Colombo ‘legalizes’ land distribution to Sinhalaese at North-East link

The occupying Sri Lankan State has deployed its divisional secretaries and provincial land officials in the East to legally re-distribute thousands of acres of agricultural lands of the uprooted Eezham Tamils in Thennai-maravadi village in Trincomalee district to Sinhala villagers from the nearby ‘Padavi Sripura’. The latest move comes while hundreds of uprooted Tamil families are still awaiting resettlement in their village. The ancient Tamil village of Thennai-maravadi is situated in the strategic narrow corridor linking the North and East in Trincomalee district. Washington, New-Delhi and the UN, maintaining total silence on the geographical and demographic genocide undertaken by Colombo and imposing the LLRC-13A ‘experiment’ amounts to complicity with Colombo in the genocide, said Tamil civil sources in Trincomalee.

Colombo’s Deputy Minister to the Economic Development ministry, Susantha Punchinilame, is coordinating the land appropriation, the sources in Trincomalee further said.

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The location of Thennai-maravadi village

The move to legally appropriate the lands comes when more than 400 Tamils are yet to resettle in their traditional village of Thennai-maravadi and the 187 families that have already resettled there are still struggling to access their agricultural lands that have been occupied by the Sinhala farmers.

Colombo has stepped up legal moves, including surveying of lands and the move to ‘re-distribute’ lands to Sinhalese in the area in recent weeks.

The Sinhala farmers using the lands of Tamils are from the nearby settlement, known as Padavi Sripura, which is an already Sinhalicised ancient Tamil village Pathivaavi.

Thennaimaravadi, located strategically between the North and Eastern province borders was the scene of intense colonization activity in 1984 by the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in a planned attempt to drive a wedge in the contiguity of Tamil presence across the provincial borders.

Thennaimaravadi was the first Tamil village completely displaced in the Trincomalee district following the SL state sponsored Black July pogroms in 1983.

Several new Sinhala settlements, Padavi Siripura, Sri Tissapura, Samanpura, Gemunupura and Sinhapura, were established in public lands in the north of Trincomalee district located close to Thennaimaravadi village thus making the Tamil population a minority in the area.

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