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SL Forest Department seizes lands for future Sinhala colony northwest of Batticaloa

The Forest Conservation Department of the occupying unitary State of genocidal Sri Lanka has seized the residential and agricultural lands of war-uprooted Eezham Tamils in four villages 30 km northwest of Batticaloa city, civil officials at the District Secretariat told TamilNet on Monday. The villages come under three GS divisions in the administrative division of Ea'raavoor-pattu (Chengkaladi) of Batticaloa district. Already, the division is exposed to Sinhalicisation as it is bordering with Maha-oya division of Ampaa'rai district in the west with Sinhala settlers in Tempitiya, Poolawala and Aranthalawa GS divisions of Maha-oya. 

The affected Tamil villages are Koappaa-ve'li, U'rukaamam, Velik-ka'ndi, Thumpa'lach-choalai and Pullu-malai, civil sources in Chengkaladi said on Monday. These villages fall into three GS divisions of Koappaa-ve'li, Rugam and Periya-pullumalai in Chengkaladi division. 

The occupying Sinhala military and its home guards chased away the Tamil people from the villages in the 1990s. Agricultural lands have become forested after the Tamil people were uprooted from their villages. 

The SL Forest Department officials are placing the burden of proof on the war-affected uprooted Tamils, who have lost most of their documents. The only witnesses were the trees planted by them in their lands and the old people who are still alive. 

Many of the war-affected people have no documents including their birth certificates, Tamil officials said. 

The SL departments of Archaeology, Forest, Wildlife and Coastal Conservation along with extremist Buddhist monks have been seizing the forested lands of Tamils since 2007, when the occupying Sinhala military took the lands of Eezham Tamils from the LTTE. 

The extremist Buddhist monks use to erect Buddha statues in the lands that become converted into Sinhala colonies causing demographic and structural genocide against Eezham Tamils. The monks use to claim that Sinhala people lived in these areas years ago to justify their occupation. 

A GPS-tracked border-stone placed by the SL Forest Department at Thumpa'lach-choalai
A GPS-tracked border-stone placed by the SL Forest Department at Thumpa'lach-choalai, photographed in March 2018
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