(Tabled in parliament on 21 October 2011)
By M.A. Sumanthiran
1. Introduction
On 7th July 2011 I tabled a report in Parliament detailing the situation in the North and East,
highlighting a series of urgent concerns. The following is an update to the previous report and
discusses some of the most serious issues that have arisen since or continue to take place in
these areas
2. Militarization
2.1 Statistics and impact of military presence – Out of a total land mass of 65,619 sq km,
Tamil people inhabited 18,880 sq km of land in the North and East, but after May 2009, the
defence forces have occupied more than 7,000 sq km of land owned by Tamil people. There is
one member of the armed forces for approximately every ten civilians in the Jaffna Peninsula.
The heavy presence of the military continues to be the most serious concern in the North and
East. More than two years since the conclusion of the war, the government has still failed to
facilitate the proper transition of these areas from a situation of conflict to a ‘normal’
environment. As evident in the following sections of the report, the high level of
militarization in the North is directly linked to most of the other problems prevalent in the
area such as the breakdown in the social fabric, state brutality including sexual assault, land
grabs and occupation, problems relating to livelihoods of the people in the area and illegal
intrusion into the role of government including administration and dispute settlement.
