Mr. Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab): I have never visited Sri Lanka. My knowledge of the problems in Sri Lanka stems from my experience as the MP for Tooting for the past two years and as a councillor for Tooting ward between 1994 and 2006. There is a large Tamil diaspora in Tooting. In my experience, the Tamil community has helped to regenerate Tooting town centre and contributed to Tooting’s vibrancy. It has also brought cultural enrichment to our community in Tooting and Wandsworth.
Members of the community first came to the area as asylum seekers. Many of them became refugees and went on to become nationals. Most of them then became British citizens. They are proud to be Tooting Tamils. Tooting has a vibrant and well-used temple: the Sivayogam temple on Upper Tooting road. The White Pigeon charity on Upper Tooting road does a great deal of charitable work in Sri Lanka. The Tamil rehabilitation organisation is on Garratt lane. The South London Tamil welfare group, Wandsworth Tamil welfare association and many other groups do a tremendous amount of work not only in the community in Tooting, but in Sri Lanka. In my contribution I will articulate the concerns that those groups have raised with me. My experience of Sri Lanka comes through the eyes of my constituents, many of whom come to my surgeries to seek help and still have family members and loved ones in Sri Lanka.
As hon. Members have said, over the past four months, fighting has continued to rage between the Sri Lankan armed forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam—the LTTE. The 2002 ceasefire agreement that was signed by the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE now seems like years ago. It is worth remembering that up to 2002, the civil war in Sri Lanka had claimed the lives of at least 64,000 people, most of whom were civilians. Men, women and children were indiscriminately killed and seriously injured.
The Sri Lanka monitoring mission made some progress. As the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) commented, Norway deserves tributes for the role that it has played, but the US Government, the EU, Japan, the Indian Government and ourselves have also played a big role.
Many of us have used the BBC as our source of reference. It estimates that 4,000 more people, mainly Tamil civilians, have been killed in Sri Lanka since late 2005, when violence began to escalate once again, bringing the total number of people killed since the outbreak of civil war to 68,000. I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound) and for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) for reminding us of the history of Sri Lanka and where any blame for the civil war should be apportioned.
Hon. Members will be aware that although the LTTE was a party to the 2002 ceasefire agreement, it was—and still is—proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000 in the UK. The US and India have also proscribed the LTTE and declared it to be a terrorist organisation. In mid-May 2006, the European Parliament passed a resolution in support of declaring the LTTE a terrorist organisation. On 29 May, it was confirmed that EU Foreign Ministers had decided to list the LTTE as a terrorist organisation. On 31 May, the EU announced in a statement that sanctions against the LTTE were in force.
I accept that in the UK it is open to the LTTE to challenge proscription using the route set out in the Terrorism Act, and I understand that when the Home Secretary recently met Tamil groups he made it quite clear that any challenge would have to be made via that route. I take on board the serious points made by my hon. Friend the Minister, and it is right that they should be addressed. However, may I tell the Government and colleagues that there is a perception among the Tamil diaspora of double standards? The House of Commons Library note states, in the context of violence:
“The main protagonists are the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE.”
There is a belief that only the LTTE has been penalised. The Tamil diaspora cannot be confident that the EU is an impartial broker, following its declaration that the LTTE is a terrorist organisation, and there are fears that that will seriously weaken the Sri Lanka monitoring mission.
Colleagues will know from other debates in the Chamber going back many years the arguments about one man’s terrorist being another man’s freedom fighter. Concerns have been raised by my constituents about a dirty tricks campaign that is being waged against the Tamil diaspora in the UK. We have all seen—and it has already been mentioned—the press coverage on 21 April 2007, in which a representative of the Sri Lankan embassy in London claimed that the LTTE was behind a scam involving petrol station employees in the UK, in which credit cards were cloned, PIN numbers recorded and money withdrawn and allegedly used by the LTTE. On the other hand, Humberside police say clearly and unequivocally:
“Our evidence does not suggest that there is a definite link with Sri Lankan gangs.”
There is a perception in the communities of the Tamil diaspora that allegations and aspersions can be made without their having any recourse to try to clear their name. We should understand their frustration, and colleagues have articulated the snowballing of perceived unfairness, whether real or not, leading to other forms of discomfort and actions that we all condemn.
Dr. Howells: We are not taken in by anybody’s spin or attempt to subvert what we hope will be the even-handed treatment of all the members of the Sri Lankan diaspora in this country, whether they are Sinhalese, Muslim or Tamil. We are very well aware that all sides are pretty adept at using propaganda to further their own ends. We were not born yesterday, and we did not come in on a pineapple boat from Sri Lanka. We know exactly what is going on and we are watching it very carefully. We will make sure that we are even-handed and that everyone receives fair treatment.
Mr. Khan: I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments, which will be welcomed and received in the spirit in which they were made. He and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for International Development are friends of Sri Lanka, and will not be taken in by spin.
