Occupying SL military cancels resettlement in Ira’naip-paalai

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 October 2011, 08:31 GMT]
Occupying Sinhala military cancelled the resettlement of the war-displaced villagers of the Ira’naip-paalai village in the Puthukkudiyiruppu division of Mullaiththeevu district a few days ago. Facing the monsoon rains, the Tamil villagers continue to live in the camps in Vavuniyaa. Their resettlement was announced on the 7th of this month. While they were waiting for transportation after completing due registrations, the SL Army in the last minute cancelled the resettlement indefinitely. The demining has already been completed in the village, but the occupying Army has some special reasons for blocking the resettlement as it fears exposure of some of the details and evidences of its war crimes if resettlement is allowed without erasing all the remaining ‘traces’, informed sources said.

Ira’naip-paalai is located a few km east of Puthukkudiyiruppu towards Puthu-maaththa’lan in the coast where the last stages of the genocidal war took place.

Around 500 people belonging to 125 families of the village survived the war and are living in the camps in Vavuniyaa.

While people of the village are not resettled, the occupying military’s interest is in showing some of the facilities used by the LTTE in the village as ‘tourist attractions’ for the Sinhalese coming from the South to see the genocidal ground.

A house and a pond in the village are displayed as facilities used by one of the commanders of the LTTE’s Sea Tiger wing.

Meanwhile, a mass grave of around 35 people haphazardly buried in a paddy field near Ira’naippaalai is shown to the Sinhala visitors as burials of the victims of ‘LTTE’s killings’.

The villagers know well that these particular burials belong to some of the victims of SL aerial bombings, shelling of Puthukkudiyiruppu and those who were brought with injuries and died without medical facilities. Some of the victims of such sporadic killings in the war before the last days were buried in the paddy field, as there were no other facilities available at that time.

The people of the locality also know many other secrets of the genocidal war. Obviously, if resettlement is allowed lies cannot be said any longer.

Besides, a large number of burnt vehicles and other movable properties are still found in the village. The Occupying military also eyes on them with greed, people of Vanni say.

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Even though demining has been completed in the village, issuing a certificate in this regard to the SL Government Agent in Mullaiththeevu is still stalled.

Theavi-puram, Aananda-puram, Koampaa-vil and Maaththa’lan are the four villages around Ira’naip-paalai. 1760 families belonging to these villages as well as Ampalavan-pokka’nai and Mu’l’li-vaaykkaal East have to be resettled.

Their resettlement is planned not in their original villages but in a forest outside of Koampaa-vil. They will continue to face another camp life there.

Some people are resettled at Theavipuram, but they face a prison life. Everyone who enters the village has to handover his or her identity card to the SL military keeping the open prison. Outsiders can’t stay for more than a day in the village.

Even after submitting the identity card a SL military personnel will follow the visitor to see which house the person visits.

Ira’naip-paalai will have the same fate, even if resettled, social workers familiar with realities in Vanni said.

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The small, beautiful village of Ira’nap-paalai in the past was engaged in deep-sea fishing in the Indian Ocean, lagoon fishing in a patch of water connected to Nanthik-kadal and small-scale farming in the hinterland.

Even in the late 1980s, occupying SL and Indian militaries targeted the village, affecting its deep-sea fishing, since the village was an important link in the Jaffna – Mullaiththeevu communication of the LTTE.

Under the LTTE-run civil administration, the villagers once again were able to go for deep-sea fishing, but that was stopped when the SL military was using the sea for its Jaffna – Trincomalee communication, after the closure of the A9 Highway.

People were then depending on fishing by throw-net in the lagoon and rain-fed cultivation. The LTTE had a Black Tiger military base in the village.

Ira’naip-paalai is beyond identification even to its own people now. That much of destruction – houses without roofs and burnt vehicles.

A real resettlement of the people means proper housing and restoration of deep-sea as well as lagoon fishing rights and facilities.

Occupying military keeping the people of the land subjugated in open prisons, while Sinhalese fish in their seas and ‘victors’ pay visit to whet their feeling of triumphalism is neither resettlement nor reconciliation but continuation of genocidal torture, commented a ‘resettled’ social worker in Vanni.