News 24.07.2007 21:00 UTC Deutsche Welle- World.DE
Fighting flares in Sri Lanka

Fighting has flared in Sri Lanka with 14 government soldiers and paramilitary forces killed in multiple attacks by Tamil Tiger rebels. At least nine soldiers were killed and up to eight others injured when their bus struck a mine in Chettikulam, about 280 kilometres north of the Capital Colombo. Earlier, four paramilitary guards were killed in a rebel attack in the same area. Another soldier reportedly died of wounds sustained in a separate action on Monday. The violence comes just days after the government held a lavish ceremony to celebrate its recapture of eastern Sri Lanka after 13 years of rebel control.

Tigers run multi-million dollar empire: reportPublished:
Wednesday, 25 July, 2007, 02:28 AM Doha Time LONDON:
Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels run a worldwide legal and illegal business empire generating revenue of $200 to $300mn a year to put towards guns, planes and attack boats, according to an analyst’s report. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been fighting for a separate homeland for minority ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka’s north and east for more than two decades, building a reputation as one of the world’s most fearsome guerrilla groups. The Tigers deny any criminal activity. Review paints a picture of a powerful global network of professional managers – both Tamils and others – across a string of countries with operations perhaps from shipping to drugs and extortion.“Some of the money will go on arms, some of it on administrating areas controlled by the LTTE,” Christian LeMiere, managing editor of Jane’s Country Risk, told Reuters on Monday. “Shoulder launched surface to air missiles are almost certainly the most probable item on the wish list but there will also be small arms and other weapons.” The Tigers would not comment on the report, but have always denied involvement in criminality. They say their funds come from taxes in their territory and voluntary contributions from the wealthy Tamil diaspora, many of whom fled during the war. The world’s wealthiest guerrilla group remained Colombia’s FARC rebels because of their vast drugs revenues, he said, but the LTTE was quite possibly second. Weapons were smuggled in from southeast Asia and nearby parts of India, he said. “But the progress of the war since 2006 has been against the LTTE, so it hasn’t done them very much good,” LeMiere said. There have also been a string of arrests of alleged Tiger weapons buyers in North America, Europe and Thailand. The report said a network of Tamil charities proved an effective way of moving money. The Sri Lankan government says large amounts of money raised after the 2004 tsunami found their way to the rebels – a charge they deny. Possessors of the world’s only rebel air force and a navy of fast attack boats, the LTTE were able to bomb the capital and airport this year with light aircraft probably smuggled into the country in pieces. But the rebels have lost large amounts of territory in the island’s east to the army since late 2002 ceasefire collapsed last year and government jets have been able to raid their bases with impunity-hence their perceived desire for anti-aircraft missiles. Analysts and diplomats blame both the Tigers and government for the renewed war and the roughly 4,000 deaths. Western donors have cut aid to Sri Lanka over widely reported rights abuses. The Tigers, who still control a de facto state in the north, have been widely condemned for their use of suicide bombing and are listed in the United States, European Union and elsewhere as terrorists. Jane’s says their freedom to operate overseas was reduced by a global crackdown on militant groups after the September 11, 2001 attacks – although the LTTE themselves have always steered clear of attacking Western targets. – Reuters

Lanka allocates Rs 6.5 billion to rebuild war-hit East
Colombo, July 24 (UNI),deepikaglobal.com

The Sri Lankan Government today said it had allocated Rs 6.5 billion to rebuild the Eastern Province, claiming it had now been ''liberated'' by its military from the Tamil Tiger rebels after almost two decades.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa, also the Minister of Finance, had ordered the treasury to allocate Rs 6.5 billion in order to lay a strong economic foundation to achieve the goal of economic freedom for the people of the East, Defence Spokesman and Minister of Foreign Employment, Keheliya Rambukwella told reporters here.
Claiming that the liberation of the Eastern Province, militarily, will be meaningful only when the people were given economic freedom and the civil administration had been established, Minister Rambukwella said the government had already embarked on a 180-day rapid development program to achieve the dual goal.
''Within the 180 days, we will have a very strong foundation laid for economic development. At the same time we will be taking all steps to strengthen the civil administration there,'' he said.
Pointing out the killing of the Chief Secretary of the Eastern province, Harath Abeyweera, in the heavily-guarded Trincomalee town last week, the minister said restoring civil administration in the East would be a challenging task for the government.
''It is a big challenge to the government but we are fully prepared to face it,'' Mr Rambukwella said.
Meanwhile, Sri Lankan police today called for heightened public vigilance claiming that the recent intelligence reports revealed that the Tamil Tigers had already despatched two explosive-laden vehicles to Colombo aiming to cause destruction in the South.
''We have received intelligence warning that the Tigers, after facing humiliating defeat in the East, have sent at least two truck bombs to Colombo. We urge the people to inform the police of any suspicious vehicles and personnel,'' police spokesman DIG Jayantha Wickramaratne said.
In a separate incident in the Vavuniya district, the LTTE attacked a sentry point early this morning, killing four police homeguards.

