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5.49 pm

Des Browne (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab): I think that everybody in this House feels the weight of the nature and scale of the suffering in Sri Lanka and believes that it has been endured for far too long.


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When making my contribution, I will observe the time constraints set down by the Chair. I heard what the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) said, and I do not intend to repeat all the statistics that the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) ably rehearsed to illustrate the scale of the challenge that faces us.

Members of Parliament across the Chamber have rightly paid credit to other Members for their contribution to this growing campaign, which has made some contribution to where we are today, although there is still a long journey to be travelled before we can be satisfied with what any of us have achieved. I want to pay special tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan) and my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who, since the middle of February, when I agreed to be the Prime Minister’s special envoy to Sri Lanka, have constantly been at my ear doing just what they have done today—speaking out passionately, eloquently and with a great degree of humanity about this issue, but at the same time ingeniously trying to find ways in which the whole process move towards the sort of conclusion that we all desire.

It is because we all feel the weight of responsibility in the current situation that I agreed to the Prime Minister’s request to act as the special envoy to Sri Lanka. In doing so, I followed in the distinguished and capable footsteps of my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy), who was appointed special envoy to Sri Lanka at the request of the Sri Lankan Government in 2006. He was entirely the right person to be appointed, because he was—I hope that he does not mind my describing him in this way—a workhorse in the Northern Ireland peace process and did a lot of the work for the Government and for others that people did not see. He was welcomed in Sri Lanka by those on both sides of the conflict; his presence there was celebrated. He spelled out in meetings—I have read the records—the steps that needed to be taken for a lasting peace and for the resolution of this conflict, which has continued for far too long.

The lessons learned by those of us who have been involved in trying to resolve conflicts not only in Northern Ireland, but elsewhere, still apply.

Mr. Love rose—

Des Browne: If my hon. Friend will excuse me, I do not intend to use the whole of my 10 minutes and will therefore not take any interventions.

All hon. Members know from our experience of debates, particularly on Northern Ireland, exactly what we need to do to create an inclusive peace process that has no preconditions attached to it, respects the rights and aspirations of all parties in a diverse community, and leads to a lasting peace. I had no illusions about my ability to resolve decades of conflict, but I wanted to make a small contribution in that context on the island of Sri Lanka. I have felt frustrated by my inability to do that thus far, but I have never given up on the opportunity to do so at some stage, if I stick at it.

Now there is a greater challenge—a humanitarian crisis and a situation that can be resolved only by a ceasefire and agreement to the conditions that I understand the Sri Lankan Government have agreed with John
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Holmes, Walter Kaelin and all those who have intervened with them and have been accepted on the island to discuss the matters that Members have raised about international supervision, conduct, and care of the people who come out of the conflict zone.

If hon. Members present, and those who hear this speech otherwise, will forgive me, I do not intend to rehearse all the steps that need to be taken, because I agree with what everybody has said. I want to say that the Sri Lankan Government have invited me to go to Sri Lanka with an all-party group of Back-Bench Members of Parliament. Those who have agreed to come with me are distinguished, serious and well-qualified Members of this House; I will not identify them because I have not agreed with them that I can do so. In any event, the applications for visas are with the Sri Lankan Government as I speak, and I want to ensure that they are processed and that we get to go.

I close by saying that I intend to go with that group to Sri Lanka to deliver on behalf of the House the message that it agrees today. I agreed to be the Prime Minister’s special envoy to work with and for the Government but not be of the Government, but I am a Member of this House. For that reason, I hope that the parties’ Front-Bench teams can get together and discuss what we are debating today, and give us a message that we can take to Sri Lanka that does not have behind it the division implied by a vote in this House. It will be much better if we speak with one voice, which we do. In five or 10-minute speeches one Member might give slightly different emphasis from another, and connections with people in our constituencies or elsewhere might rightly cause us to deliver certain messages, but we all agree about this.

We should speak with one voice and empower the small group of people from all parties who have bravely and readily agreed to come with me next week to deliver a very strong message. In that way, perhaps we can be one institution that says to the Sri Lankan Government and the people in the conflict, “This killing must stop, and there are very simple steps that can be taken to allow all of you to emerge from this with dignity and live in peace.”

5.56 pm

Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey) (LD): I thank the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Des Browne) for his contribution, for the efforts that he has already made, for working with colleagues in all parts of Parliament and for facilitating some of the Tamil community going to speak directly to people of influence in the European Union, the American State Department and Administration and, almost certainly within two days, the United Nations. They are very grateful, and his efforts are much appreciated.

