Colombo punishes Tamil officials with transfer for opposing Sinhala encroachment

[TamilNet, Sunday, 16 December 2012, 16:47 GMT]
Tamil civil servants, who take legal action against Sri Lankan State and military run Sinhala encroachment of lands belonging to Tamils in the Batticaloa district, are under threat of transfer by the Colombo government, civil sources in Batticaloa said. Recently, the Divisional Secretary of Koa'raippattu South, Mr M. Thavarasa, who filed cases against illegal encroachers in Vadamunai, Oottuch-cheanai and Kallichchai, is to be transferred from January next year by the Colombo government.

About five thousand acres of pasture lands allocated for grazing in Koa'raip-pattu South DS division are encroached by Sinhalese with the backing of SL military and its Sinhala paramilitary caled ‘home guards’.

Mr Thavarasa, in his position as the divisional secretary of the said area, filed a complaint against the encroachers at the Vaazhaich-cheanai courts.

When the case was taken up for investigation at Vaazhaichcheani Courts on 03 December, none of the respondents who had encroached the lands were present at the hearing. The Magistrate had to put off the hearing of the cases for a date in January 2013.

Following this, Mr Thavarasa has received transfer notice by the Colombo government.

In the meantime, Tamil dairy farmers complain that the Batticaloa district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentararians have failed to visit their pasture lands where encroachment had taken place despite several requests made to them by affected farmers.

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