Footage shows military selling produce from occupied Tamil land, contradicting parliament claim

Footage seen by the Tamil Guardian appears to show Sri Lankan military personnel selling large quantities of vegetables grown on military-occupied Tamil land to a Keells collection centre in Jaffna, directly contradicting claims the deputy defence minister made in parliament only last week.

The video shows soldiers transporting and handing over agricultural produce at the collection centre in Urumpirai, along the Palaly Road. It surfaced just days after the deputy defence minister, Aruna Jayasekara, rejected allegations that the military commercially exploits the land it occupies in the North-East, telling parliament that cultivation within military camps was carried out solely for the armys own consumption.

In the same address, Jayasekara said 1,661 acres within the Valikamam North High Security Zone were required by the military and would be permanently acquired, with compensation offered to the private landowners. The footage places that "self-consumption" defence in direct question, and with it whether parliament was misled over what the armed forces are doing on seized Tamil land. Should the deputy minister genuinely have been unaware that the produce was being sold, it raises equally sharp questions about the defence ministrys oversight of its own forces.

The residents of Valikamam North have flatly rejected Jayasekaras account, accusing the military of profiting from crops grown on the very land they were driven from.

"We were driven from our own homes and, even after 36 years, our lands continue to be forcibly occupied under the pretext of security."

"While we have lost our lands and livelihoods and are left destitute, the military cultivates our lands and sells agricultural produce in large quantities for profit," they said, adding that the armys farming also undercuts local Tamil growers, who are made to compete with produce raised on their own confiscated fields. It was residents who supplied the footage of the Urumpirai sales to media outlets as evidence of the practice.

They called on the National Peoples Power government, which came to office pledging that "the peoples land belongs to the people", to return their land rather than, in their words, deceive them with false assurances as previous administrations had done. Thousands of acres of privately owned land in Valikamam North remain under military occupation, its owners displaced for more than three decades.

The revelation comes as displaced landowners press on with their campaign of weekly protests, with last Friday marking the twelfth consecutive week of demonstrations by families forcibly displaced in June 1990, who have vowed to continue until their land is returned. That a military insisting it grows food only for its own tables should be filmed selling that food to a supermarket chain captures, in a single transaction, the gap between the states assurances and the reality its occupation sustains on the ground.