Allocate Sufficient Number of Houses for the Internally Displaced Sinhalese in N & E or Arrange Payment of Compensation
Posted on May 3rd, 2016
Ranjith Soysa Media Spokesman For Global Sri Lankan Forum
27th April 2016
His Excellency Maithripala Sirisena
The President of Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
The President Office
Colombo
Sri Lanka
Allocate Sufficient Number of Houses for the Internally Displaced Sinhalese in N & E or Arrange Payment of Compensation
The unenviable bleak situation faced by the Sinhalese who were earlier residents in the Northern Province is being ignored continuously and it is nothing but fair to consider allocating a sufficient number, of the proposed 65.000 new houses to alleviate their misery.
The government’s plan in rehabilitating the IDP’s should not be restricted to only the Tamil people but should equally consider the plight of the Sinhalese who were ousted from their residences from 1970s and 1980s in the North and East provinces and many of them are living in temporary makeshift sheds in the North Central Province, Eastern Province and villages in the district of Vavniya.
On the basis of census carried out by the department of Census and Statistics of the Sinhala population in the flowing districts were as follows.
| District | 1971 | 1981 | 2012 |
| Yapanaya | 6,691 | 8683 | 2,284 |
| Mannarama | 3,175 | 15,794 | 2,305 |
| Vavniyawa | — | 3992 | 17,138 |
| Madakalapuwa | — | 11,255 | 6,797 |
Source: Department of Census and Statistics of Sri Lanka
In Jaffna, the Sinhalese were engaged in businesses such as owning bakeries, jewellery shops, carpentries, vegetable stalls. They were threatened initially by the militant Tamil groups in the 70s and subsequently some of them were killed by the LTTE Tamil terrorists and the others were forced to run to save their lives mainly to the North Central Province. Their houses and the business premises were given over to the families of the LTTE members who belonged to the so called maha veer families, as the LTTE called them. Under the reconciliation process launched by the Government in order to have a meaningful unbiased and real reconciliation mechanism, the Government should make all possible arrangements to give back those properties appropriated by the LTTE to Sinhala people.
The affected Sinhalese submitted their claims for the return of the properties taken by force by the Tamil groups but to date have not received any response. The majority of the victims now live in the North Central Province leading a hand to mouth existence.
To be fair in the allocation of 65,000 houses which are going to be built for the internally displaced persons the Government has the duty to consider the plight of the Sinhalese, The total number of Sinhalese ethnically cleansed will be around 30,000 persons when the data from Kilincchchi, Kokavil, Mulativ and other places in the Northern province are added.
We therefore,, request you to CONSIDER allocating a sufficient number of houses out of 65,000 houses to the Sinhalese IDPs on an equal footing with the Tamils from the Northern and Eastern Provinces or arrange payment of due and fair compensation to them.
Yours Sincerely,
Ranjith Soysa
Media Spokesman
For Global Sri Lankan Forum
Copy;
Hon Ranil Wickramasinghe – Prime Minister
Hon Mr D M Swaminathan -Minister for Resettlement
Hon Dinesh Gunawardane – Leader of the Joint Opposition
May 3rd, 2016 at 3:53 pm
Is there a single man or woman in the parliament who could fight ardently for this cause ?
May 3rd, 2016 at 4:23 pm
DHAM !! The SWAMI will ensure that NO Sinhalese will be Re-settled, as requested by Ranjit, but only NATHANS will.
We have been writing on this subject during Rajapakses time. HE JUST IGNORED IT. Did not care two hoots and a F. It was like playing a Violin to a Deaf Elephant.
IT WILL BE THE SAME WITH THIS GOVERNMENT TOO. JUST WAIT AND SEE. NOT ONE HOUSE WILL BE GIVEN.
May 3rd, 2016 at 4:31 pm
Susantha,
Can we expect this government do what MR did not do ? No way.
If we can find one single person to at least speak for Sinhalas that will be good.
We can find many men and women fighting for security of one man who completely ignored these Sinhalas and went on partying for 5 years but now fighting for nothing but to regain his lost power.
May 4th, 2016 at 3:55 am
Many Sri Lankans are gravely concerned about the TNA proposal to partition Sri Lanka into four pieces with a huge chunk (28% of the land area, 66% of the coastline and 66% of the ocean comprising the North and the East of Sri Lanka) going to the TNA racists and separatists as a merged North East federal state (but craftily disguised as ‘unitary’) with full powers.
We are wondering why did over 43,000 both Sri Lankan Forces and civilians die at the hands of the LTTE and that megalomaniac Prabhakaran, if now, the TNA is being handed over an ‘Eelam’ so easily constitutionally?
When looking at a GIS Map of Sri Lanka, it is amply clear that most of the forested areas of Sri Lanka are situated in the North and the East. Do not these forests belong to all the citizens of Sri Lanka? Do not the same principle apply to the ocean too or even the whole island, that the oceans and the whole island belong to all the people of Sri Lanka? Mr. Vigneshwaran has ‘created’ a fake history (stating that Tamils lived in Sri Lanka for 2000 years). Yet, there are no ancient ruins in Jaffna, in the North nor any ancient Dravidian writing to prove these fake claims. History of the Tamils commence mainly with the Dutch and the British bringing in large numbers of people from Tamil Nadu to work in tobacco plantations commenced by the Dutch and the British. There was the so called Jaffna Kingdom set up by an invader just prior to that but then Jaffna was only very sparsely populated. Our question is, can people such as Mr. Vigneshwaran ‘create’ his own fake history like this? He is ignoring the many Buddhist ruins, the many ancient Buddha statues, ancient Sinhala prakrit writing, the many ancient irrigation reservoirs built by Sinhala kings in the North and the East which proves an earlier indigenous Sinhala habitation in the North and all over the island. We would like to tell Mr. Vigneshwaran to be objective when it comes to history and archaeology and accept once and for all the fact that the Sinhala people lived all over the island for thousands of years and continue to do so. I would like Mr. Vigneshwaran to note that the provincial boundaries were drawn up by British colonialists for their administrative purposes with no input whatsoever from the Sinhala people and does not tally at all with the earlier history of the island which was unitary in nature.
The Kandyan Kingdom (1400AD-1815) comprised almost all of the island inclusive of the East and almost all of the North. The earlier Kingdom of Rajarata (600BC-1400 AD) comprised the North Central, North Western, Northern and Eastern Provinces or the dry zone of Sri Lanka.
We are gravely concerned regarding the drawing up of a new constitution where due to the pressure of the TNA, the US, EU, UK, Canada, Norway, Sri Lanka is in grave danger of being divided up on ethnic lines into four, five or even six different pieces. Is this not crazy?
The TNA proposals were drawn up by experts which the TNA hired from the UK, Canada, Belgium, Canada, US and the like. Is this not an interference in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs by foreign powers, even to the extent of trying to draw up Sri Lanka’s constitution?
Can any organization in Sri Lanka go to the supreme court and stop, once and for all, the merger of the North and the East since it is critical to stop this once and for all? Can any organization in Sri Lanka also go to the supreme court and stop, once and for all the, dividing up of this small island on ethnic or any other lines?
The only way to stop this madness is to go to the supreme court and get a verdict which would prohibit the merger of any provinces and to stop once and for all the dismemberment of this small island on ethnic or any other lines.
May 4th, 2016 at 7:58 am
Since 1956 the country is run by the Indian Empire.