10 Lankan soldiers killed, 14 wounded in Vavuniya bus blast
Colombo, July 24 (UNI),deepikaglobal.com

At least ten Sri Lankan soldiers were killed and 14 others including eight civilians wounded today when a bus carrying soldiers came under a powerful claymore mine attack by the suspected Tamil Tiger rebels, military sources here said.
''The bus was carrying unarmed army personnel going on leave when it came under the mine blast at Cheddikulam on the Mannar-Madawachchiya road about 1255 hrs, killing ten soldiers and wounding six others. The injured has been rushed to the General Hospital Anuradhapura,'' military sources said.
''Of the wounded civilians two were in serious conditions,'' the sources said, adding the search operation was underway in and around the blast site.
The blast took place barely a few hours after Military spokesman Brigadier Prasad Samarasingha claimed that there was a significant increase of LTTE activities in the Wanni front during the past couple of days.
Speaking at the weekly media briefing here in Colombo, Brig Samarasinghe also said Army would be compelled to launch military operations towards the LTTE-held Wanni area if they continue to attack the security forces and civilians.
There is no immediate reaction from the LTTE in this regard so far.

Court rejects FR petition against USA-GOSL defence agreement
[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 July 2007, 11:24 GMT]

Sri Lanka's Supreme Court unanimously refused to inquire into a fundamental rights violation petition filed by Mr.Vasudeva Nanayakkara, a veteran leftist leader, challenging the Defence Agreement signed by the governments of United States of America (USA) and Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL), legal sources in Colombo said. The petition came up before a three member bench of the Supreme Council chaired by Chief Justice Sarath N.Silva Monday. Justices Shiranee Bandaranaike and Nihal Gamini Amaratunge were other members of the panel. The petitioner Mr. Nanayakkara, general secretary of the Democratic Leftist Front, is also an advisor to Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse. The Defence Secretary Mr.Gothabaya Rajapakse and the Attorney General were cited as respondents in the petition.
The petitioner stated that Defence Secretary Mr.Gothabaya Rajapakse and USA Ambassador in Sri Lanka Mr.William O Blake had signed the defence agreement between the two countries against the laws of Sri Lanka thus affecting the fundamental rights of every citizen in Sri Lanka.
The first respondent had abused his power by signing the agreement on behalf of Sri Lanka, the petition said.
The petitioner requested the court to declare the said agreement null and void.
President Counsel Mr.A.A.de Silva with Attorney-at-Law W.C.Thusahrika argued in support of the petition. Deputy Solicitor General Mr.Demunu de Silva submitted to court the said agreement had been tabled in parliament.
Justice Shiranee Bandaranaike queried from the petitioner how his fundamental rights had been violated by the said agreement between the two countries.
The SC Bench thereafter decided to reject the FR petition stating that the court has no authority to inquire into that agreement as it has been tabled in parliament.
Mr.Vasudeva Nanayakkara was present in court with his supporters when his petition was taken up for inquiry.

