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| Jaffna protest against land grabbing |
Children were thrown into vehicles and the occupying Sinhala Army assaulted uprooted Tamil families using gun butts and batons Monday evening at Thiru-mu’rika’ndi Hindu Tamil Viththiyaalayam in Ki’linochchi. A section of the uprooted families who had been brought from Menik Farm by the SL military a few weeks ago had declined to accept what they called an ‘enslavement’ offer of ‘resettlement’ by the SL military.
They were placed temporarily at the school. On Monday, as one day was remaining till the protest organised by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) against the military land grab assisted by China, the SL military entered the school, bargained with the families at gunpoint for more than 4 hours and finally assaulted them forcefully transporting them back to Vavuniyaa. Tension prevails at Thiru-mu’rika’ndi after the horror let loose by the SL military on the uprooted civilians.
The SL military has snatched away 4,000 acres of land that belongs to uprooted Eezham Tamils from Thiru-mu’rika’ndi. The military has been constructing a massive military enclave consisting 5,000 houses with Chinese aid to permanently colonise the area by settling Sinhala military personnel with their families.
The uprooted Tamils, whose lands were grabbed for this purpose by the military, have been protesting against the move demanding resettlement in their own fertile lands.
Each of the families were having between 5 and 10 acres of agricultural lands before they were chased away in 2009 by the genocidal war, waged by the SL military with the direct and indirect abetment of global powers.
Recently, 172 uprooted families were summoned by Namal Rajapaksa, the son of SL president Mahinda Rajapaksa, the war-crimes alleged colonial governor of North Maj Gen (retd) GA Chandrasri and the controversial SL minister of ‘trade’ from Mannaar Rishard Badurdeen, to a re-settlement showcase-event. They were issued with 0.25 acre of land for each family with a small house.
The uprooted civilians opposed the project, which resembled the ‘line’ houses built by the colonial British who enslaved the upcountry Tamils.
Slowly, the families realised that they were being prepared as a working stock to be assigned slavery work in the upcoming city of the military enclave. The families, who once owed acres of land each doing agriculture, were being transformed to fit the corporate establishment of the genocidal military.
Out of 172 families, 47 families had been brought from the barbed-wire internment camp known as ‘Menik Farm’. The others had been living with their kith and kin elsewhere, as displaced.
The families who were opposing the move from their displacement, were reportedly harassed and threatened by the intelligence establishment of the SL military that wanted them not to file legal suits and to accept the offer of lands elsewhere.
Of the 172 families, 80 families chose to accept Colombo’s ‘resettlement’ as a temporary measure, but 90 families declined and chose to continue their protest.
Of the 47 families that were brought from ‘Menik Farm’, 19 families declined to be subjugated forever. These families were forwarded to the ‘transit camp’ in the area, which was the Hindu Tamil Viththiyaalam, where the civilians were attacked Monday.
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), recently announced that the alliance, with the support of the civil society and the Tamil National Peoples Front (TNPF), has planned to stage a civil protest against the land grab of the SL military in Thiru-mu’rika’ndi. The protest is scheduled to take place on Tuesday.
Just a day left to the protest, the SL military, together with SL police, entered the ‘transit’ camp at the school Monday noon and bargained with the civilians camped there to accept the earlier offer. One of the aged man, arguing with the military, suffered heart attack and was rushed to Ki’linochchi hospital.
The military harassment continued at the site. The families were told by the Sinhala military not to leave the premises of the school. The SL government officials were also engaged by the military to harass the civilians with the military offer, but the uprooted Tamils continuously declined to accept the terms of the SL military.
At 6:00 p.m. in the evening hundreds of armed Sinhala soldiers were deployed at the site.
Five buses and six lorries were brought in by the military.
As the neighbouring civilians were helplessly watching the unfolding scenario, unable to resist the number of troops at the site, the children were beaten up in front of their parents by the soldiers, who used batons and gun butts. The children were then thrown into the vehicles, forcing the parents to pack their things and get on to the buses and the lorries.
At least two civilians were severely wounded in the brutal assault by the Sinhala soldiers, who didn’t even spare the pregnant mothers, neighbours told TamilNet.
All of them were to be forcefully taken to Menik Farm, they said.
Back in 2009, the so-called International Community of Establishments, formally known as Co-Chairs, spearheaded by the US State Department’s Robert Blake, the failed peace broker of Norway Erik Solheim, the Sri Lanka donor Japan and the Establishment in New Delhi were advocating the civilians to move towards SLA positions while doing nothing to stop the genocidal onslaught by Colombo. The Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is now vying for the presidency of India, put the number of people in Vanni war zone at 70,000.
Even now, these Establishments have done nothing meaningful, but just the opposite, by calling for the implementation of Rajapaksa’s genocidal Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) recommendations at the recent UNHRC sessions in Geneva, Eezham Tamil civil activists in the island say.
Now, the SL State is also scheming permanent Sinhala military enclaves throughout the country of Eezham Tamils, based on the lessons it has learned from Israel.
In the meatnime, the Sri Lankan military at Thiru-mu’rika’ndi on Monday instructed the school administration not to allow the civilians, some of whom managed to escape their forced transportation, back into the school building.
TN