{"id":43462,"date":"2015-04-27T15:34:10","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T22:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=43462"},"modified":"2015-04-27T15:34:10","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T22:34:10","slug":"continued-rape-of-the-wilpattu-national-park-and-establishment-of-unauthorised-settlements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/04\/27\/continued-rape-of-the-wilpattu-national-park-and-establishment-of-unauthorised-settlements\/","title":{"rendered":"Continued Rape of the Wilpattu National Park and Establishment of Unauthorised Settlements"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mahinda Gunasekera<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

By E-mail<\/span><\/strong>
\nHis Excellency, Maithripala Sirisena
\nPresident of Sri Lanka
\nand Minister of Mahaweli Dev & Environment
\nPresidential Secretariat
\nColombo 1
\nCopy to: Hon. Ranil Wickremasinghe\u00a0 \u00a0Prime Minister of Sri Lanka
\nYour Excellency,
\nContinued Rape of the Wilpattu National Park and
\nEstablishment of Unauthorised Settlements \u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I am writing to bring to your notice the continuing rape of the Wilpattu National Park that is\u00a0taking place at this very moment, whilst the authorities responsible for the conservation of\u00a0forests and protection of the environment are hibernating in their comfortable offices in the\u00a0capital city.\u00a0 When this matter was brought up earlier by another group of concerned citizens\u00a0with photo evidence, they pointed a finger at a minister of the state whom I believe was \u00a0Mr. Rishad Badthiutheen, as being the person responsible for the encroachment and \u00a0construction of houses for settling members of his community.\u00a0 I note that Mr. Badthiutheen
\nis once again holding a cabinet rank in your administration as well.<\/p>\n

I am giving below a link to a 5 minute 51 second video which shows the construction of roads\u00a0and permanent houses within the Wilpattu National Park. This is a clear violation of the \u00a0existing laws relating to conservation of the limited forest cover in the island needed for climatic \u00a0reasons as well as provision of areas for our wild life to freely roam in safety as envisioned by our wise rulers from ancient times. \u00a0 Please click on the link to view the video:
\nhttps:\/\/www.facebook.com\/438356542898780\/videos\/636685536399212\/?fref=nf<\/a><\/p>\n

You will observe paved roads and permanent houses already in place, with road extension and\u00a0house construction underway.\u00a0 A board has been erected denoting this illegal housing project on\u00a0encroached crown land in a conservation area as ‘JASSIM CITY’ comprising a total of 179 houses.\u00a0<\/strong>The funding has been provided according to the signboard by Sheikh Jassim Bin Jabor Al-Thani\u00a0Charitable Foundation based in Doha, Qatar.\u00a0 Does the law allow foreign organizations to establish\u00a0cities for members of a particular community on Sri Lanka’s sovereign territory involving the deforestation of national parks which are deemed conservation zones? Such funds should instead be direted to the government to resettle Muslims and others who were internally displaced in their\u00a0former places of residence.<\/p>\n

The usual reason given for such illegal action is that there has been a delay on the part of the government to re-settle members of the Muslim community who had been forcibly evicted by the LTTE from their abode in the northern province.\u00a0 There were also over 27,000 Sinhala people who had also been evicted from the north by the separatist Tamil terror groups between 1971 and 1981, none of whom have been resettled by the state, except for a handful of about 25 families who have staked out their temporary homesteads in Navattakuly without any assistance from the state. The right of return of those who had been forcibly evicted by the Tamil terror groups who carried out ethnic cleansing of non-Tamils in both the north and east must be honoured by the government.<\/strong><\/p>\n

While there are an abundance of laws established in Sri Lanka, the failure to prevent wrongdoing is mainly due to the non-enforcement of the laws by the authorities concerned.\u00a0 Could this be as\u00a0a result of political interference which prevents officials from carrying out their entrusted duties?\u00a0I have also been made aware of similar encroachments in the Eastern Province by members of the\u00a0Muslim community into strictly conservation areas such as the forests surrounding the estuaries of\u00a0waterways flowing to the sea, and even producing bogus deeds prepared by members of their own\u00a0community working in the kachcheri or district office administering the area.\u00a0 We are also aware of \u00a0the ‘Ashraf Nagar’ <\/strong>where 500 houses were built on land close to the Deegavapi Temple complex in
\nthe Ampara district supposedly to house 89 Moslem families who had been displaced by the 2004\u00a0tsunami, nearly 30 miles inland from their original place of residence with funding from the Middle\u00a0East.<\/p>\n

I trust that you would initiate an investigation immediately and take appropriate action against who \u00a0so ever has had a hand in this unlawful venture to build unauthorized houses by encroaching into \u00a0conservation properties belonging to the state.\u00a0 These houses have to give way to the preservation\u00a0of the National Park, and steps taken to restore the forest cover without delay.\u00a0 Notwithstanding \u00a0ethnicity, the government must uphold the law in order to win the trust and confidence of the people.<\/p>\n

Yours sincerely,<\/p>\n

Mahinda Gunasekera<\/p>\n

Copies to: Senior officials of the Forest Dept. and Ministry of the Environment
\n” \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 ” \u00a0\u00a0 Sri Lankan Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mahinda Gunasekera By E-mail His Excellency, Maithripala Sirisena President of Sri Lanka and Minister of Mahaweli Dev & Environment Presidential Secretariat Colombo 1 Copy to: Hon. Ranil Wickremasinghe\u00a0 \u00a0Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Your Excellency, Continued Rape of the Wilpattu National Park and Establishment of Unauthorised Settlements \u00a0 I am writing to bring to your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}