India's Taj Hotels to ‘invest’ in Trincomalee

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 June 2013, 14:48 GMT]
Taj Hotels, considered to be India’s largest luxury-class hotel chain, is reportedly planning to invest in expanding a branch in occupied Trincomalee. The hotel chain, which already has branches in the Sinhala south, is now looking at six new hotels, Indian media reports. At a time when structural genocide through land-grabs and sinhalicisation in Trincomalee is happening unchecked, it is hard not to see such corporate ‘investments’, which almost always occur through the assistance of the Sinhala military apparatus, as ‘co-investor’ in genocide, civil sources in Trincomalee said.

The Hindu, citing Manoj Matthew V.M., General Manager of Vivanta by Taj, Bentota said that Trincomalee has “great beaches”, and a hotel may come up there within a year.

“The country is pro-tourists, the beaches are clean and unobtrusive, there are no hawkers to bother you, and the country is a heady combination of culture, cuisine, art and mountains,” The Hindu further quoted Mr. Matthew.

However, last year saw reports of foreign tourists being sexually assaulted in the South.