Sri Lanka

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. May I say to the hon. Gentleman that I have never been invited to Sri Lanka? Generally, I do not do international travel in my role as an MP, because I am constituency-focused. I secured this debate, and I have become involved in the Tamil cause, because of the Tamil community in my constituency and because of the information that I have received from them. I have become aware of the despair and distress that they experience. My own experience as someone who is London-Irish—I have Irish parents— is that people cannot just ignore what happened in the past. People cannot just move on and forget, because people do not forget. If we do nothing now, we will say to the next young generation that violent struggle will continue. We must address the issues now, in order to make progress.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I compliment my hon. Friend on her work and I urge her to resist the temptations from the Sri Lankan Government lobby that is in Westminster Hall today and trying to claim that all is well in Sri Lanka when the reality is that it certainly is not. Furthermore, holding the Commonwealth conference in the country would be an endorsement of the Sri Lankan Government’s policies on the Tamil people, and would be extremely damaging to the cause of human rights, to the image of Sri Lanka and indeed to the prospect of a peaceful future for the country.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and I will obviously take his views on board.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I will be brief, Mr Hollobone, so that the other Members can get in. I compliment you on your chairing of the debate and on your announcing in advance the line of speakers. That is helpful, and it is a good precedent for Westminster Hall debates.

I compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and the hon. Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott) on their contributions and on their work within the all-party group for Tamils and in support of the Tamil diaspora. The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) and I have been involved in issues regarding the Tamil people and Sri Lanka ever since 1983, when we were both first elected to the House, and I have never forgotten the huge demonstration that took place in July of that year in London because of the problems that there then were in Sri Lanka. There has been a litany of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka for the past 30 years and beyond.

It is not an accident that there is a large Tamil diaspora in London. Many Tamil people came to this country to seek a place of safety because of the civil war in Sri Lanka in the 1980s and the years before. I pay tribute to the diaspora community for pulling together. It supported the hunger strikes that took place out here in Parliament square and mobilised 200,000 people to march through London in support of the rights and survival of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka. Mobilising 200,000—almost the entire diaspora community—was a remarkable achievement; but, disgracefully, the British media routinely and almost totally ignored it. They were more concerned about traffic disruption in Parliament square than about human rights in Sri Lanka.

I recognise that things have changed and that things have to move on. There has to be a peace process, reconciliation and a reckoning with the past, which we are looking at to move forward.

My two essential points are that the UN report of last November specifically refers to the shelling of hospitals and civilian areas by the Sri Lankan armed forces and the way in which UN staff were driven away from the areas of conflict in 2008. I hope those issues will be seriously examined at the UN Human Rights Council meeting next month, which I hope to attend, as I have attended many Human Rights Council events

If we do not consider those issues, if we do not ensure the closure of what I do not refer to as welfare camps—at the end of the conflict, they were more like concentration camps—and if we do not address rights and opportunities for Tamil people in Sri Lanka, the war will return in a different form at a later stage. It is not a question of the Sri Lankan Government claiming victory over the Tamil people and the Tigers, as they have done; it has to be a question of their perception of the future of that country, otherwise in 10, 20 or 30 years’ time, if any of us are still here, we will be debating the same thing again: yet another massacre of Tamil people and yet another wave of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka trying to flee to a place of safety.

I hope that the Minister is able to tell us that the Government will be robust on the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting and will play a robust role at the UN Human Rights Council next month to show that the UN, the Human Rights Council and the human rights of the Tamil people matter in bringing about long-term peace in Sri Lanka.