Sri Lanka

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Naseby]

My Lords, first, I thank colleagues who wish to say something about Sri Lanka this afternoon. I appreciate that very much indeed. I would like to place on record the fact that the noble Lords, Lord Bilimoria and Lord Sheikh, are in the sub-continent and send their apologies to the Committee for being unable to be here this afternoon.

As I think the Committee well knows, I have no interests to declare other than the fact that I have been interested in Sri Lanka for 50 years, since I first worked there for the Reckitt and Colman group in 1963. I had absolutely no political interests at all at that time. I have paid two key visits among many. One was in January 2009 at the height of the war, which seemed to me an appropriate time to go, if I may use that phrase, to see exactly what was happening. The second was earlier this year when the peace was firmly established.

This debate is about the LLRC, as I will call it in shorthand. It is not about the Supreme Court and what has happened there, although I will allude to that later in my contribution. A war lasting 30 years or thereabouts is a very long war. A number of colleagues in the House came through the Second World War, which lasted only five years. Change is inevitable when a war ends and Sri Lanka is no different from anywhere else in that respect. However, one thing was different in Sri Lanka. I remember the sheer joy of VE Day, as I am sure do others. Initially, there was a sense of sheer joy in Sri Lanka but it was very quickly clouded by allegations of war crimes and allegations that Sri Lanka had abused certain other international laws. My analysis leads me to the conclusion that one of the key reasons why this happened was that although the Tamil Tigers were defeated on the ground in Sri Lanka, the network that they had set up across the world was still intact, many of the senior operatives were still in place, certainly vast funding was still available, and the propaganda machine was alive and well in the sense that the propaganda was still being pumped out. That affected particularly the million or so members of the Tamil diaspora who had left because of the conflict. They were clearly leant on—we know this from the evidence gathered in many countries—and as a result western Governments understandably felt that they had to listen. Whether or not they felt that they had to act is another matter.

In my view, if today’s debate is to do any good, we need to look impartially at what has happened. The LLRC was set up on 15 May 2010, one year after the defeat of the Tigers and the end of the war. The very fact that it was set up deserves a tick as that was a good action. The more than 1,000 oral and more than 5,000 written submissions indicate that an awful lot of people responded to it. The key point is that the report was published in full, is extremely thorough and is based on the key principles of restorative justice rather than retributive justice. Those of us who know south and south-east Asia well will appreciate that it very much reflects the philosophy of the five principles of Buddhism and indeed the principles of Hinduism. People of real eminence in that society were appointed to the relevant body. Sri Lanka has been criticised for doing that and for not inviting international observers to participate. However, we chose to have “good eminent people” from our own Civil Service, and people from that sort of background, on our Chilcot commission. The report we are discussing was produced just over a year ago, whereas three years on we still do not have the Chilcot report and none of us really knows when it will come out.

The other people who were making noises at that time were the human rights groups, the International Crisis Group, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty. Sadly, each refused to give any evidence at all on the grounds that they did not like the make-up and, in their view, the independence of the eminent persons. I think that that is a great pity and shows non-objectivity on the behalf of those groups. I am astonished that Amnesty in Canada has now accepted funds from the LTTE. I find it quite extraordinary that a human rights group should receive funds from the LTTE. That is its right, I suppose, but it somewhat undermines its moral standing. Now those same three groups are chasing up the Sri Lankan Government and saying that they are acting far too slowly to implement the recommendations. And yet—I have done a little bit of research on this—all over the world there are quite a lot of investigations going on into former wars and dictatorships, and some of them are taking an extraordinary length of time. Some of them are taking 11, 12, or 15 years. To take two that we might know a bit more about, one is in Bangladesh, which is again in south Asia, which set up in 2011 an inquiry into what happened in the 1971 war of independence. That has not reported. And, dare I mention it having been PPS in Northern Ireland, the inquiry into Bloody Sunday has now gone on for 40 years and still remains totally unresolved.

