The Sri Lankan military has erected a signboard designating a military-run agricultural farm on privately owned land inside the Valikamam North High Security Zone (HSZ), entrenching its presence even as landowners campaign for the return of their property.
Large tracts of private land in Valikamam North have remained under military occupation for more than three decades, since the High Security Zone (HSZ) was established during the armed conflict and thousands of Tamil families were displaced from June 1990.
The owners have never stopped demanding their land back, staging sustained protests and appeals to the authorities. The army has for years farmed their land in the Kurumbasiddy area, but the move to formally identify the site as a military farm, through a permanent signboard, signals an intention to deepen and institutionalise that occupation rather than end it.
The board identifies the site as "Directorate of Agriculture & Livestock – Army Farm Kurumbasetti – 4 (V) Sri Lanka Army Corps of Agriculture & Livestock", marking it as the operation of a dedicated unit of the army's Agriculture and Livestock Corps, and has renewed scrutiny of the scale on which the military runs commercial agriculture on seized Tamil land within the zone.
Land originally taken on security grounds is now given over to activities with no bearing on security, among them agriculture, military-run shops, restaurants and recreational facilities, alongside one of the army's largest cantonments.
More than 6,000 families from Valikamam North remain displaced, with over 2,700 acres still under military control, and for months the affected residents have gathered every Friday outside the commander's bungalow in Myliddy to demand the return of some 651 acres of their land.
The signboard appears even as the issue moves through official channels.
Last month a delegation led by the deputy defence minister visited Jaffna to examine land release in Valikamam North, and the matter is expected to be raised at a Ministry of Defence meeting on 25 June, with landowners still awaiting word on the fate of their properties. The Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the National People's Power campaigned on a promise to release lands held under the High Security Zone designation, and the fisheries minister announced a phased programme of releases earlier this year, citing "extraordinary circumstances" during the war as the reason private land had been retained. The vast majority of it remains occupied.
Controversy is meanwhile continuing over several military construction projects in the area. The chairman of the Valikamam North Pradeshiya Sabha has reportedly written to the Jaffna District military commander requesting the immediate suspension of work on a military hospital at Vasavilan and a military-run refreshment outlet being built along the Point Pedro–Keerimalai road. The work has continued regardless.
Landowners and civil society groups have long argued that the continued military occupation and commercial exploitation of Tamil land in Valikamam North, one of the starkest illustrations of the militarisation of the homeland, obstructs resettlement and the restoration of civilian life, hollowing out the government's professed commitment to returning the land to its owners.