| P. Sivakumaran
(October 12, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Whether one shows legal land deeds of heredity or not, to establish the private ownership of land in the traditional areas of Lankan Tamils, the occupying Sri Lanka Army would place a signboard that the land is out of reach. Thereafter, if the owner of the land is not prepared to bribe the occupying Army, the land will be given to anyone who collaborates with the occupying Army. This is the reality about fertile cultivation lands especially in Vanni, since genocidal Sri Lanka has embarked upon ‘re-registering’ lands in the traditional areas of Lankan Tamils under a programme ‘Bim Saviya’ of Sinhala nomenclature. The explicit land-related structural genocide has made even a Rajapaksa-supporting Tamil politician like Anandasangaree to become more vociferous than the TNA in calling for a non-cooperation movement of Tamils.
Meanwhile, Mr Anandasangaree carrying the banner of TULF wrote to Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader R. Sampanthan, on the issue of Colombo ‘re-registering’ lands in the traditional areas of Lankan Tamils.
“If you have any plans to boycott, or otherwise, the support of the TULF and also that of the PLOTE will be readily available. If you have no plans could you please extend the support of the TNA for my proposal for a boycott campaign,” Mr. Anandasangaree said in his letter addressed to Mr. Sampanthan.
“This land issue is the burning question of the day. The people of the north are very much concerned about it. Those of the North living abroad are very much worried and take calls after calls. The letter I wrote to the president is not going to help and a more positive action is the immediate need,” Anandasangaree said in his letter.
Mr. Anandasangaree’s concern was that he should not disturb any talks [directed by India and seemingly supported by the US] between Colombo and the TNA.
“I am seriously considering to organize a boycott campaign against submission of details of lands, but holding it back fearing that I may be upsetting the program of the TNA which may be having its own proposals,” Anandasangaree said in his letter, adding his concern that what the TNA is discussing with Colombo is not known even to its elected members of parliament.
Mr. Anadasangaree was for long a TULF parliamentarian representing Ki’linochchi in Vanni in the pre-LTTE times.
Land is the focus of explicit structural genocide of Lankan Tamils after the Vanni war ending in genocide in 2009.
The occupying SL Army reserves all lands excel in water resources for its use. The SL military also cultivates lands.
Apart from extensive tracts that are still kept by the military in the guise of demining, thousands of acres in other areas including a large tract near the largest irrigation scheme in Vanni are taken over for the occupying military and its cantonments. Settling the Sinhala military with their families was a proposal even during the war.
The ratio of SL military personnel in Vanni is that there is one Sinhala soldier for every two Lankan Tamils resettled. In every sq.km there are around four small military posts and major camps are located in every villages and strategic locations.
While the strip along the A9 high way that goes through the middle of Vanni is open to Sinhala colonization and commercial Sinhalicisation, Sinhala fishermen colonize the coasts of the east and west. The ‘re-settled’ Lankan Tamils are pushed to the interior to lead a subjugated life in shanties.
New administrative divisions are created in Mullaiththeevu and Ki’linochchi districts to facilitate Sinhala colonization and demographic segregation, ultimately to deny Lankan Tamils their traditional areas.
Those who travel by the A9 highway and see the commercial vibrancy don’t see what is actually happening.
The processes in every respect are assisted by groups of Tamil paramilitaries created by the genocidal Sinhala military in the north and the east.
What comes to light is only a tip of the iceberg, but a demographic genocide of the traditional areas of Lankan Tamils will be complete within five years is the estimation of the NGOs working in the region.
The ‘re-registration’ of land is part of the agenda.
The programme with a Sinhala title, ‘Bim Saviya’ says the ‘re-registration’ would ‘strengthen’ one’s right of land, and the programme is to convert the deed right into title right.
But this is another ‘Nazi Style’ programme implemented in the traditional areas of Lankan Tamils to identify the present private landowners to intimidate and subjugate them, and if needed, to snatch away the land rights.
The forerunners of such a programme could be seen in the Thoampu System (Tome) imposed in the island, after the colonial conquests of the Portuguese and the Dutch.
