Cooray emerges as ‘civil’ guardian of Sinhala colonists wedging North-East

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 06 September 2017, 23:21 GMT]
The occupying Sinhala military forcibly evicted Eezham Tamils from strategic Mukaththuvaaram, the northern tip at the lagoon-mouth of Kokku’laay in 1983. After the 2009 genocidal onslaught, 350 Sinhala colonist families have encroached into Mukaththuvaaram. An extremist Sinhala monk has been constructing a Buddha vihara just 1 km north of Mukaththuvaaram. A Sinhalicised Catholic church is operating there already. In the meantime, the SL Governor to North, Reginald Cooray, has been harassing the Tamil officials of Karaithu’raip-pattu division and Mullaiththeevu District in a fresh drive to allocate more houses to Sinhala colonisers through Colombo’s National Housing Development Authority (NHDA) at the occupied lands belonging to uprooted Eezham Tamils. Mr Cooray is interacting with the colonists without involving the elected Northern Provincial Council (NPC), civil sources said.

354 families of Sinhala were brought into Mukaththuvaaram and electricity, cooling installations for fishing, transport and other infrastructure facilities have been arranged to the occupying Sinhala colonists through the officials based in the recently carved out Sinhala-only division of Ma’nal-aa’ru (SInhalaicised into Weli-Oya) in Mullaiththeevu district, neighbouring Vavuniyaa North and from Padaviya in the Anuradhapura district of North Central Province.

During the times of the late R. Premadasa (initially SL Prime Minister and later SL president), a housing scheme was launched under the NHDA comprising 50 houses exclusively for Sinhala colonists. However, Sinhala colonists were reluctant to permanently settle at Mukaththuvaaram as the war broke out. The 50 houses were located at 10 acres of land.

Apart from these 50 houses that have been re-constructed, the remaining residences are mostly huts.

The colonists have been demanding housing schemes and the officials at divisional level have declined to provide permission to construct houses at lands belonging to others (Tamils). The officials are also aware that the SL military has not been allowing Tamils to resettle and claim their lands at Mukaththuvaaram.

Mr Cooray wants the divisional and district officials to fully collaborate with NDHA by allocating lands to occupying Sinhala fishermen. He has been harassing the officials questioning them why they were reluctant to allocate lands to 267 encroaching Sinhala families at Mukaththuvaaram.

Without involving the elected NPC, Mr Cooray was meeting the Sinhala colonist families on Monday and has instructed the Tamil officials to attend a meeting at his place on Thursday, civil sources told TamilNet on Wednesday.

Cooray has already threatened the Tamil land-owner at Kokku’laay where a Buddha vihare is being put up at the lands seized from the private owner.

The main intention behind the entire colonisation is wrecking contiguity of the Tamil homeland between the North and East.



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