Colombo's new highways scheme genocidal demographic change in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Saturday, 07 July 2012, 21:17 GMT]
The Colombo government has been appropriating lands belonging to civilian population under the guise of implementing several highway road development projects in the Trincomalee district with a genocidal agenda, say Tamil civil officials in the district. While many of the roads within the district, especially in Tamil areas, are not cared for in the so-called ‘reconstruction’ and ‘development’ by the regime in Colombo, new roads such as the one that links Sinhala dominated Seruvila in the district with Soamaavathi village in Polonnaruwa district through Maavil Aa'ru, have mushroomed with Buddhist viharas with highly developed infrastructure for Sinhala settlements, after 2009.

Sinhala families, brought from the South are settled on both sides of the new roads, which are constructed through paddy fields.

Hundreds of acres of paddy fields of Tamils and Muslims are being appropriated for the so-called ‘road development’, which is designed according to a hidden programme of structural genocide adhering to the ‘Mahinda Chintana - LLRC - corporate colonialism’ model, involving international powers, corporations, the rulers in Colombo and the Sinhala Buddhist exclusivist nationalists.

Roads are developed in the district not for the use of ordinary people but with the hidden purpose, Tamil civil sources say.

Buddhist Vihares are constructed and Sinhalese are given lands on both sides of the highway now being constructed anew from Seruvila in the Trincomalee district to Somawathie in Polonnaruwa district via Mavil Aru.

Fertile paddy fields about five hundred acres are appropriated for the construction of a highway from Chooran-kal to Thampalakaamam. This road is planned to link the road infrastructure with Kandy road as a Main Supply Route to the Champoor Coal Power plant being constructed with Indian aid in the lands appropriated from Tamils.

Each farmer has lost about half an acre of his fertile paddy field due to land appropriation by the Sri Lankan road development authority under the instruction of the Colombo government.