Sri Lankan military personnel who had been stationed for over three decades at the Chulipuram army camp in Jaffna fully vacated the site late last week, as they transferred to a different base in the highly militarised peninsula.
According to reports, the troops who withdrew from the Chulipuram camp proceeded to the Chankanai military camp. The withdrawal followed a formal notification process, with a letter informing of the military’s departure handed over several days earlier by the Commanding Officer of the 513th Infantry Brigade to Kavitha Udayakumar, Divisional Secretary of the Sangaanai Division.
The Chulipuram camp, was established in the early 1990s during the height of Sri Lanka’s military offensive in the Tamil homeland and had remained operational for more than thirty years. Its dismantling reportedly comes amid broader directives issued in late 2024 to disband selected long-standing military camps in the Jaffna region, with the stated aim of returning occupied land to civilian owners.
Meanwhile, it has also been reported that the Sri Lankan military camp located in the Pandatharippu area is in the process of being dismantled. Military personnel who had been stationed there for a prolonged period are reportedly being relocated to the Araly military camp. As the Pandatharippu camp extends occupies a vast area of land, Sri Lankan officials have claimed that its removal will take time, and that the complete withdrawal from the site may be subject to a slight delay.
Commenting on the broader process, Sri Lanka Army Spokesman Brigadier Waruna Gamage said that the disbandment of camps should not be viewed as a sudden withdrawal but rather as a calculated step within the Army’s restructuring plan.
While the withdrawal from Chulipuram has been welcomed by residents, it comes against the backdrop of continued concerns over the scale of militarisation across the Tamil homeland, where large swathes of land remain under military control decades after the end of the armed conflict. Tamil civil society groups have repeatedly stressed that meaningful demilitarisation must go beyond selective withdrawals and include a full end to the occupation and restoration of land rights throughout the North and East.
