A Northern Province councillor with the Tamil National Alliance was attacked in Vavuniya by unidentified assailants on Thursday night.

Ramanathan Indrarajah, a councillor for he Vavuniya district, was on his way home on a motorcycle, ridden by NPC Councillor Pichchaimuththu Nadarajah, when the assailants rode up to them and hit the councillor on the back of his head with a metal bat.

The US Congressional Caucus on Ethnic and Religious Freedom in Sri Lanka was given an update on the current situation in Sri Lanka and on developments in the UN Human Rights Council, during a briefing in the Longworth House Office Building in Washington DC earlier this month.

The briefing, attended by staff from the State Department, Congress, the Foreign Relations Committee, as well as interested members of the public, started with caucus co-chair Congressman Bill Johnson's introductory remarks, who said it was critical that the international community remained vigilant about Sri Lanka's new government's progress on accountability and political reform.

Mario Arulthas, advocacy director for PEARL, a DC-based NGO, spoke about his recent trip to Sri Lanka's North-East and shared his experiences speaking to survivors of the armed conflict, families of the disappeared and victims of landgrabs. Mr Arulthas said he was able to document ongoing violations of human rights in all 8 districts, especially around security forces harassment. 

A Sri Lankan army brigadier testified before a magistrate on Wednesday that a list of all those who surrendered during the end of the armed conflict in May 2009, has been kept by security forces.

Tamils in the North-East should be allowed to remember their war dead, including militants and civilians killed in the armed conflict, said the vicar general of Jaffna Diocese in a submission to the Sri Lankan government’s Public Representations Committee on Constitutional Reforms.

In a statement delivered to the committee as it met in Jaffna this week, Father Pathinathan Josephdas Jebaratnam said:

"Just as the families of the Sri Lankan soldiers remember their loved ones who died in the war, the people in the North and East should be allowed to remember their dead in an appropriate, decent, free and dignified manner."

"These militants who died in the war and a big number of civilians especially those who died in the final stages of the war in 2009, were in some way related or connected to the people in the North and East," he added.