Unlike some colleagues, although not others, I do not come to this matter because of a great constituency obligation, as I have almost no Tamil constituents. I come to it because when I was elected 25 years ago, I was alert to the fact that there was a fundamental constitutional problem in Sri Lanka that, unless it was resolved politically, could lead to the sort of crisis that we are in. When it became independent, the majority community built in its Sinhala Buddhist majority constitutionally. It did not accept that Sri Lanka should be a pluralist country of Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Burghers, Tamils and Sinhala. It did not
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understand that India is the great country that it is because it had understood that point just over the water, and because it is a secular state where people can rise to the highest office irrespective of their religion and where there is devolution to its various states. I saw that there was a potential problem, and those of us who have been in the House together for those 25 years know that history has borne that out.

We know that there have been further disasters since then, such as the tsunami. We know that the Sri Lankan Government have gradually committed more of their budget, which they need for schools, education and other things, to defence and internal security—I believe that it is currently about 20 per cent. It became obvious over the past few years that the situation would become worse when, as colleagues have said, Louise Arbour of the United Nations and the international press were asked to leave. It became obvious when almost all the international relief agencies were asked to leave, with only the International Committee of the Red Cross and Caritas having any significant presence in the north, and when the editor of the Sunday Leader was assassinated and nobody was brought to book. Nobody has been brought to book for a succession of assassinations. The result was becoming more obvious.

As friends in all parts of the House have said, there is now a crisis in Sri Lanka—a catastrophe before our eyes in a fantastically talented, beautiful, cultured place. However, it is a crisis also for the international political system. The pleas of the right hon. Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan) and the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), for whom I have great respect, those of friends in the Conservative party, those of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) and all my colleagues and those of the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun in New York reflect the fact that the systems have not moved in time to deliver the outcome. That is not good enough. The world cannot go on letting any Government, let alone the Government of a so-called democracy and a country that is part of the Commonwealth, behave in such a way, so alienating and suppressing their minority that they build up hostility potentially for generations.

Like others, I have spent heart-aching moments across the road in the past three and a half weeks since 6 April. I have been over the road every day bar two, and I was in the United States with three young British Tamils on one of those. I have in my hand a letter written by the students who came on to the streets as a result of what was happening in Sri Lanka. They were not organised; they were not a group that formed part of the existing structure of the Tamil community. The young people came on to the streets because they could not stand it any more. They made five simple requests. I shall repeat them because they are so simple, yet so fundamental.

The letter is dated 13 April. It states:

they name the young man who remains on hunger strike in Parliament square today—


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Those are not the pleas of irrational and unreasonable people. When I spoke to the young people and their friends, they added to their absolute priority—the ceasefire—immediate access so that the human rights of all are protected, as my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) and others said.

I have spoken to humanitarian workers who have been asked to leave the north. They said that the whole of the north is effectively a detention camp. I have an e-mail, written on 24 April, from one of the bishops of the Church in the north. It simply states:

I want to request specific things that add to but do not dissent from the unanimous and strong views that have been expressed here. It is important to urge the UN to continue to do more—let me reinforce the voices that have called for that. The UN must not only hear reports, but take a view. It has a right to intervene to protect minorities around the world, and it must do that.

The EU has important levers. It has been asked whether it can help with financial support through the GSP—generalised system of preferences—plus, which is a method of helping with textile concessions to the garment industry. We must not let the EU help Sri Lanka if Sri Lanka does not participate properly in the international community.

Mr. Love rose—

Simon Hughes: If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I want to allow others time to speak.

We are grateful to the secretary-general of the Commonwealth for seeing us. The Commonwealth must convene its ministerial action group and make it clear that Sri Lanka must uphold human rights. The Commonwealth says that its members must do that, and it must effect that. It is as nothing if it does not take a stand at such moments of crisis.

As the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) said, India and the United States—I was privileged to be in the State Department and with White House officials last week—are probably the two countries that are most able to exercise influence. We pray that they take every opportunity to use their influence now, not only to get the ceasefire, but the protection, the human rights observation and the international relief that is needed.

It would be completely unacceptable if the International Monetary Fund loan was granted in the present circumstances. I am not worried about the technicalities of the rules, but to give £1.9 billion to Sri Lanka in these circumstances would be completely unacceptable, and other non-emergency funding must not go there either.


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I absolutely endorse what my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton said. The Americans are clear, as we must be, that anybody who has committed war crimes should expect to be brought to trial and treated in a way that gives justice to all. The evidence is there—I have seen it—that heavy armaments have been shelling in the civilian zone and it will prove that the Sri Lankan Government, as well as others, are guilty of those sorts of crimes.

