Colombo simulates ‘clustered camp’ for uprooted people of Valikaamam East

[TamilNet, Saturday, 09 November 2013, 23:27 GMT]
Colombo deployed its officials on Friday to showcase a ‘clustered camp’ project in Valikaamam East in Jaffna, promising ‘settlement’ to a few hundred uprooted Tamils in a deceptive move of moving a few hundred uprooted people from their camps outside the former ‘High Security Zone’ into the clustered camp environment in former grazing lands at Idaik-kaadu and Antony-puram near Palaali in Valikaamam East. Around 150 uprooted people from different camps were taken with journalists from South to showcase the ‘settlement’, a smokescreen move by SL military just ahead of Sri Lanka CHOGM to be held this month. More than 51,000 uprooted people from Valikaamam, which was occupied and declared as HSZ by the SL military, are continuously languishing in more than 10 so-called welfare camps and elsewhere in Jaffna peninsula since 1990.

The latest deception has come while the occupying SL military is demolishing the houses inside more than 6,000 acres of land covering several villages inside the former HSZ in Valikaamam North, now being converted into a permanent ‘Sinhala Military Zone’.

The move also seeks to diffuse the protests being planned by the people of Valikaamam North, S Sajeevan, the deputy head of Valikaamam North Piratheasa Chapai (PS), told TamilNet.

The SL military has started to wage a propaganda that it is prepared to allow the people to settle inside the former HSZ.

Meanwhile, informed civil sources said most of the grazing lands being utilized for the clustered-camp settlement were lands belonging to private owners. This will also create legal issues, the sources further said.

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