Sri Lanka to reduce troops in ex-war zone in north
Sri Lanka’s military said on Thursday that it would eliminate more than a dozen army camps in the former northern civil war zone and give the land back to the original owners, a move that comes ahead of key council elections.
Sri Lanka has faced rising international criticism for failing to demilitarise the north since the quarter-century-long civil war ended in 2009 when government troops crushed the separatist Tamil rebels, who were fighting to create a separate state for minority ethnic Tamils.
Troops will be removed from 13 camps in the Jaffna peninsula and the locations, “for which the army paid rent, will be handed over to the original owners,” said military spokesman Brigadier Ruwan Wanigasooriya.
Sri Lanka has faced rising international criticism for failing to demilitarise the north since the quarter-century-long civil war ended in 2009
The decision marks a change in the government’s stance on demilitarising the north. President Mahinda Rajapaksa last year rejected international calls to remove military camps in the region, saying his government was not prepared to undermine national security by removing them because remnants of the Tamil rebels remained active.
The move also comes after the government called for provincial council elections in the Tamil-majority Northern Province, once the theatre of bloody battles between government troops and the rebels. A date for the vote - the first council elections in the province since the end of the war - has not been set, but it is likely to be in September.
Wanigasooriya, however, said the decision to remove the camps was not related to the elections, saying the military has been gradually reducing the presence of troops. He said more than two-thirds of land once occupied by the military has been handed back to its owners since the war’s end and that the number of troops has been reduced to less than 15,000.
During the height of the war, more than 30,000 troops occupied the Jaffna peninsula.
Since the end of the war, the government has been under intense international pressure to keep its promise to politically empower the Tamils by strengthening the power of the provincial councils, which are the highest level of local government.
Sri Lanka is also facing criticism for failing to promote ethnic reconciliation and probe the allegations of war crimes by government troops during the final stage of the war.
