20 June 2007
The Rajapakse administration issued an Extraordinary Gazette notification on May 30 that Mutur East and Sampur are now declared a High Security Zone. It announced a Special Economic Zone in the area under the Board of Investment Law. This covers a land area of 675 square kilometers (260 square miles).
Many of the 51,450 Tamils who fled Mutur East and Sampur late last year would thus not be allowed to return. Tamil MPs had briefed the diplomatic community in Colombo that at least 15,646 Tamils would be affected by the new Government ruling. 88 irrigation tanks, 2,000 hectares of grazing land, 27 temples and 19 schools fall within the declared Zone.
The Government has taken steps to appropriate all private land in the area in an attempt to change the ethnic character of the Trincomalee district.
No international wire service nor the BBC covered this news. The contrast with the earlier coverage of the eviction of Tamils from the Colombo district could not be more stark, especially as the latest gazette notification has grave consequences for the future of the Tamil community as a whole in Sri Lanka.
The UNHCR document published on April 16, 2007 on internal displacement in Sri Lanka speaks volumes.
The UNHCR document reveals that 51,450 persons were displaced from Mutur as at April 2007. Of this amount, 35,422 had fled to Batticaloa late last year. 9,653 had fled to Amparai. 6,375 moved to the urban precincts of Trincomalee.
These IDPs (internally displaced persons) were all Tamil who fled the incessant aerial bombardment and multi-barrel rocket launches of the advancing Sri Lankan armed forces in late 2006.
The majority of the 20,000 refugees who escaped to India last year were also from the Trincomalee district.
The Muslims who were displaced by the LTTE's temporary occupation of Mutur town in the western part of that division were forcibly returned by the Sri Lankan military authorities and are hence not included in the UNHCR list of IDPs.
Mutur East has been a Tamil area of habitation since early times. During the Chola interlude in the 10th century, Mutur, Kinniya and Ichchilampattru were known as Rajaraja Valanadu and Vikrama Chola Valanadu. With the invasions of Magha of Kalinga in 1215 AD, matrilineal Mukkuvar principalities emerged in this area.
But now an old Tamil Hindu civilizational presence in the region is now being swept away by Government decree. Defence Secretary Gothabhaya Rajapakse, the brother to the President is effectively responsible for the scheme.
It was Gothabhaya, an American citizen, who authorised the eviction of thousands of Tamils in Colombo, a step which would have been carried through beyond the first few hundred if not for the international outcry.
But the international community is now silent as the permanent eviction of tens of thousands more Tamils proceeds in Trincomalee.
The Government's Gazette notification is a measure in a long series of steps to change the ethnic character of the East and the Trincomalee district in particular.
The Don Stephen Senanayake administration initiated the Gal Oya colonization scheme in what was then known as South Batticaloa in the early 1950s. This area is now referred to as either Amparai or Digamadulla.
He sponsored the settlement of thousands of Sinhalese in the area through a process of demographic re-engineering. He also paved the way for the large scale settlement of Sinhalese in the interior divisions of the Trincomalee district. This included Kantalai, Moraweva (Mudalikulam), Gomarankadavela (Kumaresan Kadavai) and Padavi Siripura (Padavikulam).
The Junius Jayewardene administration carried this further with the eviction of Tamils from Manal Aru (Weli Oya) in 1987 by similar Gazette notification.
The then Government issued an Extraordinary Gazette on April 16, 1988 ordering 13,288 Tamil families to vacate their lands in 42 villages in this strategic piece of real estate that divided the North and the East.
The Weli Oya scheme was brought under the Mahaweli Authority and 9,289 Sinhalese families were brought in. However, many Sinhalese have since left given the fluid military situation.
One needs to place things in perspective. By an Extraordinary Gazette notification today, the Sri Lankan government is now attempting to further alter the demographic character of the Trincomalee district. It is to this end it has expelled the Tamil residents of the area.
While Weli Oya served to interrupt the territorial contiguity of the North and the East, this latest attempt to de-Tamilize Mutur is intended to disrupt the territorial contiguity between Trincomalee and Batticaloa through a proposed Sinhalese enclave.
The brazen move is an outrageous effort to expel the centuries old Tamil Hindu presence there.
But international precedents for ethnic cleansing do exist and we need to be mindful of these as we fight this latest injustice of the Rajapakse administration.
Indeed it seems that the Rajapakse administration's action has strong antecedents.
In the aftermath of World War 2, between 13.5 and 16.5 million Germans were evicted from Poland, the Czech republic, Kaliningrad in Russia, Slovakia and Hungary. They were evicted from what were old German villages and provinces with a history that went back to the Middle Ages. This was the old Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, Danzig and Konigsberg.
The ethnic cleansing was underwritten by the victorious allied powers where no less than Winston Churchill stated in the House of Commons in 1944: “expulsion is the method which, in so far as we have been able to see, will be the most satisfactory and lasting. There will be no mixture of populations to cause endless trouble. .. A clean sweep will be made. I am not alarmed by these transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions.”
Internationally supported ethnic cleansing has occurred in more recent times too.
For example, Serbs constituted 24% of Kosovo in 1961. They had been in that territory for centuries. Faced with an upsurge of attacks by the Albanian majority, the Serbs began to leave.
The Serb population in Kosovo declined to 10% in 1991 and is currently 5%. Once again, a 'nuisance minority' had been evicted with the United States and West Europe now calling for Kosovan independence given the changed demographic reality. It is fait accompli.
We need to be mindful of international precedents when we consider international action in Sri Lanka.
The US ambassador in Colombo, Robert O’ Blake has been a regular visitor to the island’s east. He sits in on the Government committee that decides on the distribution of food and medicine to LTTE-held areas of the Northeast.
Ambassador Blake is clearly in the loop on matters such as the eviction of Tamils from Trincomalee and no gazette notification of this nature would have been promulgated without his prior knowledge.
Indeed, the US Pacific Command had advised back in 2002 that the southern perimeter of the Trincomalee harbor i.e. Mutur needed be secured and made safe to ensure the Sri Lnakan government's hold on the East. The Gazette notification driving out the Tamils from the area needs to be viewed in this context also.
Meanwhile, there are reports the Chinese are planning to invest in Muttur, including the setting up of a coal fired power plant.
The Tamils need to be mindful of such geopolitical ambitions as they struggle for their rights. International silence is not just unawareness.
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