Commonwealth

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, as the House may know I am chairman of the All Party Sri Lanka Group, which I started in 1975. I try to go to Sri Lanka once a year. My very best friend is an active Tamil living in the south of the country, leading the campaign for the rebuilding of Jaffna hospital, so I do not take all my information from the high commission in London.

Let me say at the start that Sri Lanka is a founder member of the Commonwealth and a very proud member. It is even more proud to hold this CHOGM convention. There are four core values: democracy, freedom of the media, human rights and trade. Let us start with democracy. There always have been elections in Sri Lanka. Only once, under JR Jayewardene did the then president decide that, because he had done so well in the provincial elections, he did not need to rerun to be president. Nevertheless, the turnout embarrasses us. It is more than 80%, nearly 90% quite often. Its register embarrasses us—it is better than ours. No one, so far, in Sri Lanka has been prevented from voting, as happened in parts of the United Kingdom in our last general election. In addition, it has had two female presidents. So far, we have had only one female leader.

On the media, there was censorship during the war; of course, there was. We had censorship in the United Kingdom during the war. When I went there just over a year ago, I saw every leading editor in the English language press, including from the Sunday Leader, which is every bit as strong as Private Eye, the New Statesman, or any other publication. When asked, individually, in a room that was not bugged, not one said that they suffered from censorship. There is no censorship. Yesterday I telephoned the Sri Lankan Government and asked about CHOGM. The statement that I was given was that all accredited media will be given access to CHOGM. I believe that that is absolutely fundamental, and I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench makes a note of that.

Human rights are a challenge; of course they are. After 26 years of war that decimated the top half of Sri Lanka, it is as bad as Germany was in 1945. There are huge problems of infrastructure that are now being addressed. I hope that everybody who goes there will look at the way in which it is being rebuilt. There are new homes, new schools, the reopened railway line, and so on. We can travel up and down Sri Lanka, as the cook of another friend of mine did all the way from Jaffna by bus, without being stopped once or needing papers. People can go where they like and every member of CHOGM can go wherever they like or see whoever they wish. There are still challenges. The LLRC, which was boycotted by the human rights groups, has gone quite a long way and makes further progress each month.

Of course, other areas have still to be addressed. There are two outstanding: one is alleged war crimes. We are beginning to get the answers from the census—the first census done by Tamil teachers in the Tamil area showing that in the last days of the war somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000 people were killed. That confirms what the in-country UN report says—not the external report that is being advised by the Global Tamil Forum and other parties; it is what the in-country report says about the same figures. So we are beginning to get somewhere there.

As to the Chief Justice, all I can say to my noble friend is that I am not a lawyer. However, I have now checked the constitution and there is provision in it for the Chief Justice to be removed, and that provision has been followed. We should remember that the Motion to remove her was initially moved by the Opposition.

There are problems still but they are being worked on. Trade will provide a wonderful opportunity.

The members of CHOGM will be very welcome in this beautiful country where, thankfully, they nearly all speak English and foreigners will find it much easier. The delegates will be able to go anywhere and see anyone they like and they will be greeted by just one word, “ayubowan”, which means “welcome” in Sinhalese.