"Struggle to achieve self-rule will continue"- American Tamils
[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 July 2007, 00:53 GMT]

In the peace rally attended by nearly one thousand American Tamils from several states across the United States in front of the Capitol Building, in Washington D.C. Monday from 12:00 noon to 3:00 p.m., the participants said: "We, the Tamil Americans, hereby proclaim that Eelam Tamils constitute a Nation. We resolve that our struggle to establish the right of Tamil people to Self-Determination, and to establish self-rule in the territories Tamil people have made their home for centuries will continue until our goal is achieved," in a declaration released to the press at the conclusion of the rally. "We appeal to the legislators, the Administration and the people of the United States who fought and won their freedom to empathize with the Tamil people, and help to establish our right to Self-Determination from the remnants of the Sinhala colonial State," the declaration further said

Expatriate Tamils, including a large contingent of second generation American Tamils, from far-away states including Florida, Ohio, California, and Boston, and from several other states attended the peace rally.
Participants carried colorful placards, wore sun-visors and T-shirts carrying the message of peace and the right of Tamil for self-determination, and shouted slogans throughout the rally.
Tamil youth group which has organized a pre-, post-rally congressional lobbying campaign, read messages of support from several Congresspersons between the speeches by International Human Rights Lawyer, Karen Parker, New York Attorney Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran, Ellyn Shander, a Medical Doctor from New Canaan, Connecticut who had visited the NorthEast to provide care and grief counseling to the tsunami survivors, and several others to the participants.
Chris Gaston, Senior Aide to Congressman Rush Holt from New Jersey met with the contingent that attended the rally from the Congressman's home state.
Ms Parker said: "Because of the right to self- determination, the Tamil areas belong to the Tamils. It is their land. The civilian government and the military force - the LTTE - have a right de jure (by law) to this State. Tamils presence in their own land is not de facto and their government is not a de facto one.
"The Sri Lankan government’s occupation of part of the historic Tamil Eelam is de facto. They are there by the clear facts on the ground but they don’t have the legal right to it," Ms. Parker added.
The declaration read at the conclusion of the rally also noted that 100,000 Tamils have died and more than a million have been internally displaced during the struggle, and that Tamils did not participate in Sri Lanka's 1972 and 1978 constitutions which "institutionalized discrimination" and "denied Tamils effective role in decision making process."

In former Afghan king Zahir Shah's death, India has lost a friend: Natwar
By ANI Monday July 23, 09:29 PM New Delhi, July 23 (ANI):

Former Foreign Minister Natwar Singh today expressed grief over the passing away of former Afghan king Mohammad Zahir Shah, and said that in his death, India has lost a friend.
"He had visited India many times and I think it was a very good of (Hamid) Karzai government to invite him back. Literally he was the father of the nation (of Afghanistan), so I think India has lost a friend, "Singh said.
Singh, who had good personal equations with the former King, said that he was not surprised about his death since nonagenarian's health was not well for last one month.
Shah, 92, today died in Kabul after a prolong illness.
He ruled Afghanistan from 1933 until his cousin and brother-in-law, Mohammad Daoud, overthrew him in 1973 in a bloodless coup.
He was the last ruler of the Durrani dynasty in Afghanistan.
Remaining in exile in Italy for close to thirty years, Shah returned home as an ordinary citizen in 2002 at the request of present President Hamid Karzai.

(ANI)EU gives €15 million aid package for Sri Lanka conflict victims and refugees
Wednesday, July 25, 2007, 13:29 GMT, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.

July 25, Colombo: The European Commission today said that it has allocated a 15 million Euro humanitarian package to help conflict-affected people in Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan refugees in Tamil Nadu, India.
The funds to be channelled through the European Commission Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO) under the responsibility of Commissioner Louis Michel include a specific €3 million for food aid activities.
The funds are to cover basic needs such as shelter, water, sanitation, food security and healthcare for the conflict communities in Sri Lanka and to improve access to water and sanitation for the Sri Lankan refugees living in Tamil Nadu, India, the EU said in a statement.
Announcing the aid package Commissioner Louis Michel said that the Commission is extremely worried by the increase in violence that is affecting Sri Lanka and shocked by the deliberate attacks against relief organisations.
“Aid agencies need to have access to victims with full security and protection for their personne,” he said.
He urged all parties to the conflict to respect international humanitarian law and condemn any attack against humanitarian operations and workers.
Some 800,000 people have been internally displaced and another 100,000 Sri Lankan Tamils live in refugee camps in India.

