President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s militarized rule of Sri Lanka’s Tamil areas is so severe, even Sinhala nationalist parties opposed to the government are finding it difficult.

The JVP (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna) said Friday that what the military’s photographing and registering of the residents was similar to what Israel was doing to the Palestinian residents of Gaza and West Bank.

See the Daily Mirror’s report here.

The government, JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva told a news conference, was creating a fear psychosis. 

This is what the island’s main Tamil party, the TNA (Tamil Nationalist Alliance), has long been protesting.

See our earlier articles: Terror in Jaffna (Jan 2011).

Meanwhile, last week Sri Lankan troops stormed an election campaign meeting by the TNA leadership, injuring several people (See details in reports by TamilNet, Reuters and AFP).

In the past decade, it’s worth recalling, Army-backed paramilitaries have murdered several TNA parliamentarians, as well as scores of party officials and campaigners, and hundreds of supporters.

See also our editorial (March 2010) on Tamil parliamentary politics in Sri Lanka.

Other comments Friday by JVP General Secretary Silva:

“Today the government is not allowing political parties to do politics in their areas. The JVP candidate for the Walikamam East in the Jaffna district has been threatened. We all know how a political meeting of the TNA attended by its MPs was attacked by a group on Thursday. Even parliamentarians are unable to do anything.

“There is a census planned to cover the whole of Sri Lanka. This is a civil activity. But, what is happening forcibly in the North does not appear to be a part of this census. It is an attempt by the military to impose its hegemony over the people. It is unacceptable."