Tamil landowners from Valikamam North staged their eighth consecutive Friday protest today in front of the Sri Lankan military's Commando bungalow, demanding the release of their lands which remain designated as a High Security Zone (HSZ).
The protest was led by residents from Grama Sevaka divisions 249, 256, 248, 251 and 255, whose communities were forcibly displaced from their homes in June 1990. More than three decades later, and despite the conflict having ended seventeen years ago, large parts of the area remain under Sri Lankan military control and inaccessible to their original owners under High Security Zone restrictions.
Landowners say they have spent years campaigning for the return of around 651 acres of civilian land, but repeated demands have produced no result. More than 6,000 families from Valikamam North remain displaced to this day, scattered across the North-East and beyond, with over 2,700 acres of land in the area still held by the Sri Lankan military.
15 June will mark 37 years since the displacement of communities from the area, and organisers have announced a larger demonstration in front of the Jaffna District Secretariat to coincide with the anniversary. They have called on the wider public to support their demand for the release of occupied civilian lands and the right of displaced families to return and resettle.
Valikamam North remains one of the starkest illustrations of the continued militarisation of the Tamil homeland. Beyond homes, the lands seized in 1990 include temples, schools, churches and agricultural fields, and the military has continued to build permanent structures on them, including camps, hotels and farms, a pattern that Tamil civil society and rights groups have long described as part of a broader project of demographic change in the North-East.
Successive Sri Lankan governments have promised the return of the land and failed to deliver.
Sri Lankn president Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the National People's Power (NPP) campaigned on commitments to release lands held under the High Security Zone designation, and Fisheries Minister Ramalingam Chandrasekar announced earlier this year that a phased programme of releases would be carried out, citing "extraordinary circumstances" during the war as the reason private lands had been retained. The vast majority of the land remains under military control.
