Minister of Resettlement Favored to Tamils – Ignored Sinhala IDP Families in Jaffna
Minister of Resettlement and Reconstruction Mr D.M. Swaminathan, who visited Jaffna on Monday purposely ignored to visit Sinhala families who were internally displaced due to LTTE Tamil terrorism. Ethnically Tamil Swaminathan visited resettlement of Tamils in Valikaamam but refused to visit the welfare of the internally displaced Sinhalese in Jaffna who are currently living Nawakkuliya.
The civil society organization, North East Sinhala IDP Association- NESIA who is tirelessly working to make justice for those internally displaced Sinhala families in Jaffna, Vavniya, Mannarama and other Northern and Eastern two provinces condemned the Ministers inactiveness and biased approached only towards Tamil IDPs in the resettlement process.
NESIA has issued a press release to show their displeasure of the Minister and Ministry officials on this matter. The full text of the press release is as follows;
උතුරු නැගෙනහිර අවතැන් වූ සිංහල ජනතා එකමුතුව
NORTH EAST SINHALA IDP ASSOCIATION (NESIA)
2nd July 2015
MINISTER SWAMINATHAN FAILED TO VISIT SINHALA IDPs
Certain Pro-eelamists websites has reported on 29.06.2015, that the Minister Swaminathan had visited Valikaamam North and had met representatives from certain organization representing uprooted Tamils. The said representatives have severely criticized the minister for its failure to provide housing for Tamils.
North East Sinhala IDP Association (NESIA) represents the interests of uprooted Sinhala inhabitations from North and East and has being engaging with Minister Swaminathan during the past several months highlighting the grievances of the Sinhala IDPs, in which most of them have been chased away by members of Tamil Eelam Terrorist organizations, now acting as political parties (EPRLF, TELO, PLOTE etc) as well as by the LTTE during pogrom against the Sinhala inhabitants during July 1983.
The July pogrom against innocent Sinhala civilians were initiated by killing of 13 unarmored Sinhala soldiers by the LTTE who were out of duty and on their way home Thereafter, the army had to rescue Sinhala civilians in Jaffna from total genocide and large number of Sinhala inhabitants had been disappeared without a trace.
NESIA had sent two specific documents (attachments 1 & 2 with responses 3 & 4) to the Minster consists of lists of names of the returned Sinhala IDPs now without permanent houses requesting the Minister to build houses for them at Navakkuliya in Jaffna and in Madu area in Mannar district. The Minster has responded by directing the Jaffna and Mannar Government Agents to find out and report back.
NESIA sadly notes that Minister Swaminathan has not visited the Sinhala IDPs during the visit to Valikaamam (Valigama in Sinhala), which is not far away from Navakkuliya instead the minister appears to be concentrating on welfare of the Tamils only. Further NESIA states that so far no action has been taken by the resettlement ministry to address the grievances of the Sinhala IDPs now in Navakkuliya in Jaffna and in Madu area even though, the 50000 Indian Housing project has been in operation since 2010.
Jayantha Liyanage,
Coordinating Secretary – NESIA.
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