Sri Lanka is now waging a new genocidal war on unarmed and demographically weakened Tamils after converting their country imperceptibly into an open concentration camp, TamilNet say.
The new war is focussed on the Jaffna Peninsula.
Many Tamils believe that India and USA continue to encourage Colombo, providing a smokescreen for the current war by projecting it as ‘reconciliation’ cum post-war ‘development’ and thus actually are party to the war and genocide.
All these decades, India and USA have been competitively negotiating the national question by upholding the integrity of a fundamentally flawed state, which has brought only untold misery.
At least now, why shouldn’t they try in unison, a genuine reconciliation by the option of secession? Further delays will convert the island into a bleeding spot of the region for ages, cautions a Jaffna university academic.
Meanwhile, on the Nazi-style registration of Tamil civilians in the peninsula by the occupying Sinhala military, and on recent militarisation and terrorisation in the peninsula, the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF) made the following comments:
‘Colombo is keen that no evidence should leak from Jaffna on the war crimes it committed in the Vanni war and believes that evidence and support for the war crimes investigation and international action comes from Jaffna. The family registration, family photographs etc are part of the terror campaign aimed at continuously silencing the people.
‘Military rule of the Tamil country is confirmed in many ways. Local media are made to announce that the SL Navy establishments occupying the islands off the Jaffna Peninsula are now being closed down.
‘But actually they are being hurriedly replaced by SL Army and by intelligence units of the military.
‘A motorbike squad of military intelligence is engaged in terrorising people even in the main streets of the peninsula. This motorbike squad has killed hundreds of civilians in the past in their houses and streets. The whereabouts of the hundreds abducted by the squad is yet to be known.
‘The re-activation of the savage squad, operated from the Palaali “High Security Zone” by the military intelligence, is an indication another war is being waged now.
‘In the name of “night security” anyone in the street going public is put to untold harassment, including bodily searches. The people who have come from Vanni are specially targeted.
‘More than ever, Sinhala colonisation is taking place in Jaffna and Vanni. Sinhalese are brought in for trade and fisheries. Tamils in their traditional land are now made to work under them.
‘Frustrating the people to the maximum is the aim of the psychological part of the war. The whole peninsula is fast sinking into the situation it faced during the height of the series of the wars in the past.’
Meanwhile, 100,000 families under the Mahaaweli scheme don’t have enough land.
‘Steps will be taken to provide them with land in the Vavuniyaa and Polonnaruwa districts,’ said D. M. C. Dissanayake of Sri Lanka’s Director General of the Mahaaweli Authority.
The north has become a dumping ground of Sinhalese unwanted in the south, serving the twin purpose of getting rid of them as well as terrorising and subjugating or chasing away the Tamils from their country could be achieved, say resettlement officials in the north.
According to Dissanayake, the lands distributed to farmers under the Mahaaweli scheme couldn’t be divided more than two blocks. The shortage of land now occurs because of the large families of Mahaaweli farmers.
The Mahaaweli scheme covers only the Sinhala districts.
Observers of development projects point out another picture too.
They say that the so-called ‘development’ projects of the state and multinational corporates prefer the resources and relative stability in the south, and also uproot large numbers of people in the south.
Sending them to the north to colonise the country of Tamils is perceived as a way to diffuse tension in the south arising from corporate colonialism in the south.
The colonisation of the country of demographically weakened Eezham Tamils is an international conspiracy in complicity with genocidal Sri Lanka, the observers said.
In Vanni, hundreds of thousands of war-affected Eezham Tamils, have had their lands confiscated and are living in open prisons. The SL military is cultivating their lands in Vanni.
Further hundreds of thousands of up-country Tamils of Indian origin have never seen their own land for generations now.
Large stretches of lands in Jaffna Peninsula – in the so-called High Security Zones and in other areas where people are not permitted to resettle using landmines as an excuse – are hurriedly sold to Sinhala businessmen ostensibly to start ‘industrial estates’.
For example, 100 acres of land near Ezhuthumadduvaa’l railway station along the A9 Highway has been recently sold to an influential Sinhala businessman. Another Sinhalese attempted buying 80 acres between Ki’laali and Puloappazhai.
The stretch of land in question at Thenmaraadchi in the Jaffna Peninsula was earlier the frontline of the occupying SL military during the war, and was a ‘High Security Zone’.
People were removed from that part and only military camps existed. 387 families were recently permitted to resettle the northern part of Ezhtuhu-madduvaa’l after claims that the landmines were removed. But they were again chased out saying the landmines still exist, with promises that they would be permitted to resettle within a month.
Within that time, the sale of the 100 acres of land, from a Tamil to the Sinhala businessman was ‘arranged.’ After the purchase, the SL military now hurriedly declares that landmines have been removed from the 100 acres of land.
The Sinhala businessman has announced that he would start a mega industrial estate there. But all expect a Sinhala colonisation.
Occupying military officials are also said to be interested in buying lands.
Industrial estates are a smokescreen, but Sinhala colonisation in that stretch, to completely seal off the people of Jaffna within their own peninsula, is the strategy, political circles in Jaffna said.
Meanwhile, in Valikaamam HSZ, a Sinhalese is said to be running a farm at Vasaavi’laan and another is indiscriminately quarrying limestone near Keerimalai.
Similar to the Vanni war, genocidal Colombo is now hurriedly engaged in a colonisation war against the unarmed and demographically weakened nation of Eezham Tamils.
India and the USA, which labelled the former as war against terrorism now smokescreen the latter as ‘reconciliation’ and ‘post-war development’.
The occupation of Sri Lanka aims at creating an Israeli model situation as fast as possible. This is going to prolong the crisis indefinitely for the entire region, commented a diaspora Tamil academic in Canada.
In the stretch from Ki’laali to Puloappazhai, the occupying military doesn’t permit people to even visit their houses and lands, saying landmines have not been removed. But there was an attempt to ‘arrange’ sales of 80 acres of land to another Sinhala businessman through a Tamil businessman.
Even this purchase attempt was in the name of ‘industrial estate’. But as news leaked, the attempt was foiled.
From the eastern coast of the peninsula to the western coast, by settling Sinhala fishermen in Veththilikkea’ni, by settlement on an industrial scale of Sinhalese at Ki’laali- Ezhuthumadduvaa’l and by settlements at Naavatkuzhi- Ariyaalai East, a ribbon of land within the peninsula is going to seal the densely populated parts of the peninsula. Even the peninsula is not going to belong to the Tamils soon.
This is not ‘development’ strategy, but naked military strategy against an unarmed nation of people, aiming at their genocide, political observers in Jaffna said.
Stretches of land in this part of the peninsula are coconut palm groves.
Many of their Tamil owners are away, and many of them are not aware of the strategic significance of their lands.
Many Sinhala traders have been brought in recent times to purchase the lands after terrorising the people of the land, in an organised way .
In a systematic way, people are psychologically made to feel that they could never get back to their lands or there is no point in them going back to their lands, to facilitate the sales.
People who are made hopeless by the situation come forward to sell their lands
The occupying military is effectively using psychological warfare. This is why the Sinhala military has come to stay, political observers say.
The entire process of making the people of a nation lose their sense of belonging, participation and enthusiasm and then make them slaves for the development of the ‘conquerors’ is what was proclaimed loudly as ‘post-war development’ by Colombo and its cronies in New Delhi, Washington and elsewhere, political observers in Jaffna further said.
They added that this is why New Delhi and Washington neither recognise the need for Tamil independence nor see what is taking place as genocide.
