Genocidal Sri Lanka plans to keep Thiruvadinilai area of Maathakal, the northwest tip of the Jaffna Peninsula, as a permanent ‘High Security Zone’ by building a naval base there, but camouflaging it as a ‘Sacred Place’ of the Sinhala-Buddhists, news sources from Jaffna said. The location is one of the two closest spots of communication between the island of Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu. While Thalai Mannaar in Mannaar district is the closest to Rameasvaram, Maathakal in Jaffna Peninsula is the closest to Koadikkarai (Point Calimere) in Tamil Nadu. Colombo’s archaeologists claim Thiruvadinilai as the landing place of Sinhala-Buddhism to the island in 3rd century BC, and are building modern Buddhist establishments there. A gazette notification of Colombo is soon expected to declare the area a ‘Sacred Place’ to facilitate permanent confiscation of lands belonging to Tamils.
The current HSZ occupied by the SL military around Pallali and Kaankeasan-thurai (KKS), the airport and seaport areas in the Valikaamam part of the Jaffna Peninsula will never be returned to people, as there is an understanding between New Delhi and Colombo over this, political circles in Jaffna said.
Maathakal is another spot now targeted for military and genocidal purposes by Sri Lanka occupying the country of Eezham Tamils.
Colombo recently built Buddhist establishments there and encouraged Sinhala ‘pilgrims’ to visit the place in large numbers. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s wife installed a statue of Sanghamitta with great funfair at this place.
According to Buddhist chronicles of the island, Sanghamitta, a Buddhist nun and Asokan emissary was the person who brought a branch of the Sacred Bo-Tree to the island in the 3rd century BC, and landed at a place called Ko’la Patuna in the north.
Whether Ko’la Patuna is the present Thiruvadinailai in Maathakal or not, the very name mentioned in the Pali chronicles is Tamil and Dravidian, suggesting that the place where Buddhism landed was a country of Tamils, academics in Jaffna said.
Ko’la Patuna is the Pali form of Kozhu Paddinam, in Tamil/ Dravidian, meaning, ‘the port town at the tip’, they said, adding that the involved words are of Dravidian etymology.
However, making an exclusive claim for Sinhala-Buddhism of today, and executing a structural genocide attack on the Eezham Tamils of the land, the state in Sri Lanka adopts a military strategy for archaeology and archaeological camouflage for military objectives.
Genocide of Eezham Tamils and militarization of the island are carefully coupled together to justify each other in saving the present regime as well as saving the interests of some powers, political circles in Jaffna pointed out.
Some of the leading archaeologists of Sri Lanka had their early training in military academy or are closely connected to the SL defence establishment, sources in Colombo said.
Maathakal is just one of the military-Buddhist enclaves the state in Sri Lanka is building in the country of Eezham Tamils it occupies. The other major enclaves in the making are in Trincomalee, Mullaiththeevu, Ki’linochchi, Mannaar, Neduntheevu (Delft), Pallali and in Kanakaraayan-ku’lam in Vavuniyaa.
Besides, in hundreds of other places there are smaller centres mushrooming.
Even the uninhabited island Paalai-theevu off Jaffna and close to Kachcha-theevu has a Buddhist structure built in recent times, news sources in Jaffna said. The island lacking drinking water was never inhabited. It is a resting place for the fishermen of Jaffna and is a pilgrim place for the annual fete of St Antony observed by the Catholic Church of Jaffna. SL Army now occupies the island.
In materialising a military-genocidal enclave at Thiruvadinilai in Maathakal, the local people are never permitted to even see their lands and houses. The fishermen community of the village is discouraged from carrying out fishing. In planning a centre of Sinhala-Buddhist authority at the place, the police station of the area too is going to be shifted to the enclave.
In what is now believed as had been schemed by establishments on either side of the Palk Strait for varied purposes, an attack of a trawler fleet coming from India some months back inflicted heavy damages to the fishing nets of the fishermen of Maathakal. When the fishermen demonstrated in front of the Deputy High Commission of India in Jaffna that was disturbed by a gang coming from the SL military’s enclave in the city. One of the aims of the whole episode was making the local fishermen to leave Maathakal on their own, political circles in Jaffna allege.
Meanwhile, Colombo’s leading archaeologist Dr. S U Deraniyagala, who is believed to be directing excavations at Kantharoadai through remote control, is currently on a visit to Jaffna. He briefed the local press last weekend on the findings of the excavation that was in conformity with what Vimala Begley said in the 1960s on the pre-Buddhist Megalithic culture of Jaffna.
Whether the excavated material will be housed in Kantharoadai or in Jaffna itself, with honest projection of facts to enlighten the Sinhala-Buddhist visitors from the south on the origins of Eezham Tamils in the island as well as on their own origins, is the question in the academic circles of Jaffna.
But the way the SL Army and Archaeology establishes enclaves in typical genocidal style is neither going to bring in ‘reconciliation’ of nations in the island nor going to facilitate reconciliation of Eezham Tamils with the powers that see the process convenient for their control of the island as a whole and back it, the academic circles further said.
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