The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) alongside Centre for Justice and Accountability (CJA) has issued a report calling calls on the United Nations Human Rights Council to hold Sri Lanka accountable for crimes committed against journalists.

Tamil journalist Puniyamoorthy Sathiyamoorthy, who was killed by a Sri Lankan artillery barrage inside the 'No Fire Zone' in February 2009, was remembered in Batticaloa and Jaffna yesterday. 

Writing in the Daily FT, Mario Arulthas, strategic advisor for People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) and PhD student at SOAS University, reflects on the legacy of the P2P marches and notes that “the fundamental spirit […] echoes that of the first significant post-independence mass-mobilisation in 1956”.

The former US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Stephen Rapp revealed that Sri Lanka’s current president Gotabaya Rajapaksa admitted to killing LTTE leaders instead of arresting or putting them on trial after surrender in 2009, during an offensive that saw tens of thousands of Tamils massacred.

Footage of @Sri_Lanka_Army Officer under the influence, attached to Kilinochchi Defence Serv. HQ caught on camera while attempting to assault group of civilians at a Gampaha eatery.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister, Dinesh Gunawardena, has denied that China played a role in Sri Lanka rejecting the East Container Terminal project which it had agreed upon with India and Japan.

The Swiss Refugee Council (OSAR) has asked Swiss authorities to stop the deportation of refugees back to Sri Lanka, due to the country’s “deteriorating” situation.

“Since the new President Gotabaya Rajapaksa took office in November 2019, the situation in this country formerly affected by civil war has indeed deteriorated” stated OSAR.

In their statement released last week, OSAR called on the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) to carefully analyse the deteriorating situation in Sri Lanka and to adapt its asylum procedures accordingly; as well as to suspend the expulsion of refugees to Sri Lanka, until a migration partnership with conditions founded by “good governance” among other values is established.

The final report of Sri Lanka’s Presidential Commission of Inquiry examining the Easter Sunday bombings, which claimed the lives of over 250 people, has recommended criminal charges against key officials, including former President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who failed to prevent the attacks, despite the early warnings.

Photograph: IBC Tamil 

Tamils gathered in Trincomalee yesterday to remember the victims of the Kumarapuram massacre where Sri Lankan army corporals went on a rampage killing Tamils in the village 25 years ago.

 Muthukumar, a Tamil Nadu activist, who self-immolated in protest against the Indian government's failure

The Indian government has released its latest records documenting more than 90,000  Eelam Tamil refuges who are currently in India, following data collected by the Commissionerate of Rehabilitation and Welfare of Non-residents Tamils in Tamil Nadu.

Speaking in parliament today, Justice minister Ali Sabry claimed that ‘there are no political prisoners in Sri Lanka’.

Following intense international and domestic backlash over Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, has claimed in parliament that the burial of bodies suspected of COVID infection will be permitted.