The Millennium Challenge Corporation has approved Sri Lanka as eligible for the body's "threshold" programme, which will release  around $30mn worth of funding, providing assistance to the government's efforts to enact reforms in areas which constrict economic growth.

"Sri Lanka has embarked on a remarkable effort over the past year to reinvigorate its democratic institutions, improve governance, and restore protection of human rights," a statement by the MCC said.

The MCC, an independent US government agency working to reduce global poverty through economic growth. allocates budgets depending on how countries score on specific indicators. According to the MCC website, threshold programmes "assist countries to become compact eligible by supporting their efforts to implement key policy and institutional reforms and thereby demonstrate their commitment to MCC’s eligibility criteria" and if implemented successfully will "reduce constraints to faster economic growth and provide MCC critical information about a candidate country’s political will and capacity to undertake the types of reforms that would have the greatest impact in compacts". 

Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinge said relations with the British government remained on a "sound footing", despite the absence of a designated ambassador in London.

The Sri Lankan government’s proposed Penal Code amendment on hate speech “directly contravenes” pledges made in a UN Human Rights Council resolution said the Tamil National Alliance, adding that it is “nearly identical” to the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act used to target Tamils and Muslims.

Strongly opposing the amendment, the TNA stated the amendment is “nearly identical to Section 2(1)(h),” adding “the previous government used this very provision to target persons from the Tamil and Muslim communities and to deprive them of their freedom of speech and expression”.

The statement went on to recall the cases of Tamil journalist J.S. Tissainayagam and Muslim politician Asath Salley, both of whom were detained under Section 2(1)(h) of the PTA. “Both these persons were critical of the previous government’s policies, particularly with respect to the treatment of minority communities,” said the TNA. “These incidents and others like them prompted international condemnation of the previous government’s use of the PTA to suppress media freedom and dissent.”

Mr. Anton Balasingham, the chief negotiator of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and an extraordinary theoretician within the Tamil struggle, is remembered by Tamils across the world today.

His death at his home in London on 14 December 2006, a few weeks after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, shook the Tamil nation.

As over 50,000 Tamils across Britain, Europe and the diaspora came to pay their respects, and many thousands more marked his death in Canada and other diaspora centres across the world, tens of thousands of Tamils in the homeland attended memorial events in Kilinochchi and Mullaitheevu. It was a day of national grief.

Honouring his three decades of service to the Tamil struggle, the LTTE conferred the title 'Voice of the Nation'.

Crowds gather at Nallur as the first day of the commission began. Photographs: Tamil Guardian

Tamil families in Jaffna testified before Sri Lanka’s presidential commission into disappearances this week, pleading for information on their whereabouts of their missing loved ones.

The first phase of the sittings took place in Nallur where 235 complaints were filed, with proceedings continuing today.