Landowners from Valikamam North protest outside a Sri Lankan military bungalow in Myliddy, demanding the return of their land, earlier this month. File photograph
The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) has found that the Sri Lankan military continues to occupy private land, run farms and businesses and subject families of the disappeared to surveillance across the Tamil North-East, 17 years after the end of the armed conflict.
“Seventeen years after the end of the armed conflict, militarization remains a persistent feature of governance and land use in the Northern and Eastern Provinces,” the commission said in a 76-page report on the human rights situation in the two provinces, published this week.
The study, based on field visits and consultations with officials, civil society groups and affected communities, covers enforced disappearances, mass graves, memorialisation, militarisation, surveillance, land, religious freedom, development projects and livelihoods.
The commission described the military’s occupation of parts of Valikamam North since the 1990s as “one of the most egregious and longstanding instances of military occupation of private land”, and said it had received information that the military “continue to engage in unlawful activities” there, including commercial farming and business ventures. No durable solution had been offered to the displaced families, it said.
It found that the military’s Civil Security Department (CSD) runs farms and pre-schools in the region, and that recruits are told during a month of military training not to take part in anti-government activity, including protests by families of the disappeared. Local farmers say produce from military-run farms is sold below market price, making it hard for them to compete.
The construction of the Tissa Raja Maha Viharaya in Thaiyiddy by the Gajaba Regiment on privately owned land “exemplifies the use of security institutions in religious appropriation”, the report said. It also recorded the obstruction of Hindu worship by the Sri Lankan police, the army and the Department of Archaeology.
Palaly residents at a protest demanding the return of their land this month. File photograph
“Security forces continue to subject victims’ families, civil society actors, and journalists to sustained surveillance, intimidation, and harassment, particularly around activities involving protests, commemorations, and demands for truth and justice,” the commission said.
Protesters are photographed and filmed, and later receive phone calls or home visits from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) or the Counter-Terrorism and Investigation Division (CTID), it found. Women who lost husbands or children report daily surveillance and harassment by the CID, CTID and Special Task Force (STF).
The report cited the CTID’s six-hour questioning in August 2025 of the journalist Kumanan Kanapathipillai while he was reporting on the excavations at Chemmani, and the use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) against people who posted about Maaveerar Naal.
Thousands march in Jaffna demanding an international investigation into the Chemmani mass grave in September. File photograph
More than 580 skeletal remains have been recovered from the Chemmani mass grave, the report noted. The commission said there is still no standard operating procedure for mass grave investigations and no affordable capacity for DNA analysis, and recorded allegations that law enforcement officers had intimidated people involved in the exhumation and families of the disappeared.
It called for the law on enforced disappearances to be amended to recognise widespread and systematic disappearance as an offence, for independent funding of the Office on Missing Persons (OMP), and for a voluntary DNA bank for families of the disappeared.
Among its other recommendations, the commission called for the military to end its occupation of private and community land unless legally justified, and to withdraw from agriculture and education. It urged the Inspector General of Police to stop the intimidation, surveillance and arbitrary arrest of people exercising their constitutional freedoms.
The commission also called on the government to compile a comprehensive list of all those who surrendered, were detained or were sent for rehabilitation at the end of the war, along with the military officers responsible for them.
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