Sirisena deploys ‘pass restrictions’ to block Tamil farmers from entering pasturelands

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 02 November 2016, 17:13 GMT]
SL Forest Department officials in Batticaloa district, under the instructions from the SL Ministry of ‘Mahaweli Development’, have instructed Sinhala forest guards to demand a pass document from the Tamil cattle-farmers in order to enter the pasturelands used by them for decades. SL President Maithiripala Sirisena, who is also the minister in charge of Mahaweli Ministry, has been promoting the demographic genocide against Eezham Tamils by deploying Sinhalese from his Polonnaruwa district to grab lands of Eezham Tamils in Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts. Now, he is trying to limit the claim of Eezham Tamils through introducing a rigid pass system, the Tamil farmers complained.

Sinhalese are being brought from Polonnaruwa and other places to seize forest and pasturelands and change the entire area into agricultural Sinhala settlements.

Mahaweli system B, running across Polonnaruwa and Batticaloa districts, will be interlinking the reservoirs while SL Archaeology Department, Buddhist monks and SL military will be putting up Buddhist viharas in the lands that are being occupied.

More than 300 Sinhala settlers are already engaged in agriculture in the pasturelands.

There are 372 Tamil dairy farmers who are being asked to have the new ‘pass’ to enter the pasturelands with their cattle.

The representatives of Tamil farmers said they are preparing for a civil disobedience struggle against the demographic genocide.

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