So what has happened on the ground? That is by far and away the most important thing. First, when I got there in the end of March, all the way through to the middle of April, there was peace on the ground. There were no bombs; you can travel wherever you like in Sri Lanka, by day and by night, with no security checks. I spoke to a Tamil cook of a friend of mine—my friend is also Tamil—just outside Bentota. He had come down from Jaffna overnight, not requiring any special pass or anything; he booked a ticket in a bus station, got off at Colombo, changed buses, and came along the corridor through to Bentota. Asked by me whether he had had any problems, he said that he had no problems at all and that it was as easy as anything. So life for ordinary people in Sri Lanka is good at the moment. Plus, one has to say, British tourists have responded en masse—in fact, almost too readily in the sense that there is obviously a shortage of hotel accommodation, particularly in the east, where people want to go, and in the north, although they are trying hard to get on and build more hotels. So that is real positive benefit on the ground.

I went to Menik farm, where the 297,000 rescued from the war fled. First, I put on record that I saw the head of ICRC with no one else present and asked him whether ICRC was restricted from going into Menik farm. The answer was no. It is true that certain other UN bodies were restricted but, in my book—as one that has done a number of these types of events—ICRC, or the Red Cross, are the key people. Secondly, my wife is a qualified retired doctor and we looked at the reports on malnutrition to see whether there was malnutrition in those coming into the camp, and there was hardly any at all. I shall not go into the food dimension but I do have data on that. That place is now closed and those 297,000 are now all rehoused, which is pretty good in that time span: near enough 300,000 rehoused in a relatively short period. On top of that, a number of the Muslims, who were ethnically cleansed out of Jaffna by the Tamil Tigers, have also been rehoused.

Demining is happening and I say a big thank you to the UK Government, both the former Labour Government and the coalition Government, for the money given to Halo, which is doing a good job on the ground. I spent a whole day with Halo: the team is very good and I thank DfID and, in particular, the Government. I make a plea that when that work is completed somebody does an analysis on Jaffna’s needs and, in particular, the hospital, which I went to look at in some depth. I would be very happy to prepare a draft paper if that was found to be helpful.

The rehabilitation of combatants has been excellent and there is a good case history. Eleven thousand of them have been rehabilitated, with 260 judicially mandated. Child soldiers, of whom there were 595, are all now back with their families. Land issues are being taken very seriously but are proving very difficult to resolve after 30 years. The situation is not unlike that in England, where if you own a bit of land for 12 years you have legal rights to it; I think that it is 10 years in Sri Lanka. The high-security zone, which I visited, is down to 40% of what it was. It has to remain because of the problems in Tamil Nadu. The country’s massive infrastructure, housing and official language policy are all working well. A great issue has been made of abductions. I have looked at the figures: in 2011 there were 239, with 226 now traced; in 2012 there were 225, with 207 now traced.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It is 11 minutes on the clock.

[Lord Naseby]

No, I have been speaking for 10 minutes. I am taking injury time. I am taking my time from the annunciator.

[Lord Naseby]

With great respect, Lord Deputy Chairman, if a time is up there, it is the time that I am speaking from. I cannot look down here.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It is the time for the Chamber. I am sorry, but that is what that is showing.

[Lord Naseby]

With the permission of the Committee, I should like two minutes to wind up.

On the numbers killed, four reports have come out recently. One was produced by the UN Country Team, which was never published. My plea to Her Majesty's Government is to ask for that to be published. That indicated that 7,000 were killed. A satellite analysis by the Americans indicates that fewer than 2,000 were killed within the graves that can be found. The recent census by Tamil teachers, again, indicates that just over 7,000 were killed. There were not 40,000 killed.

The second problem that the Government of Sri Lanka face is the ever-present threat of the LTTE overseas and the propaganda that is put out. However, Sri Lanka is an excellent member of the Commonwealth. It helped the UK in its hour of need at the time of the Falklands. There are those who, I know, want to downgrade the conference, but what greater stimulus can there be to Sri Lanka today to move forward on the areas that still have to be dealt with than to hold this conference? After all, the CPA held its conference back in September, attended by 700 parliamentarians from 54 countries. That went extremely well, as are preparations for the forthcoming conference.

Here we are in the Moses Room. I suggest that we need the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of Job, and let us not forget Kipling’s remarks that,

“A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East”.