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Sinhalese settled in areas emptied of Tamils

Hundreds of Tamils were killed and injured by deliberate military artillery shelling in 2006 as the international community looked on.

Once the area was emptied of Tamils by such ethnic cleansing, the Sri Lanka Government declared the area as High Security Zone and prevented the original Tamil residents of the area from returning to their homes in their villages.

Over the last week, 25 Sinhalese families were settled in Kadatkaraichenai, the so called High Security Zone.

This development has all the hallmark of earlier Sinhala settlements in the east where by a Tamil village is emptied of Tamils through violence and then small number of Sinhala settlements is first created with minimal facilities. This settlement then gradually expands unnoticed.

In the earlier times Tamil people were chased out by large scale massacres carried out by the military. The massacre of Tamils in the Thiriyai a village in Trincomalee in 1985 and the subsequent conversion of the area in Sinhala settlement exemplifies this tactic of Sri Lanka Government.

On 8 June 1985, Sri Lanka military came in vehicles to Thiriyai and told the people to leave the area before they begin shooting. After the people left, 1100 houses were burnt down. Following this incident, displaced people stayed in schools. Again on 8.August 1985, the Sri Lankan military attacked the displaced in the schools killing ten civilians. Again on the 14 August six civilians were pulled out of a bus in Thiriyai and hacked to death. Tamils gradually moved out of the area by the constant threat of violence by the military. The area thus emptied of Tamils was then gradually settled with Sinhalese.

No longer able to carry of such blatant ethnic cleansing, Sri Lanka Government is carrying out the ethnic cleansing under the pretext of fighting terrorism as the world looks on.

26 December 2007

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