There will need to be peace and a political process in the future, and it will need to recognise the Tamil people’s claim to self-government. In the end, nothing else will be acceptable. However, just as people in this country, in Canada and in the Lebanon have understood these issues, so must Sri Lanka understand them too.

Unless we respond effectively now, the international community of young people and the Tamils around the world, who include some of the brightest and best in this country, will not just have found us wanting in their hour of need; they will have found the international community failing. Unless we show that politics can work, we will be failing them and failing politics.

6.6 pm

John Battle (Leeds, West) (Lab): I welcome this debate and would like to say a word of thanks to the Liberal Democrats for choosing this topic this afternoon. After 26 years and perhaps more than 70,000 dead—400 a week—we all have some responsibility both for not raising the profile of the issue much earlier and more often and for not pressing for action.

I speak not as a person who has many Tamil families in their constituency; rather, I come to this debate from the viewpoint of international development, human rights and campaigning for basic justice and peace. We have failed to raise the issue’s international profile. As well as passing resolutions at the UN, we ought to be pressing the UN on behalf of the international community to get in there.

I want to make two points about taking action. One is to do with humanitarian aid and assistance, which the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) mentioned, and the other is about the media. Not that long ago in this Chamber we discussed the crisis in Burma. What did we all do, in all parts of the House? We pressed for international action to get humanitarian aid to Burma, despite the Burmese authorities saying no, and it happened—it happened to a limited extent, but it did happen. The press are not there, but the aid got through.

We have to take the crisis seriously as a humanitarian crisis. We have seen reports since January 2008, when the ceasefire collapsed. We have seen violence and conflict and the death and immiseration of thousands, and still too many people are affected. The rumour is that 100,000 people are still trapped in the conflict zone, cluttered in makeshift shelters and completely exposed to the crossfire right now. That is a humanitarian crisis. We should not wait for the politics to be sorted out. Instead, we need the UN to get in there and, in a sense, interfere and stop what is happening by ensuring that civilians are protected, because that is what we and the UN should be about.

The Sri Lankan army moved on the northern towns that were controlled by the Tamil Tigers, but the rumours are that some 50,000 civilians are still trapped there. When the Sri Lankan army moved into Mullaitivu,
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250,000 civilians were driven out into the neighbouring countryside. Hundreds were killed, but it is reported that those people are still desperate, without any resources whatever. That is precisely the sort of situation that the humanitarian agencies of the UN ought to deal with, by getting in there, interfering and mixing it to ensure that those people are properly protected.

More worryingly, the International Committee of the Red Cross has reported that 250,000 civilians have received no humanitarian aid at all since 29 January. Still no safe corridors have been properly negotiated for those civilians to be evacuated. As the hon. Member for Richmond Park said, the Sri Lankan Government claim that they are setting up so-called welfare villages for internally displaced persons, but they are not monitored and there are fears that they will be more like Government detention centres than humanitarian aid camps. Practical support and help is therefore needed in those areas. It is reported that there are 180,000 Tamils in or waiting to enter the camps for internally displaced persons, many of whom are women and children and many of whom are maimed and damaged. They are victims of shelling and warfare and they need humanitarian assistance in the form of practical medical help and support, and food and water, now.

Yesterday, it was reported that a British surgeon working for Médecins sans Frontières said that 320 people had turned up at a hospital with 40 places. The health systems are being overwhelmed by the damage caused by this conflict. As a result, the victims of land mines, shells and shrapnel are turning up at hospitals and not getting any assistance whatever.

Keith Vaz: As has been mentioned, when the United Nations seeks to intervene in a humanitarian way—the visit of Sir John Holmes is an example—all it gets is condemnation from the Sri Lankan Government. That is why we must have a resolution from the UN, to give the international community the authority to act. What this Government have done is superb, but we need the UN’s imprint if we want the Sri Lankan Government to listen.

John Battle: I completely agree; this is not an either/or. Of course, if any action is to be taken by the UN, resolutions need to be passed. It is time for the international community to hold hands and to say that this is a humanitarian crisis. We might not be able to sort the politics out tomorrow, but we need to act now because of the humanitarian issues. That means that, in practice, there needs to be unrestricted access for the delivery of humanitarian aid. Such aid was delivered in Burma, and in East Timor during the conflict some years ago, as a result of the UN’s arranging for ships to be parked off the coast or near the ports. I made suggestions about that in the House at the time. That could happen in Sri Lanka now.


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