Demonstrators, calling for President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s intervention to sort out the land issue, threatened to fight unto death to defeat what they called surreptitious attempts to grab their lands.
Residents of the Anandankulam area, in Trincomalee, demonstrated at the Mihindupura Junction asking the government to act against an organized group trying to grab their lands with the help of land deeds issued in the colonial days.
Demonstrators, calling for President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s intervention to sort out the land issue, threatened to fight unto death to defeat what they called surreptitious attempts to grab their lands.
The demonstrators, belonging to 154 families, living in the areas coming under Trincomalee Town and Gravets Pradeshiya Sabha, complained that they had receipts and documents to prove that they had lived and paid rates to the local government bodies during the past 45 years.
President of the Organisation to Protect Homelands, Ranikan A. Liyanage said that when the rate payers went to the PS recently to pay their rates, the officials had said that they could not be allowed pay rates as the lands did not belong to them anymore. The officials had claimed that a group of persons claiming to be the rightful owners of those lands had produced deeds. "These deeds were issued during the colonial times; the PS is controlled by the TNA and the rightful owners that they mention are living abroad," Liyanage said.
Secretary of the organization, Sumana Jayaweera, said that the new claimants to the lands had the backing of a TNA parliamentarian. "There is a conspiracy to chase us away from our lands."
Addressing the protestors, Chief Incumbent of the Mihindupura Vihara and Head of the Trincomalee Fort Buddhist Centre, Ven. Mihindupura Mahindwansa Thero said it was the duty of the government to safeguard the rights of protesters.
Security had been beefed up in the Trincomalee town.
(Island)