Marking the 40^th anniversary of Black July, an anti-Tamil pogrom that saw the slaughter of over 3,000 Tamils, British MPs are calling on the British government and the international community to recognise the pogrom as an act of genocide.

The 40th anniversary of the Welikada prison massacre was commemorated at Valvettithurai, Jaffna. The massacre which resulted in the murder of 53 political prisoners was instigated during the Black July pogrom by prison officials.

This year marks four decades since the genocidal violence of Black July. With the backing of the Sinhala Buddhist State, Sinhala mobs, armed with electoral rolls and transported by government-owned vehicles, unleashed a torrent of bloodshed killing over 3,000 Tamils, burning down thousands of Tamil homes and businesses, and displacing an estimated 150,000.

Sinhala extremist group, Sinhala Ravaya, disrupted a Black July commemoration event in Colombo over the weekend. 

Video footage from the commemoration shows a member of Sinhala Ravaya calling those particiapting in the commemoration 'kottiya' - a Sinhala term used to describe the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). 

Students from the University of Jaffna held a commemoration event to remember the thousands of Tamils that were murdered by state-sponsored Sinhala mobs during the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom. 

In a statement marking 40 years since the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom, advocacy organisation People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) highlighted Sri Lanka's culture of impunity and the need for an independent, international accountability mechanism.

Marking the 40 years since the Black July pogrom, Eric Walsh Canada's High Commissioner to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, tweeted that the "wounds from July 1983 have yet to heal."

A Tamil freelance journalist, Vijayaratnam Saravanan, highlighted the ongoing media repression by Sri Lanka to Eric Walsh, the Canadian High Commissioner during his visit to Mullaitivu this week. 

The High Commissioner for Canada in Sri Lanka, Eric Walsh, visited Jaffna this week, where he met with Tamil politicians, visited the Jaffna library and attended a film screening organised by Jaffna Transgender Network.  

On July 12th, the families of the disappeared in Mullaitivu conducted a protest to demand international oversight during the ongoing excavation and exhumation of a mass grave discovered in Kokkuthoduvai, Mullaitivu.

Residents of Mandaithivu blocked Sri Lankan officials from carrying our their land survey to expand a Sri Lankan naval base last week. 

Mother of Santhan, who was released after being imprisoned over the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, has written a letter to President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Foreign Minister Ali Sabry to expedite his repatriation. 

Madonne Ashwin’s debut 2021 National Award winning film ‘Mandela’ was received warmly by critics and audiences alike. The Yogi Babu starring satire deftly explored themes of identity and politics without compromising artistic sensibility. For his follow-up feature, Ashwin teams up with Sivakarthikeyan for the satisfying meta-masala film ‘Maaveeran.’ This is a return to form for Sivakarthikeyan, whose recent two films 2022’s ‘Don’ and ‘Prince’ failed to live up to the quality of 2021’s ‘Doctor.’