Colonial rape of Uva-Vellassa: Is History Repeating Itself?
July 24th, 2007 By Prof. Gananath Obeysekera

This article is a response to the proposed allocation of 23,000 hectares of land (approximately 57,500 acres), for sugar cane cultivation in the area of Uva-Vellassa to the Booker Tate Co. Ltd, UK conjointly with their local agents listed as IMS Holdings located in Colombo.
Uva-Vellassa is a vast area and by today’s reckoning consists of the districts of Badulla, Monaragala and Ampara. It was the area that heralded the famous rebellion of 1817-1818 and in its aftermath and was systematically destroyed by the British in what I have called the “rape of Uva-Vellassa.” I shall initially deal with a synoptic account based primarily on Paul E. Pieris’ work on the historic role of this region during the rebellion and then outline the proposals formulated for the “development” of this region alongside my criticisms of the project.
Part 1
Vellassa and the 1818 rebellion
Vellassa is historically important as the locus of the first major rebellion against British rule during the period 1817-1818, the only rebellion that embraced virtually all the Kandyan kingdom and nearly toppled the colonial government. It was triggered by local issues but later became a rebellion against British rule when Dorai Svami, saying he was a direct descendent of the Nayakkar kings, emerged as a claimant to the throne. According to British accounts he was an ex-monk named Vilbave. I shall simply refer to this person as the “claimant” or “Prince” because people accepted him as the legitimate heir to the throne.
A key feature of the uprising was the role of the Vaddas led by a distinguished Kandyan Vadda chief, Kivulegedera Mohottala. He mobilized his forces in support of the Prince, thereby expressing the traditional Vadda loyalty to the Kandyan kings. Around July 1817 the claimant announced that the god Skanda at Kataragama had appointed him to be King and crowds began to receive the claimant and his entourage as they travelled from Kataragama to Buttala. Eventually, the Prince came to Kokagala near Padiyatalava, the sacred mountain of the Vaddas where he was under the protection of the Vadda chief, Kivulegedera. Many local chiefs gathered there including Maha Badulugama Rate Rala of Uva.
Wilson, the “resident” of Badulla at the time, was then asked to interview the “stranger” in person but he could not be easily located. Wilson therefore dispatched a contingent to seize him, a difficult task because the Prince was in Vadda country under the protection of a large contingent of Vaddas. In the village of Bakinigaha, the contingent was confronted by Butava Rate Rala and his men, captured, sent to Kokagala and their leader sentenced to death by the Prince. Then Wilson himself went in early December with twenty Malay and Kaffir soldiers under Lieutenant Newman and reached the village of Butava. Butava Rate Rala had fled into the forest. On his way back to Badulla Wilson reached the Pattini shrine at Itanavatta, near Bibile. There he apparently stopped to defecate at a nearby stream when he was killed by Sinhala arrows. A monument to him exists to this very day at the spot. Ironically most of the names of the Sinhala and Vadda chiefs who led the rebellion hardly appear in the cultural memory outside of this region. A week after Wilson’s death the Prince “assumed the name Viravikrama Sri Kirti and appointed the Household officials whom court etiquette rendered necessary,” according to Paul E. Pieris.
Simon Sawers, the trusted second in command of the notorious master spy John D’Oyly, was then sent to Badulla on 27 October 1817 to oversee matters. The well-known Kandyan chief Kappitipola Nilame was also sent by D’Oyly to Badulla. The British strategy was to isolate the region and this was done by Major MacDonald who with four detachments moved from Badulla, Kandy and Bintanna and met on the 31st at Haunsanvella, near the place of Wilson’s death. Here he engaged in a massive destruction of village homesteads and crops. Such scorched earth tactics became the norm for British soldiers during the rebellion but as Pieris points out that such a policy was unthinkable to Kandyans for whom destroying crops even in time of war was an act of sacrilege. With this development dozens of local leaders known as rate ralas (chiefs of a cluster of villages) joined the movement.
Meanwhile Kappitipola had left Badulla as an emissary of the British to deal with the situation in Vellassa but he was captured by Vaddas at Alupota, on November 1, 1817. According to one of the local histories I am now collecting from the field it was again Kivulegedera who headed the Vaddas. The details of the negotiations between Kappitipola and those who captured him are not clear; what is clear is that Kappitipola, from being the agent of the British government, now became the leader of the rebellion and was endowed with the title Pallegamapaha Adigar by the Prince. With Kappitipola’s involvement the rebellion ceased to be a local one and became a national movement in 1818.
I will not deal with the wider spread of the rebellion in this account, except to say that large tracts of this region were completely destroyed and most of the leaders were captured and executed or sent to Mauritius, the notorious penal colony of the time. They may be forgotten by the rest of the country but not forgotten by the people of Vellassa. Following the custom of this region, several of the leaders of the rebellion, among them Kivulegedera, Migahapitiya, Godegedera and Kappitipola, were deified and continue to be propitiated in collective rituals that I am now studying.
According to Vellassa folk, the term for their region means “the country of hundred thousand rice fields (vel laksha). An English major writing to the Governor, the year before the rebellion noted: “Every village in Velassy District [contains] the finest, the most beautiful fertile country I have ever seen.” Yet today, though it is nearly two centuries since the British scorched earth policy, many of the rice fields are still abandoned and Vellassa remains one of the poorest areas of the country. After the British destruction some of the people fled to mountain tops; others moved to the East Coast and their descendants exist to this very day as Tamil speakers with Sinhala vasagama names. Yet others were forcibly relocated. Sawyers wrote to D’Oyly to say that:
“Until a clear sweep is made of the principal Chiefs of Walapone and Veyalowa such as been made with those of Vellassa, there will be no security there. It is upon this ground I would humbly presume to recommend that every individual of the Kivulegedera, Hapatagame, Andawella, Boragolla and Yallegama families should be removed from the Interior.”
Compare this with the statement made eighty years later by Archibald Lawrie, a notable British judge:
“The story of the English rule in the Kandyan country during 1817 and 1818 cannot be related without shame. In 1819 hardly a member of the leading families, the heads of the people, remained alive; those whom the sword and the gun had spared, cholera and smallpox and privations had slain by hundreds.”

