G8 news

Tsunami land grab

AS THE Tsunami-hit communities in Sri Lanka struggle to rebuild their lives, the right-wing coalition government of President Chandrika Kumaratunga is stealing the victims’ land.

A report in The Independent (10/6/05) shows that the government is enforcing a 200 metre wide ‘safety buffer zone’ in coastal areas preventing local fishing communities from returning. This land is however being acquired by the tourist board which locals fear will be used to develop hotel businesses. In Argum Bay, housing units planned for displaced residents are one mile inland.

As previously reported by the United Socialist Party (USP – the Socialist Party’s Sri Lankan counterpart) in the socialist, despite their heroic relief efforts with the support of the Committee for a Workers’ International, the relief response of the Sri Lankan and Western governments, six months after the Tsunami, has been a failure.

The USP has demanded that aid and reconstruction be under the democratic control of the working people and their communities and has produced a campaigning newspaper – the Voice of the Tsunami people – in both Tamil and Sinhalese to fight for this demand.