Sri Lankan military forces occupying Palaly had a post office to meet their needs opened in the area on Saturday.

Families of Maaveerar (fallen LTTE cadres) buried in the destroyed Kanchikudicharu thuyilum illam, in Amparai, cleared the cemetery on Friday, in preparation for Maaveerar Naal.

Protests calling for the release of Tamil political prisoners have continued daily in towns across the North-East.

The director of the organisation Roots of the Nation has been investigated by the Terrorism Investigation Division.

Director Ganeshan Pirapakaran attended questioning on Thursday in Colombo.

Pirabakaran said he was kept from 9 in the morning until 7 in the evening, and was questioned about the organisations activities and memorial events.

The TID warned him that they could call him for investigation again in the future.

Twelve senior LTTE members including Lt Col Kumarappa and Lt Col Pulenthiran were remembered in Valvettithurai on the 31st anniversary of their deaths.

Almost 5000 acres of privately-owned land in Mullaitivu still remains occupied by Sri Lankan military forces, the district secretariat has revealed.

Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan president has reportedly issued a deadline to release all privately-owned lands in the North-East by December 31.

Responding to a private right to information request, the Mullaitivu district secretariat calculated that a total of 4859 acres remained under occupation, compared to 2891.75 that had been released.

Of the five divisions of the district, Karaithuraipatru (Maritimepattu) remained the most heavily occupied with over 4000 acres of the total occupation falling in this division.

The Sri Lankan army continued its militarisation of the North-East with its announcement that a new “state-of-the-art modern facility complex” had been constructed at the 66 Infantry Escort Troops Headquarters in Poonakari last week.

The UK’s Minister of State for Asia, Mark Field visited a group of police officers in Colombo earlier today, just days after a Scotland’s police announced a last minute cancellation of a training visit by a contingent of Sri Lankan policemen.

Field met with the female officers and tweeted that “UK funding has been supporting police reform in Sri Lanka”.

The Sri Lanka Monitoring and Accountability Panel (MAP) has called for an independent evidence-gathering mechanism for to be set up by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) to collect evidence of international law violations.

In a statement issued earlier this week the MAP, which consists of a panel of prominent legal experts to monitor transitional justice mechanisms in Sri Lanka, said that “looking ahead to the HRC’s 40th Session in March 2019—when the question of Sri Lanka’s compliance is back on the agenda—a fresh approach is needed”.

The Sri Lanka Campaign has re-launched its ethical tourism campaign for those who visit Sri Lanka and the Tamil homeland, reflecting ongoing concerns regarding militarisation and in an effort to prevent human rights abusers from benefitting from tourism to the island.