The German Embassy in Colombo provided a grant of nearly Rs 4 million to a Sri Lankan NGO to support their project addressing Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) in Sri Lanka - which will benefit around 1500 women and children in areas such as Batticaloa and Jaffna.

Local Tamils in a village in Mullaitivu have been instructed by Sri Lankan officials to leave their land, despite having it returned to them from Sri Lankan military occupation. 

The locals have questioned “who they are trying to give this land to” and why they are “lifting us from the land we protested on the streets to reclaim.”

R Sampanthan, the current leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), announced that Indian President Narendra Modi is “standing behind us (TNA)” in a recent interview to Tamil media earlier this month. 

Sri Lanka has appointed a new navy commander, as promotions of officers close to Sri Lankan president and accused war criminal Gotabaya Rajapaksa continue.

Rear Admiral Nishantha Ulugetenne was promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral in a ceremony attended by Buddhist monks and other senior naval figures, the official Navy website reported. 

A man has been arrested for allegedly being in possession of a sword and having connection to a string of sword violence related assaults dating back to last year.

The man was arrested on Tuesday night by the Jaffna police for allegedly having connection to a sword violence incident on the 9^th July in Jaffna. He was also accused of having connection to sword violence incidents from 2019.

Police officers seized a sword, iron rods and a cricket stump from the man.  

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi extolled the virtues of the classical Tamil literary and philosophical text Thirukkural in a tweet on Thursday.

In a trio of tweets in English and Tamil, the Hindu-nationalist leader heaped praise on the wisdom of Thiruvalluvar, the saint who authored the entire corpus of 1,330 pithy moral precepts, and said he “hoped”  youngsters across India would read the text.

The tweet in English reads,

A Sinhala nationalist monk has lodged a complaint with Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Commission (HRC), after the leader of the extremist Buddhist nationalist group Bodu Bala Sena had his account blocked from Facebook due to complaints of racism.

Athuraliye Rathana, a Buddhist monk, parliamentarian and founder of the Sinhala nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), complained to the HRC that BBS leader Gnanasara was not a racist.

Journalists in the Eastern Province staged a demonstration in Batticaloa on Saturday, demanding that the Sri Lankan state halt the intimidation of journalists, after a newspaper photographer was manhandled and threated by a police officer outside a Colombo courthouse last week.

Sri Lankan police Inspector Neomal Rangajeewa, who is on trial with regards to a prison massacre, grabbed and threatened Akila Jayawardane in Colombo last week, drawing widespread condemnation.

The British government said it will “keep all evidence and potential listings under close review” when questioned on whether Sri Lankan officials involved in rights abuses would be added to a newly announce sanctions regime, but refused to speculate on names that may be added.

The response had come after, parliamentarian Theresa Villiers asked whether there had been discussions on “the imposition of Magnitsky sanctions for people involved in war crimes and human rights abuses during the Sri Lankan civil war”.

Sri Lanka has slammed plans by Israel to annex parts of the occupied West Bank in a statement delivered to the UN Human Rights Council this week, even as Colombo continues with its own Sinhalisation of the Tamil North-East.