The beneficent and benign pax britannica that followed the rebellion was erected on this terrifying base, as I believe was the case with British policy throughout its colonies.
In the years that followed vast extents of land were given over to coffee and later tea plantations, especially in Uva. The view that these areas were unpopulated is simply false. For example, Namunukula in Uva is nothing but a large tea plantation now but once it harbored local communities living under the gaze of their god Indaka. Neither the communities nor the deity exist today. It is this return of colonial policy under the guise of contemporary international capitalist development, the dark or shadow side of the colonial persona that seems to be surfacing in Sri Lanka’s ruling class in what might well develop into the second rape of Uva-Vellassa.

Part 2
In this section I am using documents I was given by concerned residents of Bibile a few days ago. According to these documents IMS Holdings, the local agents for Booker-Tate, have identified lands available in the Monaragala, Badulla and Ampara districts especially in seven AGA divisions all in Uva-Vellassa and have requested a total of 23,000 hectares (57,500 acres) for sugar cane cultivation from this area. 200 hectares (500 acres) have already been allocated to the factory and buildings on a fifty year lease. Another 3,000 hectares (7,000 acres) for a pilot project to be jointly owned by the company and out-growers (local farmers) has also been granted. Under this scheme 1,500 families of local farmers will be given two hectares (five acres) each to work. These farmers, although owning land jointly (havule) with the company, will not be permitted to live on the land, only to work it under the direction of the company. Instead they will be allocated between 40 and 60 perches (approximately quarter to half acre) elsewhere, for their homes which will be built by the housing development authority. A further 20,000 hectares (50, 000 acres) are to be allocated from this region of Uva-Vellassa for sugar cane cultivation on the basis once again of five acres per out-grower. This is necessary as the factory needs a supply of one million tons of cane per year. The department of forestry, the department of lands and the central environmental authority have been asked to expedite the release of these lands. Lands privately owned by villagers or lands given to them by the government for residence and cultivation can be acquired for this purpose.

