Tuesday Jan 20, 2026
Tuesday Jan 20, 2026
Tuesday, 20 January 2026 00:44 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Flags off State-led land dispossession and anti-development policies targeting Eelam Tamils
People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) has released a new report and accompanying case study examining the Sri Lankan state’s ongoing project of Sinhalisation in the North-East, with a detailed focus on land dispossession and violence against Tamil dairy farmers in Mayilaththamadu–Madhavanai.
The report forms part of PEARL’s Sinhalisation series and builds on its 2022 publication, State-Sponsored Sinhalisation in the North-East. It defines Sinhalisation as the use of state power to assert Sinhala-Buddhist control over the North-East in order to erase its Tamil-speaking character. While these processes begin with land seizure, they extend to the coercive economic, cultural, and religious dispossession of Eelam Tamils, including the appropriation of livelihoods, resources, and sacred sites, which are subsequently re-inscribed as Sinhala-Buddhist property. The report documents how Sinhalisation operates as a form of ethno-national conquest, historically intertwined with ethnic cleansing and used by successive governments to obstruct Tamil demands for autonomy and self-rule.
Contrary to official narratives that frame these practices as “development,” PEARL’s analysis demonstrates that Sinhalisation functions as an anti-development project. It actively destroys existing economic systems, prevents the emergence of new ones, and entrenches poverty in Tamil-speaking regions. The report finds that state-led irrigation, settlement, and land redistribution schemes associated with Sinhalisation have failed to generate economic returns, and wasted public resources.
The accompanying case study on Mayilaththamadu–Madhavanai illustrates these dynamics on the ground. Tamil dairy farmers have been violently displaced from productive agricultural land, while Sinhala settlers, supported by state officials, security forces, and Buddhist clergy, have acted with impunity. The loss of cattle, disruption of milk supply chains, and destruction of livelihoods have inflicted severe economic harm on the Tamil dairy farmers, The report highlights that the destruction of valuable livestock in a debt-stricken and resource-scarce country is economically irrational, deepening instability and exacerbating Sri Lanka’s broader economic crisis.
“The Sinhalisation of Mayilaththamadu-Madhavanai exposes the reality behind the state’s development rhetoric,” said PEARL. “Driven by Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarianism, Sinhalisation is a systematic project of land dispossession and demographic engineering that violates Tamil livelihoods, while producing economically destructive and destabilising outcomes. This highlights the urgent necessity of Tamil self-determination, so that Tamils can exercise genuine control over their land, resources, and economic and political future, free from coercive state-led domination.”
PEARL urges the international community, including UN member states, to recognise Sinhalisation as a systematic state policy, take urgent action to halt state-sponsored land grabs, advance meaningful international accountability mechanisms in the face of repeated domestic failures, and support Tamil calls for self-determination.
