Colonisation

submitted by International Human Rights Association Bremen

Before the armed resistance of the Tamil people took the centre stage, three major processes could be identified aimed at the marginalisation and destabilization of the Tamil nation. The first was the state sponsored colonisation schemes, which under the pretext of development, settled depressed peasants and later lumpen elements of the Sinhala nation alongside military garrisons within the traditional homeland of the Tamil people. It was aimed at disrupting the demographics and geographical contiguity of the Traditional homeland of the Tamil people. The colonization process, to a considerable extent, resembled the Israeli state aided settlements which brought pockets of Jewish majority areas and subsequently disrupted the continuity of Palestinian settlements, bringing about the disjuncture of Gaza and the West Bank.

Secondly there have been numerous laws and constitutional amendments passed, which legalised and thereby legitimized the structural violence against the Tamil nation.

Thirdly there have been major anti-tamil pogroms orchestrated by the state, mainly in 1956, 1958, 1974, 1977, 1981 and 1983 which saw thousands of Tamil civilians massacred. Besides such pogroms, the Tamil people have been slaughtered or forcibly transferred in order to set the grounds for state enacted colonization schemes.

In this paper, we will be presenting consequences of the state aided colonization schemes and their destructive impact on the collective national life of the Tamil people.

This background paper can be downloaded here: State aided Sinhala Colonisation [pdf: 396 kb]