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Sri Lanka's Genocidal War - '95 to '01
Sinhala army runs Tamil forced labour camp
"(Sri Lanka Army's) Special Task Force personnel attached in the Kirankulam camp have ordered all adults between the ages of 18-50 in the village to clear the shrubs around the Kurukalmadam STF camp and assist in the reconstruction work of their security camp a TULF leader has charged.
'It has become a practice in the cleared areas of the Batticaloa district, particularly in the STF controlled areas to force Tamil civilians including school children to do manual work around their security camps. This has earlier taken place in the villages of Mandoor, Porativu and Thalankudah, where every Sunday adults including public servants and school children were forced to do labour work. I protested to the authorities of the STF on various occasions and this was stopped for sometime. Now I find that this inhuman act has started again,' TULF Parliamentary group leader Joseph Pararajasingham has said in a letter to President Chandrika Kumaratunga.
'... the forceful engagement of people at the point of a gun is not only inhuman but also a violation of basic rights,' he added appealing to the President to intervene in the matter. " (The Midweek Mirror , 26 November 1997)