Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting Debate
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Heidi Alexander
Main Page: Heidi Alexander (Labour - Lewisham East)Department Debates - View all Heidi Alexander's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
Heidi Alexander Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I want to speak in the debate because two and a half weeks ago a delegation of seven Tamil constituents came to my constituency office. Two men sat in my office with tears in their eyes as they gave accounts of the torture they had recently been subjected to at the hands of the Terrorist Investigation Division.
Both men were asylum seekers who had come to this country hoping to find a safe haven. One had returned to Sri Lanka voluntarily; the other had been deported. One of the men rolled his sleeves up to show me the scars on the front of his arms, where he had been repeatedly burned with cigarettes. Another man told me how he had been abducted. When he left one of the camps in Sri Lanka, he was bundled into a white van and hit across the back with a steel rod. He also had electrodes placed on his head, and a bag covered in petrol was placed over his head in an attempt to suffocate him.
When the Minister and the Prime Minister are in Sri Lanka at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, I want them to raise with the Sri Lankan leadership the torture that is happening. I would like to know what the Minister will say to the Sri Lankan leadership about the accounts that those of us with Tamil communities in our constituencies have heard first hand.
Will the Minister raise with the Sri Lankan leadership the horrific things that we saw on the documentary “No Fire Zone” on Sunday? There was individual witness testimony about the shelling of hospitals and food supply areas in the later days of the conflict; it said that the firing came from the Sri Lankan Government. What discussions has the Minister had about Sri Lanka not becoming automatically the chair of the Commonwealth? That is an honour that the country does not deserve to have bestowed on it. We risk endorsing not only what has happened in the past because of the actions of the Sri Lankan Government, but what is happening now.
The hon. Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott) said that we cannot bring back the lives of those who have been killed in the conflict; we can respect them, however. I would prefer it if the Prime Minister did not represent us at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, but we need to take a strong stand there to respect those lives.