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Sri Lanka’s militarised response to the coronavirus pandemic “poses grave threats to human rights,” the Adayaalam Center for Policy Research (ACPR) said in their latest brief. 

Tamil women from the North-East who come to work in Sri Lanka’s special trade zones are being subjected to sexual harassment and abuse, found a report by The Diplomat, driving at least one woman to commit suicide.

Updated 1845 GMT

Sri Lankan police officers forced entry into a house in Jaffna and viciously attacked family members with their guns and bats, leaving at least three Tamil women hospitalised.

The three women were rushed to the Base Hospital in Manthikai, Jaffna earlier today, with one of the women unconscious from the violent assault. Children and elderly people living in the house were also ruthlessly assaulted, with officers threatening to arrest people on false drug possession charges.

The Australian government has been ordered to pay over $200,000 in legal fees to Tamil asylum-seeking family as they fight deportation to Sri Lanka. 

Priya and Nades Murugappan and their two Australian born daughters Kopika and Tharunicaa, were initially detained in Melbourne in March 2018.

<p>Kamal Gunaratne, Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary and accused war criminal has issued a statement claiming that no orders were given to establish quarantine centres in schools for the military.</p> <p>Whilst denying these claims he maintained that additional camps would be provided for the military. Gunaratne further stated that people were making false statements with respects to the virus for their own political gains. He has said that he will be working in cooperation with Sri Lanka’s Ministry for Education.</p> <p>With respects to the military personal he has said:</p> <blockquote><p>

Amnesty International has called on Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to revoke the presidential pardon issued for Sergeant Sunil Rathnayake who was convicted for the Mirusuvil massacre where eight Tamil civilians were killed including three children.

A 40-year-old Tamil man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after two children were found stabbed to death at their east London home on Sunday evening, in an incident that has highlighted issues around mental health in the Tamil community.

The children were identified as 19-month-old Pavinya, who was pronounced dead at the scene, and three-year-old Nigish who died at hospital. The man, reported to be the father of the two children, is currently receiving treatment at a London hospital and remains under police guard.

The Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) has put forward a set of eight questions to the Sri Lankan government on its coronavirus response, calling for greater transparency in how Colombo’s actions during the pandemic.

“We fear that politics precedes science and the public good in the Government’s response to COVID 19,” said the TCSF. “We demand concrete answers to these questions from the Government. The Government must release in public a white paper on its handling of the crisis thus far and its plans for the future.”

The TCSF called for clarification on the government’s strategy, including on curfews, funding and the economic fallout thus far.

At least  248 sailors at a Sri Lankan naval base have currently tested positive for the coronavirus admitted authorities, in what has been the biggest outbreak of the virus on the island so far.

Shavendra Silva, currently heading COVID-19 operations, stated that among the 30 cases in the last 24 hours, 22 of them were navy sailors and all but one of the rest had been in close contact with them. 

Memorial events were held across the Tamil homeland this week to mark 15 years since the assassination of Tamil journalist Dharmeratnam ‘Taraki’ Sivaram.

D. Sivaram, also known as Taraki, was a renowned journalist and editor of the website TamilNet, who was abducted on 28 April 2005. His body was found the following day inside a High-Security Zone in Himbulala, a Sinhala suburb of Colombo.