TNA under fire for dealing with SL military commanders at district-level

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 25 April 2017, 21:46 GMT]
EPRLF leader Suresh Premachandran has urged the elected Tamil parliamentarians to refrain from engaging directly with SL military on the issue of releasing private lands. The burning problem of military land grab of private lands should be addressed to the elected leaders in the South. It is the duty of the SL President, who is an elected leader to instruct the military to immediately hand over the lands seized from private land-owners, Mr Premachandran said at a press conference held in Jaffna on Tuesday. The SL President is also the Commander-in-Chief of the occupying Sinhala military.

The reaction from the leader of one of the four constituent parties of the TNA has come after a Tamil parliamentary delegation, led by M.A. Sumanthiran, has been involved in a series of meetings with district-level SL military commanders in Mullaiththeevu, Ki’linochchi and Jaffna in recent days.

Initially, there was a meeting between SL President Maithiripala Sirisena and Opposition Leader R. Sampanthan, before the district-level direct meetings between TNA parliamentary delegation and the SL military commanders took place. In that meeting, Mr Sirisena was ‘explaining’ that he was yet to receive details despite his request made to the military one year ago.

Later, another meeting was arranged between SL military commanders and the TNA delegation at the SL Defence Ministry in Colombo, where the SL military commander was claiming that none of the lands in the custody of the SL military were illegally obtained.

The SL military commander was also telling the TNA parliamentarians that his military would not hesitate to relocate from any land if it was instructed to do so by the SL President.

But, when the parliamentary delegation, led by Mr Sumanthiran, visited the military camps at district-level, the military commanders were saying they needed more time and money from SL Government to release the seized lands.

These are all contradicting claims, Mr Premachandran observed.

In the meantime, the occupying SL military was also ‘mobilizing’ former LTTE members, who are employed by the military as slave workers organized under the so-called Civil Security Division.

The CSD slaves were instructed to march opposing the requests coming from the Northern Provincial Council to transfer the military-run pre-schools to civil authorities.

The CSD personnel, instructed to march towards Ki’linochchi District Secretariat on Monday, were also told to carry slogans opposing the release of military-run farm lands to the rightful landowners.

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