Protesters are rallying through Vavuniya today as they demand the release of the eight Tamil men who were unlawfully arrested at a Shivarathri pooja at Vedukkunaari Hill Athi Sivan temple last week.

Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) Member of Parliament Selvarajah Kajendren who visited the detainees in the Vedukkunaari temple arrest inquired why the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission (HRCSL) did not launch an investigation, despite a formal complaint being lodged.

A mass protest was held earlier today in Nedunkerny, Vavuniya, to demand the release of the eight devotees who were arrested on Shivarathri at the Vedukkunaari Athi Sivan temple last week. 

The Sri Lankan navy has been accused of being complict in the murder of a man in Jaffna, after they were seen in dramatic CCTV footage refusing to help the man and his wife as they were being chased and beating the couple as they were abducted by unidentified assailants.

Five out of the eight Tamils who were arrested last week at Vedukkunaari Hill Athi Sivan temple have launched a hunger strike to demand their immediate release.  

Marking 2,200 days of protest the Association for the relatives of the enforced disappearances, representing 8 districts across the North East, called on UN member states to recognise the Tamil genocide and bring Sri Lanka before the International Criminal Court.

Indigo Airlines, a budget airline from India is tipped to operate direct flights between Chennai and Jaffna later this year.

In a letter to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Human Rights Watch (HRW) calls upon the organisation to stress to Sri Lanka the importance of civil society and to abandon proposed legislation that would severly curtail their freedom.

The University of Jaffna's Teacher's Association has described last week's violence and arrests at Vedukkunaari Athi Sivan temple in Vavuniya as the "latest manifestations of the violence of Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism" as efforts to colonise the traditionally Tamil temple continue. 

Last Friday, as Tamils gathered at the temple to observe Shivarathri, Sri Lankan police aggressively disrupted the religious ceremony and arrested eight Tamil devotees. 

Lands that were being occupied by the Sri Lankan military were released to their original owners for the first time in years, with Tamils returning to the area finding their homes having been left in ruins.

Some of the families were visiting their homes for the first time in almost 30 years. Much of the land had been seized by the Sri Lankan military after it launched an offensive to capture the Jaffna peninsula in 1995, triggering an exodus of over half a million people.

Sri Lanka's archaeology department has claimed that the eight Tamil devotees at Vedukkunaari Hill Athi Sivan temple were arrested during the Shivarathri for damaging the temple's antiquities. 

Hundreds of women from all eight districts across the Tamil homeland 8 districts took to the streets in Kilinochchi today, demanding an end all forms of oppression, harassment, and militarisation across the North-East, including eliminating violence against women.