Photograph via Centre for Monitoring Election Violence 

Deepika Udagama, Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission in Sri Lanka (HRCSL) has put forward her resignation on Monday, two days before the parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka..

In preparation for today’s parliamentary elections, ballot boxes were taken to polling stations in districts across the North-East under heavy security and military presence. 

Sri Lanka Podujana Perumana Party’s Triconmalee candidate MP Punchinilame, said that “should voters not vote for him, the next and only option for them is to vote for TNA leader Sampanthan” during his election campaign in the North-East.

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Over 69,000 Sri Lankan police officers have been deployed for election duties today, whilst it was announced that military personnel will be deployed in the Northern and Eastern provinces as parliamentary polls opened this morning. 

Tributes have been paid to a 20-year-old British Tamil artist who was killed whilst taking part in a charity cycle ride from London to Brighton, attempting to raise money for those affected by the conflict in Yemen.

Pathushan Sutharsan, from Morden in South London, was taking part in the 120km cycle when he was involved in a collision with a tipper lorry on July 22. Though paramedics and an air ambulance were deployed, he was pronounced dead on the scene.

The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) Jaffna candidate, Paranirupasingham Varatharajasingham, also known as Vinnan, assured that he will get justice for his party’s “direct involvement” in the “wiping out of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)” and “nullification of the Tamil freedom struggle.”

International human rights group Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, has urged the UK to use its new ‘Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime’ to adopt sanctions against high-profile individuals, including accused war criminal Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva “to send a strong signal to the Government of Sri Lanka that impunity for human rights violations will not be tolerated”.

Drawing on work by Sanjana Hattotuwa, we examine the hundreds of thousands of dollars that were spent on advertisements across the island and in the North-East, as recorded by Facebook. 

According to Facebook's Ad Library report, from May to August 2 alone, $478,545 was spent on 26,710 advertisements.

The Sri Lankan army conducted an “awareness lecture” with the Muslim community in Trincomalee last week, reportedly “in order to educate them on the importance of security, social responsibilities and co-existence in the area”.

Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami of Tamil Nadu denounced the three-language formula contained in the New Education Policy (NEP) recently unveiled by the central government, which critics claim is a tacit attempt to impose Hindi in the state. 

Sri Lanka’s upcoming parliamentary election, scheduled to take place this week, will be the “most expensive election” in the island’s history according to officials, as the island struggles with an economic crisis in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Four people including a candidate of the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) in the upcoming parliamentary election for the Vanni constituency have been arrested in the Puthukkudiyiruppu, Mullaitivu for allegedly possessing sample ballot papers.

The Election Commission undertook investigations after it was secretly informed that supporters of certain parties were holding the sample ballot papers.

Ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections, the Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) called on the Tamil people to vote in such a way that they "elect those representatives whom they can hold responsible,” as it reflected on the “abject" performance over the past decade to deliver on Tamil rights.