India is to set up a dedicated economic zone and pharmaceutical centre in the Trincomalee district, it announced on Thursday.

The country's Industry and Textile Minister, Ananda Sharma, who is currently in Colombo, said,

“We have agreed to establish a manufacturing investment zone to manufacture engineering, auto parts for exports to India,”

A Sri Lankan Minister claimed that Tamil diaspora organisations were behind a “sinister political agenda” smuggling asylum seekers out of the island, in order to tarnish the Sri Lankan government’s reputation.

Mass Media and Information Minister Keheliya Rambukwella went on to state that “deportation” is the solution, according to state-run Daily News.

The Minister said that,

The Chair of the Jaffna University Teachers Union, A. Rasakumaran, has blamed declining education on drug addiction and child abuse which has increased in the absence of the LTTE, reported Uthayan.

Speaking at a press conference of Jaffna University Lecturer’s strike, Rasakumaran said:

A Tamil Canadian citizen was arrested by a police ‘Crime Prevention Force’ reports Uthayan.

Nadarajah Jeyakanthan, who has lived in Canada for the past 25 years, went to Jaffna three weeks ago to visit his relatives.

Jeyakanthan had been staying for 10 days at a relation’s house in Vathiri, Nelliyadi when a few people in a white van, identifiying themselves as the Colombo ‘Crime Prevention Force’ appeared outside the house on Thursday last week.

The Sri Lankan Army in a joint operation with the police force, is set to intensify its operations in the Eastern Province ahead of the Provincial Council elections due to be held there next month.

According to a senior police officer, raids will be conducted on locations throughout the East, where they suspect illegal activity, such as the storage of firearms, is taking place.

Speaking to Ceylon Today, a police officer was quoted as saying,

Speaking at a seminar organised to remember Black July 1983, MPs and activists outlined their support for an international investigation into war crimes in Sri Lanka and offered support to the Tamil right to self-determination.

See full article on TamilNet.

Writing in The Australian, the executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre Phil Lynch states that Australia must do more to protect asylum seekers and re-evaluate its relationship with Sri Lanka.

Extracts have been reproduced below. See the full piece here.

"It is well documented that the Sri Lankan government was responsible for mass human rights violations towards the end of the civil war in 2009. The Australian government has not done enough, either at the international level or through our bilateral relations, to ensure that these crimes are independently investigated and that perpetrators are held to account."

"Serious human rights violations did not end in Sri Lanka with the cessation of the civil war. Arbitrary arrest, detention and even torture remain systematic and widespread, particularly against the Tamil minority."

"In recent months, evidence has emerged that asylum-seekers returned to Sri Lanka are at particular risk of rights violations. Human Rights Watch has documented at least eight cases in which people who unsuccessfully sought asylum in Britain were returned to Sri Lanka and endured serious abuses, including torture and rape. There have been similar claims by Tamil asylum-seekers returned by Australia. This corroborates a May 2010 report by the Edmund Rice Centre that claimed asylum-seekers returned to Sri Lanka were detained and assaulted by Sri Lankan police."

"Despite this, Australia works closely with Sri Lanka - including through financial assistance and intelligence co-operation - in preventing people from fleeing the country. The Sri Lankan Department of Immigration and Emigration receives Australian aid, and Australia's last federal budget included almost $11 million to deploy Australian police officers to Sri Lanka and elsewhere to "combat people-smuggling"."

"At best, this undermines the spirit of the Refugee Convention, which gives people the right to flee persecution and seek protection. At worst, it involves Australia, at least indirectly, in exposing people to torture and other serious human rights violations. It is time for Australia to recalibrate its relationship with Sri Lanka to put human rights at the core."

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has urged Sri Lanka to focus on trading with India and China in order to improve its poor exports and economic growth.

The IMF's representative for sri Lanka and Maldives, Koshy Mathai, said,

"We are not going to have economic success if we continue having exports declining relative to the size of economy. It is only with export growth, that the Sri Lankan economy is going to go forward,"

The Italian Tamil youth organisation, Giovani Tamil and the Italian Council of Eelam Tamils held a conference entitled "Tamil, the identity denied", with human rights organisation, academics and politicians in attendance, at the historic town hall of Palermo.

A resolution, calling for a “plebiscite among the people of North and East descent in the island of Sri Lanka, in the diaspora and among the refugees in India and elsewhere, to decide on the creation of an independent and sovereign state of Tamil Eelam”, was passed by the organisations.

Several academics form the University of Palermo spoke at the event.