The Sri Lankan police's massacre of 8 Tamil civilians, including two schoolchildren in Thampalakamam, was remembered yesterday at the Trincomalee village, twenty years on. 

On February 1, 1998 civilians working at the local paddy fields were taken to the nearby police station where officers and home guards began shooting at them, before mutilating the dead bodies by stabbing and kicking them. One dead Tamil man's penis was cut off and stuffed inside his mouth. 

The Sri Lankan army continued with its miltiarisation of the North-East, by deploying soldiers to a Tamil pre-school in Kilinochchi to help pick up litter.

The People’s Alliance for Right to Land released a statement this week, condemning the Sri Lankan security forces’ intimidation of Tamil families from Keppapulavu who were protesting and demanding the release of their land from Sri Lankan military occupation.

^{Photograph: A UK mercenary pictured training Sri Lankan soldiers in the 1980s. JDS Lanka}

Britain’s Foreign Office plans to shred dozens more files about its relationship with Sri Lanka, in addition to the hundreds of diplomatic it has already destroyed, writes Phil Miller in JDS Lanka this week.

“I found, from British air force files that had survived the shredder, that a senior British intelligence officer made two visits to Sri Lanka in 1979 to advise how to deal with the Tamil militancy,” writes Miller. “In 1980, a British special forces training team visited Sri Lanka to help set up an army commando unit.”

<p>A Tamil school student has been attacked and hospitalised after reporting to Sri Lankan police about illegal drug dealing in his local area.</p> <p>The student informed police about activity in his local area when police visited his school to raise awareness about the illegal drug trade and ways to report it.</p>

<p>The father of one of the Tamil students gunned down in the infamous ‘Trinco 5’ massacre has spoken of how despite the Sri Lankan government’s intransigence, he will continue his struggle for justice more than 13 years after the killings.</p>

Sri Lankan police have arranged security to guard an illegally-built Buddha statue while a court injunction on its construction remains in place.

Employees of Vavuniya urban council held a strike on Friday, protesting the unnecessary and aggressive intrusion of United National Party (UNP) supporters into their duties.

As concerns over military involvement in civilian activity in the North-East continue, the Sri Lankan military handed out accessories to Tamil schoolchildren in Poonakari last week, taking charge of an initiative that was begun by Jaffna University students.

The Sri Lankan air force announced that it had held a golf tournament earlier this month, at a luxury gulf resort in Trincomalee which is run entirely by the military.

<p>Civil society groups working on issues in the North-East have written to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressing concern over the Sri Lankan government’s pledges to implement a UN resolution and called for the appointment of a Special Rapporteur on the issue.</p>

Families of the disappeared in Vavuniya today urged the United Nations to ensure Sri Lanka was referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its genocide of Tamils. 

Holding a demonstration in Vavuniya calling for justice and for answers over the tens of thousands of Tamils who were disappeared, families expressed anger and a feeling of betrayal over the current government's failure to fulfil its pledges. 

 

Families of the disappeared in Amparai yesterday held a demonstration and signature campaign, demanding answers over the unearthing of hundreds of skeletons at a mass grave in Mannar. 

"Tell us the truth about the skeletons excavated in Mannar and who those people are," demanded protesters as they marched from the 'Office for the Families of the Disappeared in Thirukkovil' to Amparai clock tower. 

A US military delegation held another meeting with the Sri Lankan army in Jaffna, where they discussed the prospects of more training programs between the two militaries this week.