JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Nov. 1 — Displaced residents of Valikamam North gathered at Palaly Junction on Sunday for the 20th week in a row to demand that the Sri Lankan military return land it has held since they were driven from their homes 36 years ago.
The protesters, many of them elderly, said the army was using their land for farming and for shops and other businesses, while their own families had spent more than three decades without houses or land. They called on President Anura Kumara Dissanayake's government to release the land and let them resettle.
The Sunday protests at Palaly Junction, near the edge of the Valikamam North High Security Zone, began on June 21. Three weekly demonstrations now take place in the division. Landowners from Myliddy have protested every Friday since April 24 outside the army commander's bungalow there. Residents of Vasavilan began their own Sunday protest in mid-September.
The Palaly protest has gone on through the July heat and into the monsoon rains. In July, police stopped protesters from putting up a shelter at the site. In October, a woman fainted from the heat during the protest. Others gave her first aid, and she stayed until the protest ended. On Oct. 22, the Mallakam Magistrate's Court postponed until Dec. 17 a case against five people accused of obstructing traffic during an Aug. 16 land protest on Palaly Main Road. The magistrate ordered the Palaly police to submit a full report.
Thirty-Six Years Outside the Fence
Residents of Valikamam North were forced out in June 1990, when fighting resumed between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The military declared the area around the Palaly air base and Kankesanthurai harbour a High Security Zone and later widened its boundaries. Homes, farmland, temples, churches and schools ended up inside it.
The war ended in 2009. Successive governments have released parts of the zone in stages since then, but much of it is still closed to its owners. More than 6,000 families from the division remain displaced. Many rent houses or live with relatives elsewhere in Jaffna, and some have moved abroad.
In 2013, the Defence Ministry under President Mahinda Rajapaksa issued a gazette notice acquiring 6,317 acres in Valikamam North. The gazette has never been revoked. This year, civil society groups in Jaffna asked a visiting European Union delegation to press Colombo to withdraw it.
Estimates of how much land the military still holds vary. Local officials and campaigners put it at about 2,700 acres. In mid-October, the military handed back 11.23 acres across three Jaffna divisional secretariat areas. Figures cited at the time showed 2,033.68 acres of private land in Valikamam North still unreleased. Only 1.29 acres of the handover was private land in the division, and protesters said the rest was state land.
"The land was seized from ordinary people 36 years ago," Somasundaram Sugirthan, chairman of the Valikamam North Pradeshiya Sabha, said at a rally in Jaffna in June. He said about 7,000 families had been affected.
Farms and Shops on Private Land
Residents say much of the land is no longer used for security. Inside the zone, the army runs farms, shops, restaurants and recreational facilities next to one of its largest cantonments. In June, the army put up a signboard at Kurumbasiddy naming the site as a farm run by its Agriculture and Livestock Corps. Residents took the sign to mean the military intended to stay.
The chairman of the Pradeshiya Sabha has also written to the Jaffna District military commander asking him to stop work on a military hospital in Vasavilan and a military-run refreshment outlet on the Point Pedro-Keerimalai Road. Both are on private land.
Promises and New Acquisitions
In 2024, the National People's Power campaigned in the North on the pledge that the people's land belongs to the people. That November it won three of Jaffna District's six parliamentary seats. Two years later, the protesters say almost none of their land has been returned.
Protesters at Myliddy said the government had promised to release their land by the end of September. At a Jaffna District Coordinating Committee meeting on Oct. 14, Fisheries Minister Ramalingam Chandrasekar, who chairs the committee, said the government needed another two to three months. Suresh Premachandran, leader of the EPRLF, said the government had been "saying the same thing for two years."
The government has also said some of the land will never be returned. In July, Deputy Defence Minister Aruna Jayasekara told Parliament that land the armed forces considered essential could not be released. He said arrangements were under way to formally transfer to the army 1,661 acres it uses in the Palaly zone and to compensate the owners. He also said there was "no possibility" of releasing the land under the Palaly army hospital. The Civil Aviation Authority, he said, had asked for more land to develop Jaffna International Airport at Palaly, and the Defence Ministry, the authority and the Jaffna District Secretary were working out which plots to take.
Since then, new notices have been issued to acquire land in Myliddy for the airport. Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam, a Jaffna MP and leader of the Tamil National People's Front, has accused the government of using the airport expansion to take close to 3,000 acres. He said Tamils would support development work already planned at the airport, but not an expansion that needed more land.
In August, Mr. Dissanayake told representatives of six Tamil parties that releasing private land held by the military and other state bodies remained a goal of his government, and he asked for a report, according to M.A. Sumanthiran of the Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi. Some Tamils say the president wants to return the land but has not been able to overcome the military's resistance.
Representatives of Valikamam North resettlement groups have recently been left out of Tellippalai Divisional Coordination Committee meetings. They used to be invited to raise land issues there.
A Wider Dispute
Valikamam North is the largest of several land disputes in the North. In Keppapilavu, in Mullaitivu District, families have protested for years over land held by the army, and Tamil MPs joined their protest again this year. In Mannar, residents of Mullikulam are still trying to get their village back from the navy. Land claimed by the Forest Department, the Wildlife Department and the Archaeology Department is also disputed across the province.
Some of the older protesters at Palaly have said they fear they will die before they are allowed home. "Our final wish is that we should at least be able to die on our own land," one protester said in October.
Organisers said the Sunday protests would go on until the land is released.