This project will cost a total of 18,752 million rupees. The company will invest 13,534 million rupees; the balance would have to be provided by the government which hopes to do so with foreign aid.
The project targets are the production of 80,000 metric tons of sugar per year; ten million liters of alcohol; and to generate 25 megawatts of electricity. Consequently, they estimate that they can save the government about 2.5 billion rupees per year that would normally go for the import of sugar. According to the company the government will also save 17 million rupees per month which it now pays out as Samurdhi subsidies to 34,000 families or 98,000 persons living below the poverty line. The reason given is that these people with their two hectares of land will now have a stable income.
The criticisms are obvious and it is surprising that the cabinet did not see them. Perhaps it is natural that a government strapped for cash would be eager to save the tremendous expenditure on the import of sugar and on the Samurdhi program. However we are not told how these statistics were arrived at; or whether the company and the government ever calculated what happens with the fluctuations of the international sugar market especially in the context of new large scale sugar cultivation opening up in South America. What happens if there is a world glut of sugar production leading to a down turn in the price of sugar? If and when this happens, the lucrative gains for the government might prove to be illusory and the earnings of farmers might drop drastically. Booker-Tate must surely be aware of such contingencies and I suspect that this is the reason why no mention is made of the estimated rupee income that a farming family will earn under this project. And no contingency is provided (as for example an insurance system) if and when prices fall in the world market.
I shall show later that over fifty percent of this proposed land area is already occupied by farmers who will be displaced and lose their lands when the project comes into operation. One must ask whether the maximum half-acre proposed for each of family of out-growers for house building will compensate for their lost farm land. Consider also the strange proviso that the company I.M.S Holdings (not a government or independent organization) should prepare an environment impact report. My understanding is that contemporary law requires an environmental report including an archeological survey of the region to be made by the relevant government departments before land is released for such development projects. But if already the 3,200 hectares have been given to the company, then what probably will happen is that compliant government officers will simply rubber stamp a decision already made. A serious archeological survey of selected sites within this large area simply cannot be done in a few months but needs trained personnel and modern equipment and a period of a few years.
I am not a professional archeologist but my research assistant is one. I can assure the reader that the Vellassa region is studded with archeological remains, such as Brahmi inscriptions, drip ledge caves where monks meditated, larger meditational complexes, ruined viharas and Buddha statues (some of whose heads have been lopped off by contemporary treasure seekers). The conventional wisdom is that there were two civilizations, one in the northern Raja Rata and the other in Ruhuna and just forest in between. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sri Lankan Buddhist civilization was a continuous one and the region of Uva-Vellassa was connected with the north and south to constitute a large and fabulous culture area. There are also remains of a road in the Nilgala forest that local people say connected Magama in the south with Anuradhapura in the north.
By the end of the 15th century, much of this area probably fell into ruin. Bintanna-Alutnuvara (Mahiyangana) remained a powerful centre till at least the beginning of the 17th century It was an entrepot of trade with the East Coast ports and also strategically located on the road from the East Coast to Kandy taken by foreign embassies. Bintanna-Alutnuvara was also the place that Kandyan kings sent their families for safe keeping during political troubles. Dutch accounts from around 1602 show it as a place where “the old Emperors used to hold court as it is a beautiful city where there are many large streets, beautiful buildings and wonderful pagodas or heathen temples and among others there is one whose base is 130 paces round, extraordinarily beautiful, very tall E. In it is also a beautiful and large palace of the Emperor full of beautiful buildings within E”
Another Dutch account has called it “one of the most beautiful cities of the entire island where everything that one thinks of can be obtained.” How and when this place turned out to be a “ruined city” is anybody’s guess. Sri Lankans should be dismayed to see a vital part of this region which contains the buried remains of their past history and culture leveled to the ground by tractors.
The most trenchant criticisms of the project comes from the District Forest Officer, Monaragala to the Managing Director, IMS Holdings written on 21 December, 2005 in response to an IMS request for the release of land in Uva Vellassa. The Forest Officer makes the following points.
1. Most of the lands requested by IMS Holdings are owned by the Forest Department and about 50% of that land is already in occupation by villagers on legitimate deeds given by the government. Additionally, there are long term residents who have occupied the lands but without legal documentation.
2. Part of the lands claimed for this project belongs to the proposed Nilgala protected area for Ayurvedic plants. It is the largest extent of forest in the country containing medicinal plants.
3. The proposed area also contains land presently demarcated as reservations for rivers and waterways and is a catchment area for the Gal Oya reservoir. The alienation of this forest land will affect the farming and the production of electricity for this part of the Eastern province.
4. Because the proposed project area will border the Gal Oya forest reserve, the planting of sugar cane will attract elephants and intensify the man-elephant conflict.
5. Owing to the planting of sugar cane in areas bordering forest reservations, the risk of extensive forest fires will be heightened.
Having made his cogent case the official tells IMS Holdings: “We cannot agree to release this land for the company.”
As far as we know neither the government nor the company has responded to or addressed the issues raised by this courageous official. The IMS proposal states that this project will effectively be a substitute for hena or shifting slash and burn cultivation. This traditional form of hena cultivation has been defunct in this region because it has been banned by law. There is good reason for this, namely, its negative environmental consequences and the destruction of forests. Even in lands allocated by the government to villagers (also called hena) for limited cultivation no felling of trees is permitted. But if hena cultivation and the felling of trees have been forbidden for good reason, what is the rationale for the large scale destruction of forests that will result from this project? If right now it is illegal for an Ayurvedic physician to pick a single medicinal herb from a protected forest, then what is the rationale for the wholesale destruction of the very forests that contain medicinal plants and other rare species?
IMS Holdings are the local agents for the international sugar company Booker and Tate of UK which was same company that in the early 1980s were given (I think) about 80,000 acres in Pelawatta adjoining the Yala game sanctuary. After completely denuding the forest and planting sugar cane, the Pelawatta project was terminated by Booker-Tate after five years or so, perhaps when tax incentives and other perks had expired. What is there to say that Booker history will not repeat itself? Pelawatta was subsequently bought by a local company. It now produces some sugar but large tracts of land that are no longer under sugar cultivation but have been converted into a kind of Leisure Park with a golf course. Its main by-product is alcohol. The new Vellassa project is generously expected to add ten million litres more of alcohol per year. We can only hope that this will be for export and not for consumption in a nation already viewed as the second largest consumers of alcohol world-wide. The elephants that have been displaced from the Pelawatta area now cause serious man-elephant conflicts in the villages surrounding Lunugamvehera and Wellawaya, a foreboding of what will happen if the new project is implemented.

