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| Uthayan, 07 June 2012 |
Contrary to news reports released by Colombo that it has drastically reduced the number of troops in the North, the occupying Sinhala military in Jaffna peninsula has been stepping up land grab for military purposes in recent days even outside of the so-called High Security Zone and former Forward Defence Lines in the Jaffna peninsula.
Uthayan Tamil daily, published in Jaffna, on Thursday broke a front-page story that SL military has begun to appropriate 61 acres of land in the peninsula from the civic bodies and private owners in three divisions. After already grabbing thousands of acres of land, the genocidal SL military has now set afoot to appropriate 35 acres in Thellippazhai division, 24 acres in Jaffna division and 2 acres in Nalloor division of the peninsula.
The SL military Governor of North, Major General (retd) G.A. Chandrasiri, who was the former commander of the SLA in North has exerted pressure on District Secretariat officials last week to appropriate the designated lands, according to the paper. Tamil activists have blamed the former SLA commander for committing war crimes. Hundreds of people were extra-judicially abducted and allegedly slain by the SL military during the times when G.A. Chandrasiri was the commander of the SLA in Jaffna.
Apart from the already established military camps outside the HSZ and the former FDL areas, which are yet to be released to the public, this is the first time after the war, a large-scale land grab is being carried out by the SL military by officially appropriating the lands for military use through instructing the civic bodies to abide by the military instruction, civil officials in Jaffna told TamilNet.
Last year, the chairman of Kaarainakar Piratheasa Chapai (PS), V. Anaimukan, was threatened by the occupying SL Navy for the appropriation of lands from the civic body. Mr Anaimukan has admitted that he signed the documents after being threatened of his life.
The SL Navy has established its new bases in the appropriated lands in Kaarainakar.
This time, lands that are not owned by private persons and that come under the management of the civic bodies, are instructed by the military to be officially handed over for military purposes.
The lands that are owned by private persons are being appropriated through the SL Ministry of Land and Development. SL Defence Secratary and presidential sibling Gotabhaya Rajapaksa is dealing with the matter of the privately owned lands with the secretary of the land ministry in Colombo, informed civil sources in Jaffna said adding that the SL military was seeking to establish large cantonments in the lands that it had appropriated in the country of Eezham Tamils.
Permanent cantonments are to be set up in these places to facilitate Sinhalicisation through militarisation according to the genocidal blueprint of the LLRC recommendations that envisages assimilation of Tamil Nation by denying territory-based political solution and by introducing demographic destruction through colonisation and through the so-called ‘tri-lingual Sri Lanka policy’.
Cautioning the Tamil diaspora on the hoodwink of the so-called liberal peace establishments talking about ‘accountability, reconciliation and development’, the Tamil civil officials said that an approach that doesn’t concede the sovereignty and legitimate national rights of the Eezham Tamils alone, could meet the situation.
The SL military was also engaged in identifying lands for occupation in three more divisions, including Point-Pedro, Valikaamam North and Kaarainakar, they further said.
TN