Reviving memories of how state sponsored colonisation of Tamil areas in the eastern province began in the eighties, press reports last week said Sri Lanka plans to move hundreds of Sinhala convicts to an army-held enclave in the northern Jaffna peninsula
The transfer is ostensibly to grow vegetables for the military garrison in the wholly Tamil-speaking region.
Forced to fly up to 1.5 tonnes of vegetables a day into the Jaffna peninsula to feed 40,000 troops because of patchy local supplies, the army plans to send as many as 200 prisoners serving time for minor offences to work on a farm, Reuters reported.
“We have a farm there. The farm is not maintained properly, because we don’t have (enough) people. So we can hand it over to them as an open prison and they can work there and we can get vegetables,” military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said.
The LTTE have imposed bans on sales of provisions to the army, cut off from the south of the country by a swathe of Tamil Tiger controlled territory.
But many Tamils suspect the move is an effort to begin colonisation of parts of the Jaffna peninsula. The military’s high security zones comprise vast areas and dozens of Tamil villages whose inhabitants have been displaced for over a decade.
Tamil areas in the east were sometimes colonised by allocating land from which Tamil residents had been driven out by the security forces, to Sinhala convicts who are denied land allocations in the south.
Sri Lanka’s prisons chief aims to have the plan operational within weeks, and wants the army to pay the prisoners around 4,000 rupees (23 pounds) each a month for their services.
The proposed site, on heavily defended army land with its gun turrets and the ruins of buildings destroyed by years of heavy shelling, is a natural open prison.
“Because they (will be) in Palaly, a high security zone, they have no escape whatsoever,” said Rumy Marzook, Commissioner General of Prisons, referring to the Palaly region where the army’s northern base is located.
“It is a good plan and I am waiting for the approval of the government,” said Rumy Marzook, whose other innovative ideas have included encouraging inmates to make and sell coffins.
Marzook wants to send 70 prisoners from the main prison in Colombo to a sprawling heavily guarded air base in the peninsula with lots of room for farming. His earlier plan to make coffins was a success.
The transfer is ostensibly to grow vegetables for the military garrison in the wholly Tamil-speaking region.
Forced to fly up to 1.5 tonnes of vegetables a day into the Jaffna peninsula to feed 40,000 troops because of patchy local supplies, the army plans to send as many as 200 prisoners serving time for minor offences to work on a farm, Reuters reported.
“We have a farm there. The farm is not maintained properly, because we don’t have (enough) people. So we can hand it over to them as an open prison and they can work there and we can get vegetables,” military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasinghe said.
The LTTE have imposed bans on sales of provisions to the army, cut off from the south of the country by a swathe of Tamil Tiger controlled territory.
But many Tamils suspect the move is an effort to begin colonisation of parts of the Jaffna peninsula. The military’s high security zones comprise vast areas and dozens of Tamil villages whose inhabitants have been displaced for over a decade.
Tamil areas in the east were sometimes colonised by allocating land from which Tamil residents had been driven out by the security forces, to Sinhala convicts who are denied land allocations in the south.
Sri Lanka’s prisons chief aims to have the plan operational within weeks, and wants the army to pay the prisoners around 4,000 rupees (23 pounds) each a month for their services.
The proposed site, on heavily defended army land with its gun turrets and the ruins of buildings destroyed by years of heavy shelling, is a natural open prison.
“Because they (will be) in Palaly, a high security zone, they have no escape whatsoever,” said Rumy Marzook, Commissioner General of Prisons, referring to the Palaly region where the army’s northern base is located.
“It is a good plan and I am waiting for the approval of the government,” said Rumy Marzook, whose other innovative ideas have included encouraging inmates to make and sell coffins.
Marzook wants to send 70 prisoners from the main prison in Colombo to a sprawling heavily guarded air base in the peninsula with lots of room for farming. His earlier plan to make coffins was a success.
