Dear Sir, please read the Daily Mirror article’Low income Houses Should Be Demolished: PM, D.M. Jayaratne.

To Beautify Colombo City.
October 21.2011.

(reported by Yohan Perera and Kelum Bandara, Daily Mirror.)

‘Colombo should be beautified with high-rise apartment buildings and bridges to create a good impression of Sri Lanka among the international community…all unused land in Colombo city should be leased out to foreign investors.. or for that matter anyone in the world if it would help us to earn revenue.But he said he was against the selling of state land…’

You are our brothers and sisters..

forgive us.

‘..those who buy up all the houses
and grab all the land for yourselves –
evicting the old owners,
posting NO TRESPASSING signs,
Taking over the country,
leaving everyone homelss and landless.
(Isaiah.ch.5)

Regarding the forwarded comments I may remind the commentators that when giving evidence before the LLRC I quoted these principles, which appear in the LLRC web site. The LLRC Chairman appreciated my submissions, which too is on record. May be the final report next month may prove such appreciation was real and genuine.

Any one interested further may study the UN Comprehensive Guidelines on Development Based Displacement and Sri Lankan National Involuntary Resettlement Policy. Both can be accessed on Google.

Austin Fernando

Please raise this with the government:

The last batch of detainees from Menik Farm(the biggest IDP camp in the world) are forcibly settled in a jungle and not allowed to go back to their villages:
http://groundviews.org/2011/10/03/re-displacement-of-menik-farm-inmates-to-kombavil-mullativu/
Re-displacement of Menik Farm inmates to Kombavil (Mullativu), 3 October 2011: ”In a petition submitted to the IDP Project Office for the Vavuniya district of the National Human Rights Commission on 29 Sept. 2011, people concerned have stated that “we want to go to our own homes and resettle.”

This has been happening earlier too:
http://transcurrents.com/tc/2010/10/young_religious_visit_their_ow.html#more
Young religious visit their own suffering brothers and sisters in Northern Sri Lanka, Rev.Fr.Lasantha de Abrew, 25 October 2010: ”We had an opportunity to visit Sannar in the District Mannar where the people are living in temporary huts donated by the UNHCR. They were told that they would be resettled in their own land but they are relocated in a jungle as their own land has been named a High Security Zone under the Sri Lankan Army.’’

http://www.groundviews.org/2009/08/01/forcible-resettlements-in-east/
Forcible resettlements in East, Ruki, 1 August 2009: ‘’Government has started to dump displaced people in the East into remote jungle areas infested with wild elephants, against the wishes of the concerned people’’