beyond looking at issues of accountability to focus “on preventing a return to violence and be followed by a sustained international effort to persuade the Sri Lankan government to pull back from its dangerous trajectory”.

Nine bodies were buried in a second burial site in Oddamavadi, Batticaloa today after the Sri Lankan government lifted a ban on burials for COVID-19 victims, which has generated months of controversy and protest from the island's Muslims.

Tamils in Amparai began a hunger strike yesterday calling on the international community to refer Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The protest was staged outside Pandiruppu Amman temple in Kalmunai, Amparai, in solidarity with British Tamil activist Ambihai K Selvakumar who has been hunger striking for eight days, calling for decisive international action.