Dozens of events were held across Tamil Nadu last month to mark Maaveerar Naal, with thousands attending memorial services across the state.

See a selection of pictures from events organised by politicians and local community groups in various locations below.

Sri Lanka's prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe on Friday assured the former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa of his security during the upcoming elections. 

Mr Wickremesinghe said 154 police personnel had been assigned to Mr Rajapaksa, including one ASP, one chief inspector and nine inspectors. 

The former president, Chandrika Kumaratunga has 61 police personnel assigned to her, he added. 
 

Sri Lanka's parliament on Friday approved tax exemptions for the Chinese led development of Hambantota port. 

“Today the parliament approved two motions... to grant certain tax incentives to those two companies operating the Hambantota port,” the country's Ports Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe told Reuters.

The development is to take place as a joint venture between China Merchants Port Holdings and Sri Lanka Ports Authority, who have a 70 - 30 stake respectively. 

In a vote in parliament on Friday, 72 voted in favour of the concessions, with 7 voting against. 

Despite the Sri Lankan government's claims it had significantly improved press freedom, a report published by Groundviews on Friday revealed that 13 news websites had been blocked since 2015, when the present Sirisena and Ranil led unity government came to power. 

An RTI request to the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) by Groundviews and its sisters sites revealed not only the list of websites but that the order to block the sites came from "as high up as the "Presidential Secretariat, for at least four of the websites". 

Groundviews further reported: 

The International Monetary Fund approved a disbursement of US $251.4 million to Sri Lanka following the completion of the third review of the 3 year Extended Fund Facility arrangement which was set up in June 2016. 

Approving the latest tranche of funds, the IMF warned that further fiscal consolidation was needed given Sri Lanka's high debt burden and weakly performing state owned enterprises. 

The present review was undertaken after an earlier review was postponed by the IMF pending further reforms by the Sri Lankan government. 

Sri Lanka's Daily Mirror reported on Friday that seven nominees for the Office of Missing Persons had been selected by the Constitutional Council. 

The list of nominees, which remains undisclosed, was reportedy submitted to the president for approval. 

According to the paper over 100 applications were received for the posts. 

See here for more. 

Sri Lanka on Tuesday acceded to the 'Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment'. 

The protocol will become effective on January 4th, 2018. 

Sri Lanka's decision to accede the protocol comes amid ongoing reports of torture committed by state security forces. 

Unemployed graduates in Batticaloa marched in protest at the Sri Lankan government's failure to appoint the promised number of graduate teachers.

Several graduates who passed a graduate scheme entrance exam set by the Eastern Provincial Council have not been given the promised employment, the protestors said.

Five representatives from the protest met with the Government Agent and stressed the graduates' demand that all those who passed the criteria should be appointed by the end of the year.

Photograph: Yardstick Films

Secret filming at the Scottish Police academy revealed deep ties between Scotland’s police force and Sri Lanka’s Special Task Force – a notorious paramilitary unit that has been accused of directly carrying out war crimes.

Undercover footage provided by Yardstick films shows an interview with a manager of Police Scotland's international training unit, who said, "We know there are issues”. “We know the previous President was being taken for war crimes,” he added. “Yeah. The choices are we do nothing or we go in. UK government's position was we want to go in and do something."

The governor of Sri Lanka's Central Bank this warned that island's signficant debt was the achilles heel of the economy. 

"The underlying problem was that Sri Lanka allowed exports to come down as a share of gross domestic product and allow foreign commercial borrowing to go up," the governor, Indrajit Coomaraswamy was quoted by Economy Next as saying. 

“That was a suicidal set of policies - to allow exports to collapse and go on a foreign commercial borrowing binge.”