The Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) in a statement has urged the Sri Lanka Department of Elections to implement a proper programme to register the persons above the age of eighteen now held in the detention centres in the North including Menik Farm, in the 2010 voters’ list revising process.
The voter registration process in many parts of the North is in its final stages right now, reports TamilNet.
Initial steps have not been taken to register the uprooted persons detained in camps such as the Menik Farm camp in Vavuniyaa in the 2010 voters list.
Over 17,000 people are still under detention in the camps.
Elections Department has decided to postpone the registering of the detainees in Menik Farm camp as voters until they are resettled, CaFFE statement says.
Meanwhile, the Sri Lanka government has decided to settle the Sinhala families claiming resettlement in Jaffna on the coastal areas of Jaffna Fort and Ma’niam Thoaddam in Kozhumpuththu’rai, sources in Jaffna said.
Parts of prefabricated houses donated by China to construct 12,000 houses in the areas from Muruka’ndi to Mullaiththeevu to settle Sinhala families have been brought to Jaffna to construct houses for the Sinhala families, the sources added.
The construction materials are kept in the custody of Sri Lanka Army (SLA) bases in Jaffna town.
The Tamil residents in the areas near Jaffna Fort and Ma’niam Thoaddam had been uprooted due to SLA offensives and their lands are to be settled with the Sinhala families claiming resettlement in Jaffna.
In Trincomalee too Sinhala families have been settled on lands belonging to Tamils by Sri Lanka government, evicting the Tamil families.
The Sinhala families claiming resettlement are lodged in the Old Jaffna Railway Station where they had arrived in early October and are looked after by SLA in Jaffna.
193 Sinhala families had arrived in Jaffna 08 October seeking resettlement in Jaffna claiming that their families had lived in Jaffna before 1983.
They are occupying the old Jaffna Railway Station premises displacing the families of uprooted families from Valikaamam North Sri Lanka Army (SLA) High Security Zone (HSZ) who had been staying there.
A team of Sri Lanka police personnel from Trincomalee police station on Sunday morning forcibly evicted thirty-five resettled Muslim families in Ka’ndalkaadu in Ki’n’niyaay Divisional Secretariat (DS) division in Trincomalee district from their dwellings and burnt their temporary huts, directed by top civil authority in Trincomalee.
The vegetable plots in the premises of the resettled families were also damaged by the police team, according to complaints by affected families to civil authority in Ki’n’niyaay, sources said.
About fifty members of these families are now temporarily sheltered in A’n’nal Nakar Al-Athan Muslim Viththiyaalayam and are looked after by the DS office.
These families were living in Ka’ndalkaadu before 1990 and were uprooted after 1990. They had been resettled on government instruction in Ki’n’niyaay.
Last Wednesday, Ki’n’niyaay Assistant Divisional Secretary C. Krishnendran, along with the Ki’n’niyaay Police Officer-in-Charge went to Ka’ndalkaadu and inspected the resettlement process.
But on Sunday the team of police personnel sent from Trincomalee on the instruction of the top civil authority went to Ka’ndalkaadu and forcibly evicted the resettled families.
Meanwhile, a delegation of the affected families Monday met the Provincial Governor at his Trincomalee secretariat and complained.
The Governor is said to have told the delegation that he was not responsible for the incident.
In separate news, Sri Lanka police in Karadiyanaa’ru in Batticaloa district on Monday morning recovered the body of a building construction labourer drowned in a drain in Iluppaiyadichcheanai in their police division.
The victim was identified as Samimuthu Samiyan alias Sivagnanam, 38, a father of two children and a resident of Haliyela Rokunawathe in Badulla.
Samiyan had been working in building construction work in Karadiyanaa’ru.
Samiyan had taken drinks with his friends after work in a bar in Karadiayanaa’ru Sunday night and had gone home.
The victim’s body will be handed over to his family after postmortem examination in Karadiyanaa’ru hospital, police said.
Also on Monday, Mannaar police recovered the body of a fisherman washed ashore in Katipiddi in Mannaar and identified it as the body of a fisherman from Kurunakar in Jaffna.
The fisherman had gone missing in the seas of Paalaitheevu where he had gone with his friends to fish Friday.
Mannaar police informed Jaffna police and action is being taken to hand over the body of the fisherman to his family in Kurunakar.
The fisherman dead is identified as Francis Romaniar, 35, the father of two children.
Romaniar had gone missing while his friend was asleep in the fibre boat while fishing in Paalaitheevu, according to the statement by his friend to police.
Romaniar used to have seizures due to epilepsy, his friend said.
• A German Parliamentary delegation headed by Dagmar Ernstberger, Chairperson of the Parliamentary Group on South Asia, was due to arrive in Colombo on Tuesday on a four day visit for the first time after the end of the war to obtain a first-hand impression on progress made and of challenges ahead.
The main objective is to gain first-hand experience on post conflict development activities in the country.
They will also visit the Northern Province and inspect the de-mining activities and resettled villages, the German Embassy officials in Colombo said.
The delegation is to meet Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa, ministers, leaders of political parties, representatives of civil societies and religious dignitaries during their stay.
German Ambassador in Sri Lanka Jens Plotner said in a statement that this visit is significant as this was the first time a group of German Parliamentarians were visiting Sri Lanka since the end of the war.
In this crucial phase of Sri Lanka’s history, the revival of a substantial political dialogue is of particular importance, the Ambassador stressed.
Germany wants to assist Sri Lanka in its transformation from a country at war to a society living in peace, he said.
