The Sri Lankan military has increased its deployment of troops to Jaffna after at least two police officers were injured in an explosion in Vadamarachchi yesterday.

Sri Lanka’s Special Task Force (STF) bomb disposal squad was deployed to the area after the explosion by the Vallipura Aalvar Kovil.

The Sri Lankan military has set up more checkpoints across Mullaitivu this week, as armed soldiers continue to be stationed and carry out searches across the Tamil homeland.

The increase in checkpoints has stepped up since the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as Sri Lanka’s president last year, and even more so since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic on the island.

The European Union (EU) delegation in Sri Lanka has written to Sri Lanka's authorities to "express deep concerns" about the detention of a lawyer under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). 

"We reiterate need to review counter-terror legislation to be in line with Sri Lanka's international human rights obligations," the delegation tweeted. 

Mirusha Yogarajah writes on Toronto’s Tamil community for Briarpatch Magazine.

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Tamil people created, own, and manage the businesses woven tightly into the fabric of Toronto – Babu Take-Out & Catering, the famous Spiceland franchise – but we are also the workers stocking shelves, sweeping the aisles, weighing and cutting fish, and packing up hundreds of iddiyappams. The restaurant industry was one of the few industries in which Tamil migrants were initially able to find work – albeit often underpaid and exploitative work. Today, we are the working class as well as, increasingly, Toronto’s elite – but behind the wealth of the Tamil elite lies the fact that most of us arrived in Toronto fleeing genocide. Where once we sought shelter in the Nallur Kandaswamy temple in Jaffna, we fled to seek safety at the crosswalks of McCowan and Finch.

The United Nations Children's Fund faced criticism after it collaborated with Sri Lanka’s prime minister and accused war criminal Mahinda Rajapaksa to produce a video for children on the coronavirus earlier this month.

“Kids have big questions about COVID-19,” said UNICEF. “Watch the Hon. Prime Minister H E Mahinda Rajapaksa answer them.”

The video goes on to show Rajapaksa answering questions from children across the island.

The Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) showed their “support and solidarity to the NHS” by handing out food donations to hospitals across England, last week marking the Mullivaikkal Tamil Genocide Day (May 18).

Volunteers of TGTE delivered donations directly to seven hospitals including; Kingston University Hospital, Croydon University Hospital, Northwick Park University Hospital, Bournemouth  Royal Hospital, Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, last Monday.

In a statement, former Sri Lankan Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, urged the government to release a report on the current dire economic situation in Sri Lanka, stating that “silence will not help”.

The Terrorism Investigation Department (TID), questioned two Tamil men for around four hours about last year’s Maaveerar Naal commemorations, that took place at the Theravil Maaveerar Thuyillum Illum in Mullaitivu.

Sundaralingam Yogalingam and Thambaiya Yogeswaran were investigated by four TID officers last Thursday at 11:30 am for their involvement in preparing and organising the Maaveerar Naal event at the Theravil Maaveerar Thuyillum Illum.

A court in Tamil Nadu has handed the leader of a pro-Tamil political organisation bail, after he was arrested over a speech on social media where he praised the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and called for a separate state of Tamil Nadu to be established.

The Public Prosecutor argued that G Thirumurgan, who heads the Thamizhar Katchi, made a direct threat to the integrity, security and sovereignty of the country, at the Ramanathapuram District Court earlier this month.

Sri Lankan police in Jaffna announced the arrest of a Tamil man, who they accused of assaulting a Sri Lankan soldier and being involved in a string of robberies.

Police officers announced they had seized a motorbikes and chains from the man, who had apparently confessed on assaulting the soldier on May 14.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s appointment of a well-known alleged torturer as the new Director of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), is a “gravely worrying step” the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP) said in their latest press release.

Prasanna de Alwis “is named in numerous court documents in connection with torture, including the case filed by eleven Tamils in 2019 in California against Gotabaya Rajapaksa,” the ITJP stated.

Sri Lankan military carried out roadside checks in Vavuniya as they patrolled the area on motorcycles.

Special Air Service (SAS) veteran Brian Baty who “served on covert operations across the crumbling British empire from the 1950s, then sold his counter-insurgency experience to the Sri Lankan government, profiting from massacres of Tamil civilians” died without facing justice from war crimes, Phil Miller writes for the Daily Maverick.

After serving in the SAS, Baty joined Keenie Meenie Services (KMS), a British private mercenary company, which recruited military veterans equipped with combat experience from various conflict situations.

“Sri Lanka’s ruling Sinhalese majority urgently needed military support from KMS to suppress an armed separatist movement among its marginalised Tamil minority. Thatcher’s government had refused to intervene directly, fearing it might sour UK trade deals with India, which initially supported the Tamils,” Miller wrote.

Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, warns against division in response to the coronavirus pandemic stating that Sri Lankan’s have only one option to “pull together or perish”.

This stark warning has raised concerns from civil society actors as military surveillance, intimidation and harassment of dissent voices ramps up.