The head of the Ceylon Workers' Congress (CWC) passed away this week, after a sudden illness just hours after meeting with the Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka.

Arumugan Thondaman passed away on Tuesday night, aged 55-years-old.

As head of the CWC and a parliamentarian for Nuwara Eliya for 26 years, he represented many Malaya Tamils. His coffin was draped in an Indian flag and brought to Sri Lanka’s Parliamentary complex, where Sri Lanka’s current president Gotabaya Rajapakasa paid his respects.

Sri Lanka’s president hit back at a report in The Hindu last week, which covered a speech he gave declaring he would not permit investigations into war crimes committed by Sri Lankan armed forces, maintaining that human rights are not “clear-cut rules”.

In a written response by the Sri Lankan President’s Media Division, Rajapaksa insisted The Hindu article did not reflect “the real situation”.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has issued a Gazette notice mandating that six institutions will under the control of the Sri Lankan Defence Ministry.

Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, congratulated Mahinda Rajapaksa for his 50 years in parliament despite overwhelming concerns over his human rights records.

On Twitter, the Indian Prime Minister stated:

Spoke to PM Mahinda Rajapaksa today to greet him on completing 50 years since his first election to the Parliament of Sri Lanka. Complimented him on an illustrious political career and wished him and the people of Sri Lanka good health, peace and prosperity.

The Sri Lankan military has increased its deployment of troops to Jaffna after at least two police officers were injured in an explosion in Vadamarachchi yesterday.

Sri Lanka’s Special Task Force (STF) bomb disposal squad was deployed to the area after the explosion by the Vallipura Aalvar Kovil.

The Sri Lankan military has set up more checkpoints across Mullaitivu this week, as armed soldiers continue to be stationed and carry out searches across the Tamil homeland.

The increase in checkpoints has stepped up since the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as Sri Lanka’s president last year, and even more so since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic on the island.

The European Union (EU) delegation in Sri Lanka has written to Sri Lanka's authorities to "express deep concerns" about the detention of a lawyer under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). 

"We reiterate need to review counter-terror legislation to be in line with Sri Lanka's international human rights obligations," the delegation tweeted. 

Mirusha Yogarajah writes on Toronto’s Tamil community for Briarpatch Magazine.

_____
Tamil people created, own, and manage the businesses woven tightly into the fabric of Toronto – Babu Take-Out & Catering, the famous Spiceland franchise – but we are also the workers stocking shelves, sweeping the aisles, weighing and cutting fish, and packing up hundreds of iddiyappams. The restaurant industry was one of the few industries in which Tamil migrants were initially able to find work – albeit often underpaid and exploitative work. Today, we are the working class as well as, increasingly, Toronto’s elite – but behind the wealth of the Tamil elite lies the fact that most of us arrived in Toronto fleeing genocide. Where once we sought shelter in the Nallur Kandaswamy temple in Jaffna, we fled to seek safety at the crosswalks of McCowan and Finch.

The United Nations Children's Fund faced criticism after it collaborated with Sri Lanka’s prime minister and accused war criminal Mahinda Rajapaksa to produce a video for children on the coronavirus earlier this month.

“Kids have big questions about COVID-19,” said UNICEF. “Watch the Hon. Prime Minister H E Mahinda Rajapaksa answer them.”

The video goes on to show Rajapaksa answering questions from children across the island.