Valikamam North residents continue eighth week of protest demanding release of Sri Lankan military-held lands

Residents of Valikamam North staged a protest for the eighth consecutive week at Palaly Junction on Sunday, demanding the release of their land, which remains held by the Sri Lankan military.

The protesters, deprived of their land for the past 36 years, called on the authorities to return their properties and allow them to resettle in their homes.

The residents said the military has been using their privately owned land for agricultural activities and commercial establishments for its own purposes, while the rightful owners have been forced to live without access to their homes and properties for decades. They stressed that they have endured prolonged displacement and continue to demand the immediate release of their land so they can return home and rebuild their lives.

The Palaly demonstrations run alongside a separate weekly protest outside the military commanders bungalow in Myliddy, now in its fourteenth week. Residents of Valikamam North were forcibly displaced in June 1990, after which the area was designated a High Security Zone, and more than 6,000 families remain displaced, with the 2013 defence ministry gazette acquiring 6,317 acres still unrevoked.

Protesters at Palaly have faced obstruction from the authorities. Last month, police removed the drinking water tank and temporary toilet used by demonstrators, many of them elderly, from a nearby community centre, and refused permission for even a tarpaulin shelter, leaving participants to hold the sheeting up by hand in the heat.

The protests continue as the government issues fresh notices to acquire ancestral land in Myliddy for the expansion of Palaly Airport, and after the deputy defence minister told parliament that a further 1,661 acres in the North-East would be permanently acquired for military infrastructure and would not be returned. Speaking in parliament last week, the ITAK MP Shanakiyan Rasamanickam asked why wartime justifications were still being used to hold civilian land, noting that of 44 people who had applied for the return of their property, only 11 had been told theirs would be released.