Uprooted families due to SLA offensives in East denied assistance

[TamilNet, Saturday, 16 October 2010, 06:48 GMT]
Vanthaa’rumoolai Village Development Society president, bearing witness before Sri Lanka President’s Lessons Learnt & Reconciliation Committee (LLRC) in Chengkaladi Divisional Secretariat in Batticaloa said that even basic facilities are denied to the families uprooted by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) offensives, now resettled. Ms. Subramaniam Vijayaladchumy, the president, told the LLRC that paddy fields and lands of Tamils in Chengkaladi Divisional Secretariat area are being encroached by Muslims and requested the LLRC to take action to stop the encroachment.

Many Tamils in the boundary villages of Batticaloa district had been killed and their properties worth billions of rupees destroyed in the shelling by SLA in its offensives from 1990 to 2009. So far Sri Lanka government has not paid any compensation or rehabilitated them, Vijayaladchumy told LLRC.

The people of Eera’lakku’lam of Ea’raavoor Pattu resettled in their villages still live in temporary sheds erected by non-government organizations and they suffer without medical, transport and other necessary basic facilities, she said.

The lands and paddy fields of Tamils in the villages of Tha’lavaay, Eera’lakku’lam, Koaappaave’li and Veappa Vedduvaan are being encroached by Muslims, she further said.

Though the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Union and countries like India, USA, Great Britain and Japan had donated billions of rupees for the resettlement and rehabilitation of the people of Eastern Province, the resettled families continue to suffer without even basic facilities, civil society sources in Batticaloa said.