Stephen Pound: My hon. Friend has made many important statements on the Floor of the House, and the statement that he has just made is so important that it needs to be underlined. My own Tamil friends, neighbours and constituents have been agonisingly hurt by the statement that there is some sort of terrorist funding scam operating at petrol stations. It is crucial that my hon. Friend put that lie to bed, and it is important, too, that we recognise that many members of the Tamil community work extremely hard in petrol stations. We should be grateful to them for their hard work and their contribution to the economy, and we should not seek to spin them into an atmosphere of blame.
Mr. Khan: I am extremely grateful for that intervention from my friend and hon. Friend. I deliberately made a point in my introduction about the cultural enrichment that the Sri Lankan community has brought to Tooting and London, as well as the regeneration to which it has contributed. What impact do those press reports have on community cohesion, if labels about the Tamil community are so easily thrown around?
Colleagues have referred to atrocities in Sri Lanka, and they are right that the blame rests with all parties—there is no single party that can be completely exonerated. However, we must not ignore the fact that impartial international organisations objectively confirm the atrocities that have been committed. The UN working group on disappearances commented in December 2005 that
“of more than 12,278 cases of disappearances in Sri Lanka submitted to the government, 5,708 remain unclarified and this is the highest number of disappearances in the world next to the case of Iraq with 16,517 disappearances.”
The problem of internally displaced persons and refugees has been mentioned by many of my colleagues. The Tamil-speaking population of Sri Lanka has, by percentage, one of the highest rates of internally displaced people in the world today. Most of them have been bombed out of a number of locations. Most estimates show that more than one third of the remaining Tamil-speaking population on the island are displaced and living in makeshift camps and welfare centres. In addition, many others have recently fled to India, which has already had hundreds of thousands of refugees from past periods of the conflict and from the tsunami.
The Tamil diaspora represents one third of the Tamils from Sri Lanka and now numbers over 1 million persons. The camps for the IDPs are in deplorable condition, owing to lack of food, water, sanitation, medical care, schooling and adequate shelter. Some of the IDPs are housed in schools, making the schools for those local communities unusable. In a moving contribution, my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy), the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, mentioned the impact that visiting the IDPs had had upon him.
In its report in December 2005 the United Nations committee against torture commented on the atrocities in Sri Lanka, and in March 2006 the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial executions submitted a powerful report. Finally in relation to independent corroboration, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights stated clearly and unequivocally in December 2006, in a powerful report that I recommend to all colleagues:
“There is an urgent need for the international community to monitor the human rights situation in Sri Lanka as these are not merely ceasefire violations, but grave breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law . . . In the latest phase of its ethnic conflict, now more than 20 years old, Sri Lanka has witnessed a re-emergence of some of its most frightening ghosts: disappearances, abductions and killings by unidentified gunmen.”
In Tooting, the White Pigeon charity, which does a tremendous amount of invaluable work in Sri Lanka, tells me that a few weeks ago White Pigeon’s prosthetic technical workshop was bombed and destroyed by the air force in the Mullaitivu district. The charity also tells me that the ongoing daily bombing by the air force is adding many new physical disabilities to the people with whom it works in the Tamil communities.
I am told by the Tamil rehabilitation organisation in Tooting that there are 160,000 people whom it is helping who have no food and lack water and shelter. The hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) spoke about the A9 road, which is a main road into the northern province that has been blocked since August 2006. The blockage has prevented clothes, medicine and food from getting to people in Jaffna.
The UK and Sri Lanka have a special historical relationship. Until 1948, Sri Lanka was part of the British empire, and since 1948 and Sri Lanka’s independence, it has been part of the Commonwealth. Sri Lanka also has a special relationship with the Labour party. It was a Labour Government who gave Sri Lanka its independence. We have a special role to play in helping Sri Lanka in its current troubles. I call on my Government to use our special relationship to persuade all the parties and factions to recommit to the 2002 agreement.
I agree that terrorism and violence, whether state-sponsored or not, can never be the way to achieve a negotiated solution in Sri Lanka or elsewhere. I am aware that the work that my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen has done and will continue to do may lead the way to progress being made. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister confirmed that any advice and help that we can give, based on our experiences in Northern Ireland, will continue.
The international players must square a circle, as the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) commented. Although they accept that extensive autonomy for the north-east is the only realistic basis for a sustainable peace, they do not wish to reward the LTTE for its actions over the past few years. Once again, there are lessons that can be learned not only from Northern Ireland, but perhaps from South Africa. I am pleased that the Home Office has looked again at how we treated asylum seekers, and I welcome the fact that Sri Lanka has at last been taken off the white list of safe countries. Its inclusion in the list was causing my constituents and those of other hon. Members huge problems.
An early return to negotiations is crucial. I ask our Government to continue to use all the levers, public and private, at their disposal to alleviate the suffering of all the Sri Lankan people, so that peace and tranquillity can return to this beautiful island once again.