The fate of sugar factories so far forces us to ask what happened to other sugar cane plantations. A major sugar cane project was in Hingurana as part of the Gal Oya project in the early 1950s. What was touted as one of the largest sugar factories in South Asia was established there. This was abandoned in the early 1990s with the owner disappearing into nothingness leaving behind huge debts unpaid to government banks. Then there was the Kantalai sugar factory, abandoned now for nearly two decades? These earlier failures should surely caution us on embarking on any more grandiose cane projects. And the public has a right to know whether fanciful projections of income were also made in respect of those now defunct sugar cane factories, including the Booker-Tate project at Pelawatta.
While it would be foolish to deny that there might well be immediate benefits for farmers by projects of this sort, it is the mid and long term consequences that are troubling. I am also not opposed to rational capitalist development, as has been envisaged for Colombo and Hambantota. But one must object to the predatory form of contemporary global capitalism that often enough occurs at the expense of the smaller and economically less developed nations.
It seems that the approval of this project was done under a veil of secrecy. None of the villagers I met were aware what was in store for them. Nor did my colleagues in the Department of Archaeology know of it. Surely, a project of this magnitude should be open for public discussion and the input of local experts familiar with conditions here should be aired and creatively employed to resolve issues that might ultimately have disastrous consequences for the nation. One way of doing this is to open up the debate to a larger concerned public. From my personal knowledge of this area and from historical data I have been working on, if this project is implemented one immediate consequence will be the wiping out of archaeological sites and with it the historical and cultural memory of a people.
The Minister for Supplementary Crops, Mr. Dharmadasa Banda, states in the Daily Mirror of 2 July that he has a ten year plan for the sugar cane industry. The Minister should unequivocally reject the Booker-IMS proposals and instead look at some of the projects in neighboring India, the largest producer of sugar after Brazil. Eschewing mono-culture, the ISCON farm near Bangalore has encouraged farmers to plant sugar cane alongside other crops using green manure; and these farmers have managed to produce 65 tons per acre, much larger than that estimated by IMS holdings. I suggest a creative adaptation of this model (or similar models) so as to include the large extents of abandoned or under-cultivated land in this region along with existing hena gardens. Also the current private owners of sugar cane factories should be compelled to produce sugar cane, rather than leaving the land fallow or using the land for non-agricultural purposes. If some of these suggestions are followed, no destruction of forests and archeological sites need occur. And instead of investing in a new factory, the cultivated cane should be shipped to existing factories, renovated, in Kantalai, Hingurana and Pelawatta. Other models are entirely possible but these need careful consultation and planning with a variety of local experts, rather than a foreign company with little knowledge of local conditions.
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Well - known academic Prof. Gananath Obeysekera served for long as head of the Anthropology Dept at Princeton University in New Jersey, USA. He is now back in Sri Lanka engaged creatively and constructively.