The Chairman of the UK’s All Partiy Parliamentary Group for Tamils (APPGT) has written to the United Nations requesting that the government end its use of Sri Lanka troops in peacekeeping missions

Tamil National Alliance leader, R Sampanthan, briefed visiting UK Minister of State for the Commonwealth, UN and South Asia, Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon, and complained of Sri Lanka's broken promises.

An ongoing strike carried out by lawyers across the North-East was suspended last Friday as the Sri Lankan Attorney General responded, acceding to the lawyers' demands to investigate incidents surrounding the cremation of a Buddhist monk in a Hindu temple in Mullaitivu last week.

The Federation of Saiva (Hindu) Temples UK expressed their dismay at the cremation of a monk in the grounds of a Hindu temple, despite a court injunction prohibiting the funeral rites from being carried out on the temple's premises.

The Federation strongly opposed the cremation as Hindu temples and their grounds are considered to be sacred and called on the President of Sri Lanka to take responsibility "for the sacrilege acts of the Buddhist monk pardoned by him."

A Tamil journalist from Jaffna has been summoned to Sri Lankan police headquarters in Colombo.

The United Nations has called for a Tamil family who are currently being detained by Australian authorities on Christmas Island, to be released “into community setting arrangements”, as the legal battle to deport them to Sri Lanka continues.

The British Tamil Conservatives (BTC) hosted their annual reception at the Conservative Party Conference last weekend, where they were joined by Parliamentarians who pledged to work for justice for Tamils in Sri Lanka.

The leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has called the cremation of a controversial Buddhist monk in the grounds of a Hindu temple in Mullaitivu last month “a deliberate act of aggression” and called for those responsible to “be dealt with and appropriate action should be taken against them” in a wide ranging letter released this week.

The appointment of accused war criminal Shavendra Silva to the top of Sri Lanka’s military has “exposed the Sri Lankan army as one institutionally committed to impunity for grave abuses” said Human Rights Watch’s United Nations Director Louis Charbonneau this week.

“Despite commitments to investigate and prosecute alleged war crimes, the government has failed to do so,” said Charbonneau.

Events were held in India to mark the 32nd anniversary of the death of Lt Col Thileepan, a political wing leader of the LTTE who fasted to death in 1987, appealing to the Indian government to honour pledges made to the Tamil people.

The former head of Sri Lanka’s army announced that he will be running for president in the island’s upcoming elections, as the electoral contest between Sinhala Buddhist candidates begins to heat up.

A parliamentarian from the Tamil National Alliance said Tamils will have “have no choice but to boycott the election given the step motherly treatment that the [Sri Lankan] government gives them”.

Kilinochchi MP S Sritharan made the comments to NewsInAsia, as Sri Lanka gears up for a presidential election for November.

Sri Lanka’s archaeology department has been accused of willfully ignoring the decaying condition of the Dutch Fort of Mullaitivu, which once stood as a testament to the bravery of Pandara Vanniyan, the last chieftain of the Vanni known for his resistance against colonial rule.