Sri Lankan state-sponsored colonisation schemes

Sri Lankan state-sponsored colonization schemes is the government program of settling mostly Sinhalese farmers from the densely populated wet zone into the sparsely populated areas of the dry zone. This has taken place since the 1950s near tanks and reservoirs being built in major irrigation and hydro-power programs such as the Mahaweli project.

Sinhala Buddhist nationalists within the Sri Lankan government, Buddhist clergy and Mahaweli department have deliberately targeted the Tamil majority northeast for state sponsored Sinhala colonisation, with the explicit intention to take the land into "Sinhala hands" away from the Tamils,^[1] and to disrupt the Tamil-speaking continuity between the north and east.^[2] This resulted in a significant demographic shift, with the resettled farmers contributing to an increase in the Sinhalese population in the northeast dry zone, thus promoting Sinhala-Buddhist hegemony in the area.^[3] Sinhalese settlers were provided with preferential access to land by the state in these regions, whilst the local Tamil speaking people were excluded from this privilege,^[4] making them minorities in their own lands.^[5]

Whilst empowering Sinhalese settlers, the scheme also served as a means to marginalize, exclude, and harm Tamil speaking minorities, treating them as the 'other'.^[6] It has been perhaps the most immediate cause of inter-communal violence,^{[7][8][9][10]} with violent displacement of Tamil civilians to make way for Sinhalese settlers occurring several times.^[11][12] The University Teachers for Human Rights has described this as ethnic cleansing of Tamils occurring with the support of the government since the 1956 Gal Oya riots.^[13] Following the end of war in 2009, Sinhalese officials and settlers in Weli Oya have expressed their desire to take more land further north in order to “make the Sinhala man the most present in all parts of the country”.^[14]