Santhan, alias T. Suthenthirarajah, a former Tamil prisoner who was released after decades in prison over the Rajiv Gandhi assassination has finally been given a travel document by the Sri Lankan High Commission - but must wait until the Regional registration officer in Chennai provides an exit permit to leave India and return home

Canada’s Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre said he would look to prosecute Sri Lanka at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and appoint lawyers to pursue charges against accused war criminals in international criminal courts.

Giving interviews to two Tamil media outlets in recent months, Poilievre said his plan includes "Magnitsky sanctions to specifically target guilty members of the Rajapaksa regime for their role in the genocide”.

Sri Lanka's Foreign Affairs Minister Ali Sabry said his government would "express its displeasure with the British government" against the protest held by Tamils in London, at a time when Sri Lanka was holding its 76th Independence Day Celebrations and Tamils worldwide marked it as a 'Black Day'.

Tamil journalist Puniyamoorthy Sathiyamoorthy, who was killed by a Sri Lankan artillery barrage inside the ‘No Fire Zone’ in February 2009, was remembered by the Tamil National People's Front.

The TNPF held a remembrance event in their Jaffna office today to mark 15 years since his death. 

Murugathasan Varnakulasingham, the 26 year old who self-immolated in protest outside the United Nations in Geneva over the inaction of the international community in the face of the 2009 genocide of Tamils, was remembered in London today. 

This week marks 28 years since the Kumarapuram Massacre took place in Trincomalee, where the Sri Lankan military killed 26 Tamil civilians and gang-raped a 15-year-old girl. 

On the evening of February 11, 1996, a group of soldiers, some of them under the influence of alcohol, charged into the village of Kumarapuram and indiscriminately beat up Tamil civilians in the locality.

There has been much consternation in recent weeks as the Sri Lankan government passed the Online Safety Bill, a new piece of legislation that essentially allows the state to police and prosecute what individuals and organisations post online. There have been remarks from the United Nations human rights office, diplomats from various Western countries and a host of NGOs – all of whom have expressed concern over the risks to freedom of expression on the island. In the Tamil North-East, however, those concerns have long been a reality. Left unabated and unchallenged by the international community for years, that climate of repression has solidified and is now being rolled out across the island.

Sri Lankan government officials, tasked with surveying 500 acres of land for transfer to the Civil Aviation Authority in Jaffna's Valikamam North, were compelled to retreat in the face of vehement opposition from local residents.

Despite criticism from Tamils across the North-East and international organisations, Sri Lanka’s much criticised ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ Commission held a forum in the South last week, with the participation of Colombo-based civil society organisations and journalists.

Leader of the lankai Thamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK) Sivagnanam Shritharan speaking to parliament told the house that “Sinhalese leaders waged a war against their own brethern and turned into a genocide," adding "in a country where justice does not prevail, the economy cannot flourish”.