Sri Lanka is preparing to launch a new licensing round for offshore oil exploration in the Mannar Basin, Energy Minister Kumar Jayakody announced in parliament on Thursday.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has issued a detailed statement calling on the Sri Lankan government to ensure that ongoing excavations at the Chemmani mass grave site in Jaffna are conducted in full compliance with international human rights standards, including the Minnesota Protocol.

The Sri Lankan military continues coordinated strategy employing large-scale community and social welfare programmes to infiltrate and dominate civilian infrastructure - particularly schools within the Tamil homeland. These operations disproportionately target Tamil-majority regions and implicitly subjugate civilian institutions. Many of these programmes are led by Sri Lankan army units implicated in war crimes.

Tamils in Canberra, Australia, demonstrated on July 22 to demand an international investigation into the mass grave sites in Chemmani, Jaffna. 

Protesters in Canberra started their rally outside the Sri Lankan High Commission and marched to the United Nations office, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as well as several other embassies, where they delivered briefings to officials about the Chemmani mass grave site. 

(All photos by Zebedee Parkes)

A memorial event was held in Jaffna on Saturday to mark the 42nd anniversary of the massacre of key members of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) inside Welikada Prison in 1983 - a massacre widely remembered as one of the darkest chapters in Sri Lanka’s treatment of Tamil political prisoners.

A public memorial seminar was held in Jaffna to commemorate Black July, bringing together political leaders and activists under the theme “Yesterday – Today – Tomorrow”

Sri Lankan police have summoned Tamil human rights activist S. Sivayoganathan for further inquiry, months after he lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) over the suppression of a Tamil commemorative event.

Five more human skeletal remains were exhumed on Sunday from Chemmani mass graves, bringing the total recovered to 95

Widespread protests were held across the North-East this weekend as Tamil families of the disappeared, civil society organisations, and human rights defenders rallied to demand an international, independent investigative mechanism into the genocide committed against the Tamil people.

This week, France’s president Emmanuel Macron announced his government would move to recognise the State of Palestine. Though not the first state, nor even first European country, to do so, as a G7 nation and permanent member of the UN Security Council, the move carries significant weight.