Calculating the number of missing Tamils would be a lengthier and more arduous, but nevertheless important task acknowledged the former Ambassador.

Tamil Guardian caught up with Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian after his parliamentary speech on Sri Lanka’s constitutional assembly speech last week.

“I’ve always been vocal from day one about the fact that I was a refugee and not a migrant. There was no secret. I actually left Sri Lanka because we were bombed and shot at.” The global icon talks politics and life with Tamil Guardian.

As discussions on how to deal with the findings of the UN investigation into Sri Lanka’s mass atrocities (OISL) reach fever pitch, the newly elected chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils, James Berry, spoke to the Tamil Guardian last week.

Speaking ahead of the release of the UN report into mass atrocities and after meeting the Chief Minister of the Northern Province, the APPG-T chair reiterated calls for normalcy in the North-East and stressed the need for any process to deal with the findings of the OISL to have the full confidence of the victims.

Speaking to the Tamil Guardian, Indian film maker Maga Tamizh Prabhagaran condemned the procurement of Tamil land by the Sri Lankan government as part of a structural genocide, after the London screening of his film ‘This Land Belongs to the Army’.

Prabhagaran, who was detained by Sri Lankan security forces whilst visiting the Tamil homeland in the North-East of the island, was eventually deported by Colombo. Upon arrival in London, Prabhagaran also described being held and interrogated for over 3 hours by British police, questioning him on the LTTE and on protests held by the Tamil diaspora.

His film, detailing state procurement and Sinhalisation of the Tamil homeland, was screened at an international conference on land grabs earlier this month in London.

Land grabs, the Sri Lankan state’s forcible and militarised procurement of Tamil owned land in the North-East, has seen international condemnation with a resolution having been presented to the US Senate this week outlining “ongoing concerns regarding landownership and property restitution”.

The Tamil Guardian caught up with the Tamil National Alliance's Batticaloa District Parliamentarian, P. Ariyanenthiran in a phone interview last month, and discussed issues such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Northern Provincial Council elections and the TNA's future plans.

See full interview below.

Students from Loyola College in Tamil Nadu remained steadfast in their call for a complete boycott of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo by the international community, and continued to call for Sri Lanka to be suspended from the Commonwealth.

In an interview from Chennai, Joe Britto from Loyola College said to the Tamil Guardian,

"We, the students of Tamil Nadu, we strictly condemn that - that conference shouldn't be happening in Sri Lanka, and we will protest on the streets, and we will raise our voice against the Sri Lankan Commonwealth conference."