Presently, colonial Colombo implements such a programme when a large part of the Lankan Tamils affected by three decades of war are either lost or unable to trace their documents. The loss of documents took place not merely in the Vanni war, but every time people were displaced in the country of Lankan Tamils in the last three decades.
Colombo’s programme now particularly targets the Lankan Tamils in the diaspora, who have given the charge of looking after their properties in the hands of their relatives and friends, says diaspora Tamil circles.
The programme will specifically identify the owners of lands in the diaspora, so that blackmail and intimidation of them will be possible for the genocidal regime in Colombo.
There are already many such programmes: delivery of pensions in the island for the diaspora pensioners has been stopped unless the pensioners come in person. Most of the pensioners were using the money to help their relatives in the island and that is stopped now, even though Colombo says that it encourages the diaspora to help the war-affected kith and kin in the island.
The introduction of visa system for travelers from 78 countries is also seen primarily aimed at screening and blackmailing the Lankan Tamil diaspora members who have got citizenship of various countries.
Topping all, the land ‘re-registration’ programme nullifies the collective right of Lankan Tamils as a nation deciding the issue of the land of their traditional areas by themselves.
Sri Lanka’s genocide of Lankan Tamils in war and accelerated structural genocide in the aftermath become possible by deliberate designs of particularly the US and India in war and post-war, Lankan Tamil political circles point out.
More than 30 countries tagged behind the USA and India, along with the UN, contributed to the genocide in war.
By allowing the genocidal Sinhala military to occupy, consolidate and rule the traditional areas of Lankan Tamils, by failing to take direct responsibility of the post-war situation and by ignoring the need to immediately implement an internationally guaranteed political arrangement for the internationally abetted war, the structural genocide is being facilitated now against an unarmed nation.
None of the Establishments or the UN accepts what took place in the island is genocide and what is taking place is structural genocide.
One cannot help thinking that both the genocide and structural genocide of Lankan Tamils are ultimately their designs and that’s why they allow it to continue unchecked and even provide enough time for the Agent State Sri Lanka to complete it.
Talking to diaspora groups, the US Asst Secretary of State Robert Blake denied any knowledge of Sinhala colonization taking place. Tamil political activists in the island say that whenever they privately raise the issue with diplomats in the West their response was nothing but apathy.
War crimes accountability and human rights paradigm would settle everything is the position of International human rights groups.
The Indian show, shielding the genocidal regime even in war crimes and human rights, is the worst of all.
Everyone knows Colombo bargains the genocide and annihilation of the nation of Lankan Tamils for giving space to India in economic and strategic matters.
The new Indian foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai was more interested in Palk Bay oil and harbors in the north and east than anything else, media reports from Chennai said.
A pro-establishment Indian media recently said that every Tamil they interviewed in Vanni were talking of ‘Indian House’ – the Indian commitment to build 50,000 houses for war-affected Lankan Tamils.
But the 53 houses so far completed in the ‘line model’ in Pazhai show the concept India has in mind for an agrarian people who have a culture of having individual garden houses with land, well, etc., similar to the settlement pattern in Kerala rather than that in Tamil Nadu.
If the 50, 000 houses are going to be constructed in the same way in Vanni, then this social engineering is enough to alienate the people from land, facilitate land-grab, allot vast tracts of lands for outsiders for whom the ‘line-dwellers’ will be the working class, and thus to consolidate the structural genocide.
Amartya Sen who blares about 'culture and development' and M.S. Swaminathan who has given a 'blue print' to Mahinda Rajapaksa for agricultural revival in Vanni should take a note of what is taking place when the politics of self-determination is taken away from a people facing a genocidal State.
As a person hailing from Vanni, even Mr. Anandasangaree who was collaborating with Rajapaksa in the war could not tolerate what is happening to land in Vanni.
Mr Anandasangaree talks of a boycott movement. But the actual boycott movement of Lankan Tamils has to be waged against the powers that perpetrate the crime of genocide but refuse to acknowledge it or refuse to acknowledge the right to self-determination of Lankan Tamils.
Lankan Tamil polity should be able to clearly give the message to both India and the USA that neither their preemptive measures that don’t meet the fundamentals nor their competitive capturing of the Tamil NGOs will help to fool the Lankan Tamils anymore.
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