Land & Property Desk

Post-war assessment of military presence, land occupation, and the failure of reconciliation mechanisms in the North-East.

Field investigation of land occupation, militarisation, and demographic engineering in the post-war North-East.

Updated documentation of state land-grab patterns, archaeology-led Sinhalisation, and ongoing dispossession in Tamil-majority districts.

Demographic-engineering pattern: Buddhist vihara construction, Himikama orders, and forest-department land seizures across Tamil districts.

Colombo-based independent policy research on land release, HSZ regularisation, and statutory gaps in restitution. Honesty-index reference: the Sri Lankan state's 2025 release figure is approximately 672 acres — published verbatim alongside PEARL/Oakland evidence that the underlying Sinhalisation pattern (Buddhist vihara construction, Himikama orders, forest-department seizures) continues. TLTE never aggregates its own land-loss figure; the 672-acre release is cited as the state claim, not as TLTE's finding.

Active digitisation of Jaffna land registers and ola-leaf manuscripts. The Tamil-produced corpus — leads where both Tamil and colonial-era sources exist.

Jaffna-based policy-research centre. Tier-A reports on militarisation and demilitarisation of the North-East, women in post-war contexts, land questions including military occupation and archaeology-driven dispossession, and post-war political-settlement questions. Operating inside the North-East — carries documentary risk that diaspora bodies do not. The case file defers to Adayaalam on every question where on-the-ground research is needed.

US-based diaspora policy-research and Hill-advocacy organisation. Successive Tier-A reports on Sinhalisation (Withering Hopes, Erasing the Past), militarisation, land, and reconciliation. Submits Congressional testimony on Sri Lanka appropriations and human-rights conditionality. Participates in UNHRC advocacy each March and September session. The case file's primary deference partner on Sinhalisation and land questions in the North-East.

Colombo-based independent policy research organisation. Standing coverage of land releases in the Northern and Eastern Provinces (anchor for the 672-acre Verité-CPA figure used in the Unmai Land Desk honesty index), 13th Amendment devolution monitoring, HRCSL engagement on ICCPR Act enforcement, and the legal analysis of the Online Safety Act 2024 and PTA Amendment 2022. Tier-A independent Sri Lankan source paired across the case file with PEARL/Oakland/Adayaalam.

PEARL's 2024 report documenting state-driven Sinhalisation of place names, archaeological appropriation, vihara construction on Tamil land, and the decimation of Tamil heritage in the North-East. Paired with Oakland Institute (2024) as the Tier-A anchor for the Unmai Land Desk and the case file's Sinhalisation entries.

Oakland's 2021 successor to The Long Shadow of War (2015). Documents post-2009 military conversion of occupation into permanent commercial agricultural control across Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu, Vavuniya, Batticaloa. Tier-A anchor for the land-seizure leg of the conditional-sovereignty argument.

HRW documentation of systematic failure to return land despite repeated official promises. The Mullikulam (Mannar) 100-acre case is paradigmatic — including the demolition of a Catholic church and graveyard on the site. Pairs with Oakland and PEARL for the post-2009 occupation pattern.

Quantifies Mullaitivu: at least 30,000 acres under military occupation; 1 soldier per 2 civilians; ~25% of the Sri Lankan Army in a district holding 0.6% of the national population — the structural data that anchors the post-war demographic-displacement reading. Numbers attributed to Adayaalam/PEARL, never to TLTE.

PEARL's framing of post-2009 Sinhalisation as a coordinated multi-instrument pattern: settler villages (Pulmoaddai, Kokkilai, Verugal/Seruwila, KKS), vihara construction on displaced land, toponym overwriting (Manal-aaru → Weli Oya; Kachchal Samalankulam → Sapumalgaskada), and forest/wildlife reclassification. Read with PEARL Erased 2024.

Peer-reviewed analysis establishing the Forest Department and Department of Wildlife Conservation as post-2009 land-acquisition vehicles — gazetting formerly Tamil-inhabited land as forest reserves and national parks to prevent IDP return. The legal-channel companion to military occupation and the gateway for archaeological reclassification of Hindu temples (Kurunthurmalai, Vedukunari Aathi Iyanaar, Neeraviyadi Pillaiyar) inside gazetted forest reserves.

Cross-organisational documentation of state-funded vihara construction on lands claimed as Hindu temple sites, Tamil-village land, or pre-existing Hindu/Buddhist archaeological complexes in the Northern and Eastern Provinces (Kurunthurmalai/Kurundi, Vedukkunari, Thiriyai, Neeraviyadi, Mullaitivu district sites). The 2020 Presidential Task Force for Archaeological Heritage Management in the Eastern Province (chaired by a Buddhist monk, no Tamil or Muslim members) crystallised the pattern. Civic record only — TLTE does not name individual monks or settlement-scheme officers. Cite PEARL Erased 2024, Oakland Endless War 2024, Adayaalam Normalising the Abnormal 2017.

Documents how state-aided colonisation under the Mahaweli scheme (1970s onwards) coupled land grants to Sinhala settlers with co-located vihara construction and Buddha Sasana ministry land allocation — the agricultural-resettlement and religious-architectural layers of the policy moved together. Establishes that the religion-state architecture is not just a constitutional ornament but an operational instrument of demographic engineering. Pair with cpa-land-restitution and pearl-erased-2024.