Tamils in Musali fear intensified demographic genocide by SL ‘national security’ state
Tamils in Musali fear intensified demographic genocide by SL ‘national security’ state
The occupying SL Navy has continuously refused to vacate from Kondaichchik-kudaa, a Tamil village along the coast between Mu’l’lik-ku’lam and Chilaavath-thu’rai in Musali division of Mannaar district, since 2009. Apart from retaining 19 acres of residential lands that belong to thirty-six families for ten years, the Sinhala Navy has also seized two acres of land, which the Divisional Secretary allocated recently as the cremation ground for the use of the uprooted community. The people of the village fear that they would permanently lose their properties at the hands of the ‘national security’ state apparatus of the South, regardless of the future president being Gotabhaya Rajapaksa or Sajith Premadasa. The village, situated to the west of Puththa’lam – Mannaar Road, was home to around 60 Tamil Saivite families before 2007. Most of them inherited the ancestral residential lands through generations. There are also plots received through the alienation of crown lands 40 years ago. A section of the uprooted Saiva Tamil families is now residing in nearby Kokkup-padaiyaan, located to the east of the road, which is a Tamil Catholic hamlet. Both the villages belong to the same village area (GS), Ko’ndaichchi, in mainland Mannaar of the western coast of the Northern Province. The Tamil term Ko’ndaichchi used to denote both the Tamil villages is a short form of Ko’ndaichchik-kudaa, meaning the cove shore found with Ko’ndaichchi birds. Ko’ndaichchi is well-known for cashew plantation. The area has been a target of Sinhala colonists for a long time. However, the armed struggle put an end to the Sinhala colonisation scheme in the late 80s. The occupying Colombo made the entire division of Musali no-man zone after it evicted Tamils from the division in 2007. After the end of the genocidal war in 2009, SL Forest Department has been silently colonising the interior areas of Ko’ndaichchi, establishing a colony known as ‘Sinhala Gammana’ comprising of settlers of the Sinhala Army, Navy and Civil Defence Force paramilitary personnel as well as workers of the SL State-owned cashew corporation. Rajapaksa regime was clearing around 400 acres of forest lands for the establishment of the colony in 2013.
