An assault on a civil society representative by paramilitary members during a protest by families of the disappeared has caused outrage in the North-East and drawn condemnation from Tamil politicians.

Coordinator of Vavuniya's citizen committee K Rajkumar was attacked while families of the disappeared protested against paramilitary leader and current cabinet minister Douglas Devananda as he was due to appear at a meeting about the disappeared on Monday.

A video which purportedly shows a Sinhala Buddhist monk physically assaulting a Christian man in Batticaloa has been shared thousands of times on social media.

The monk, identified as Ampitiye Sumanarathana, is seen slapping the man whilst Sri Lankan police officers watch on. He then goes on to criticise the Sri Lankan police officer for failing to stop the Christian man from doing missionary work in the area.

A young Tamil woman whose family have been searching for their disappeared father since May 2009 has achieved top rank in the Mullaitivu district in this year’s GCE A Level Commerce results.

Yalini Ravichchandran whose father disappeared in the final phases of the armed conflict found out she had obtained the highest marks in the district earlier this week when A Level results were released.

Families of the disappeared rallied in Kilinochchi on Monday to mark the end of 2019, the third year of their protest.

The families, accompanied by locals and politicians, marched through Kilinochchi town calling for answers about their disappeared relatives' whereabouts.

P S M Charles, has been appointed as the Governor of the Northern Province and  took her oaths before President Gotabaya Rajapaksa today.

In 2017, Ms Charles was appointed as the Director General of the Sri Lanka Customs Department on the recommendation of previous Minister of Finance and Mass Media, Mangala Samaraweera.

Ms Charles has over 26 years experience of service in the public sector and has perviously served as the Batticaloa Government Agent (GA) and as the Vavuniya GA.  

A Swiss Embassy employee who was detained by the Sri Lankan government following reports of being abducted and molested, was granted bail today.

Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa warned that “non-governmental organisations” had influenced the education system in Sri Lanka, in order to try and “destroy the Sinhala Buddhists”.

Speaking at a ‘Dhamma School’ in Vavuniya on Friday, Rajapaksa told the audience that “Non-Governmental Organizations have deviously intervened in our education system by including content in school textbooks to distort the minds of children”.

“I heard some leading academic bhikkus explaining how school textbooks now have content that will have the effect of corrupting young minds,” he said. 

Britain’s High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Sarah Hulton met with Colombo’s Justice and Human Rights Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva this week, with the United Kingdom reportedly offering support for “prison and justice reform” on the island.