Residents of Cheddikulam, Vavuniya reported a tense situation last week after Sri Lankan authorities stepped up a campaign to evict Muslim farmers from the area by arresting one farmer and seizing his tractor.

The incident took place last Thursday in Suduventha Pilavu where Muslim farmers have been resisting attempts by the Sri Lankan forest department to evict them from their cultivation lands.

A school in Myliddy, Jaffna was released after 27 years of military occupation, with most of the buildings demolished and a well-maintained Buddhist shrine and piles of discarded alcohol bottles in their place.

Northern Provincial Council member, T Ravikaran has rubbished claims that the current Sri Lankan government does not participate in Sinhalisation of the North, saying that Sinhala settlements have continued with the current government and that the Sri Lankan President was anyway complicit in his role as Mahaweli development minister the previous regimes.

The Northern Provincial Council (NPC) today called on the UN Human Rights Council to refer Sri Lanka to the UN General Assembly and to the UN Security Council in order "to be referred to the International Criminal Court or to a specially created international criminal tribunal set up by the UN". 

The organiser of a hartal in Batticaloa this week, Kanapathipillai Mohan, has been arrested by Eravur police for allegedly inciting the hartal and damaging public property. 

The hartal was organised by local businesses and residents to demonstrate against the construction of a bottled water company. 

Mohan was called in to the police station for an inquiry regarding the hartal and was arrested at the station.

Chunnakam police on Sunday arrested three Tamil youths for allegedly carrying swords whilst travelling on the roadside. 

The youths are understood to be from Uduvil, Jaffna and are in their early twenties. 

Chunnakam police state two swords and the youths' motorbikes were confiscated. 

Britain, Germany, Macedonia and Montenegro said that Sri Lanka’s lack of progress in important areas of reform “risks undermining reconciliation efforts” in a statement delivered to the 39^th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) today.

Sri Lanka’s state minister of defence said “arrangements are being made to strengthen security at all times," as he sought to reiterate his government’s commitment to strengthening the military this week.

"I must stress that under the advice of President Maithripala Sirisena, the guidance of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and all security chiefs of security, arrangements are being made to strengthen security at all times," Ruwan Wijewardene told a meeting in Biyagama.

The Sri Lankan navy announced that it had arrested three Tamil men, over a reported attempt to smuggle 118kg of cannabis in Jaffna on Sunday.

The Tamil men, who the navy said were residents of Jaffna and Mannar, were arrested off the coast of Point Pedro.

Sri Lanka's president, Maithripala Sirisena on Saturday vowed to "vindicate security forces" at the UN General Assembly where he is scheduled to deliver a speech on September 24. 

Sri Lanka is most at risk of an exchange rate crisis, according to a gauge published by Nomura this week, as fears over currency crunches continue to build in emerging market economics.

Nomura’s “Damocles” index, which the bank called an “early warning system”, placed Sri Lanka most at risk out a range of market economies, reports the Financial Times.

Newly appointed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet said Sri Lanka had “moved too slowly towards meaningful implementation of the transitional justice agenda” in her opening statement to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) earlier today.

Families of the disappeared in Sri Lanka have “waited too long to know the truth” about the enforced disappearances of their relatives, said the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (UN WGEID) in a report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council.

The report stated that “families of the disappeared in Sri Lanka have waited too long to know the truth about the fate or whereabouts of their loved ones”.

The slaughter of 185 Tamils by the Sri Lankan army with the assistance of the Muslim home guards in Sathurukondan, Batticaloa was remembered 28 years on at the memorial site in the village. 

Families of those massacred gathered to remember the horrific event.