Sri Lanka's joint opposition is to seek legal action over the government's introduction of the Office of Missing Persons bill, the FT.lk reported on Tuesday.

“The OPM bill was passed by violating parliamentary procedures, Standing Orders and contrary to the stipulations of the Constitution. Therefore we cannot admit it as an actual Act,” the Democratic Left Front General Secretary Vasudeva Nanayakkara was quoted by the paper as saying to the media. 

Chief Minister C V Wigneswaran, US Ambasador Atul Keshap and Minister of National Coexistence Dialogue Mano Ganesan as they arrived in Jaffna on a USAF aircraft..

The US ambassador to Sri Lanka, Atul Keshap, stressed that much remained to be done in order to ensure the implementation of the UN Human Rights council resolution on accountability and reconciliation, as he marked a historic trip to Jaffna this week.

Female headed households in Jaffna faced added insecurity to their livelihoods due to the pervasive Sri Lankan military presence in the North-East, said Jaffna residents at a Sri Lankan government consultation on the mechanisms for accountability, truth, reparations and non-recurrence earlier this month.

Women who head households, due to the large number of men who have been abducted or killed,  in the  Vadamaradchi East also made representations during the meeting, stating that the overwhelming military presence creates an atmosphere of fear across the region.

Tamil fishermen in Vadamaradchi East alleged that hundreds of Sinhalese fishermen from the south have been allowed by the Sri Lankan military to fish in restricted areas, as tensions between the groups heighten.

The Sinhalese fishermen have also been cutting the nets of the Tamil fishermen, they said at a meeting at the Divisional Secretariat in Marudhankeni earlier this month. Some 700 boats belonging to the Sinhalese can now be seen along the Vadamaradchi East coastal region they added. With Sri Lankan military assistance, the fishermen have been in waters that remains off limits to the Tamil fishermen they claimed, and have been able to do so without permits.

The newly-built Buddhist temple at Ilankaithurai - re-named Lanka Patuna by the government. A bridge is being constructed to improve access to the site for the increasing number of Sinhala visitors.

Tamil Guardian co-editor and PEARL Advocacy Director Mario Arulthas travelled to Trincomalee last month to report on how Tamils in the region are struggling with the Sri Lankan state's spread of Buddhism across the North-East.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) told the Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg on Sunday that a new consitution in Sri Lanka must resolve the national question, the FT.lk reported. 

Highlighting the difficulties facing Tamils in the North-East, the leader of the TNA, R Sampanthan stressed that much more needed to be done regarding the release of land by the military back to the civilians. 

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Sri Lankan army soldiers protested in Battaramulla against the government's passing of the Office of Missing Persons bill last week. Five joint opposition MPs were also present. 

Sri Lanka's Terrorism Investigation Division have called in the disappearance campaigner, Balandran Jeyakumary for a further inquiry in Colombo at the second floor of the TID's office. 

 In a statement opening a Tamil People's Council meeting earlier this month in Jaffna, Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister, C.V. Wigneswaran, raised issues of accountability and a North-East merger.

The Chief Minister emphasised that a North-East merger would be key to the interests of Tamil people in those areas. Otherwise he said there was a "danger of minority communities losing their identities in the long run," which the majority community appeared to want. He added that any process to erase the identities and culture of those communities is genocide. He noted that Muslim Tamil-speaking peoples could have an autonomous unit within a merged North-East province.

The Sri Lankan police this week launched an investigation over a T-shirt found in a textile shop in Kandy, depicting a Tamil Eelam map, Tamil Eelam flag symbol and photograph of the leader of the Liberation Times of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), V Prabhakaran, and with the words 'L'aspiration des Tamouls est un Tamil Eelam libre' and 'Free Tamil Eelam' printed over it.