Sri Lanka's Forest Department has stopped placing boundary stones on land belonging to residents of Aruvithottam in Vavuniya, after farmers said officials had been marking their land without authorisation.
The Aruvithottam Farmers' Association took the matter to the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi parliamentarian P. Sathiyalingam on 22 September, alleging that Forest Department officials had been placing boundary stones on residents' land in the area, which falls within the Settikulam Divisional Secretariat.
Sathiyalingam raised it with the Vavuniya district secretary and the Settikulam divisional secretary, and with the district forestry officer. He said the department had acted unilaterally and repeatedly. Following instructions from the district secretary and district forestry officials, the boundary marking was stopped with immediate effect, and the farmers' association later confirmed to him that the work had ceased.
Sathiyalingam has raised the department's conduct before, at district and divisional development committee meetings, where he has called for stronger protection of residents' land rights .
Boundary marking of this kind is one way in which land in the North-East is removed from Tamil hands without an eviction. Once a plot falls inside a boundary drawn by the Forest Department or the Department of Archaeology, the residents who farm it become encroachers on state land, and the burden of proving title shifts to them. Farmers across the Vanni have reported the same pattern, in which stones and markers appear without notice, survey or consultation, and are followed by notices to quit.
Aruvithottam sits in Vavuniya North, an area from which Tamil families were displaced during the armed conflict and to which many returned to find their land claimed by state departments.
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