Human Rights (Commonwealth)

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Champion]

The fundamental problem is that, although equality is embedded within the Commonwealth charter, LGBTI rights are not mentioned explicitly, so these grey areas are exploited.

Last year, armed police raided a human rights workshop attended by LGBTI activists in Kampala, Uganda, arresting five staff of the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project and 12 other participants. That happened in the context of the Ugandan Parliament seeking to pass an anti-homosexuality Bill, which could include punishing homosexuality with the death penalty. The Bill would create legal provisions to persecute and punish people just for being LGBTI, which directly contradicts all international human rights legislation and should be condemned by the international community. I am aware that Uganda claims that criminalising homosexuality is partly in the interest of public health. In reality, however, it further stigmatises and marginalises groups, making education about effective forms of sexually transmitted disease control considerably more difficult. HIV control is incredibly important as it is an enormous problem within the Commonwealth.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

Would my hon. Friend like to acknowledge the work of the David Cairns Foundation? Following the death of our friend David, it has raised funds to open clinics in Uganda to help with HIV awareness and care.

[Sarah Champion]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the David Cairns Foundation, which does superb work, and I wish all power to it.

Commonwealth countries contain more than 60% of people living with HIV globally, despite representing only some 30% of the world’s population. The importance of HIV control is backed by the eminent persons group— a group of 10 leading figures from around the Commonwealth, chaired by the former Prime Minister of Malaysia. In 2009, the EPG was commissioned by Commonwealth Heads of Government to examine key areas of reform for the Commonwealth. It recommended decriminalising homosexuality. That recommendation was made specifically in the interests of non-discrimination and outreach to educate LGBTI communities about HIV transmission.

The Commonwealth charter needs to name LGBTI as one of the categories of potential discrimination. It needs to call for homosexuality to be legalised across the Commonwealth to ensure that that persecution stops. In the interest of not sounding too negative, I would like to congratulate the Commonwealth countries where it is legal to be LGBTI, including Australia, the Bahamas, Canada, Cyprus, India, Malta, Mozambique, New Zealand, Rwanda, South Africa and the UK.

Finally, I want to talk about Sri Lanka. The horrific civil war that waged for 26 years in Sri Lanka ended in 2009. There were concerns about human rights abuses and war crimes, committed by both the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. International attention was captured by allegations of the systematic targeting of civilian hospitals within a designated no-missile zone. Video evidence exists of extreme cruelty, including beheadings and rape. Such images shocked the international community and left a permanent scar on Sri Lanka’s human rights record. It was absolutely correct that the allegations were investigated and that due redress followed those investigations. To examine events during the period from 2002 to May 2009, President Mahinda Rajapaksa established the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, which was welcomed by many civilians. Implementing the commission’s recommendations, however, has been both slow and selective. Post-2009, grave concerns still exist about military engagement in civilian activities in the north, including sexual abuse, the situation of detainees from the war, the impact of forcible disappearances, impunity, hatred and violence against religious minorities, the intimidation and harassment of human rights defenders, the weakening of democracy, growing authoritarianism, the erosion of the rule of law and the abduction and murder of journalists.

Last month, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, completed a seven-day visit to Sri Lanka. She raised strong concerns over the continual and increasingly authoritarian direction in the country. The international community—in particular, the Commonwealth community—should put pressure on President Mahinda Rajapaksa to force him to show that there is a strategic plan to implement all the LLRC report before Sri Lanka’s Ministers consider attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. Owing to the lack of clear implementation of the LLRC report and continuous concerns about human rights abuses, I am calling on David Cameron and senior ministers—

--- Later in debate ---

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

With the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting scheduled to go ahead as planned later this year, I intend to talk about the insult and hurt caused by its taking place in Sri Lanka. This country has had a bad few weeks of doing nothing about human rights abusers, but my disappointment at Britain’s decision to give succour to the human rights abusers in Sri Lanka knows no bounds.

Our Government have happily bestowed respectability on a regime that cluster-bombed its own hospitals, killed tens of thousands of its own citizens and turned its country into the most dangerous place in the world in which to be a journalist. Amnesty International has said:

“We continue to witness a deterioration of human rights in Sri Lanka”.

It has also stated:

“Despite the armed conflict ending over four years ago, human rights violations continue, with the Sri Lankan Government cracking down on critics through threats, harassment, imprisonment and violent attacks. Journalists, the judiciary, human rights activists and opposition politicians are among those who have been targeted in this disturbing pattern of government-sanctioned abuse.”

I share Amnesty’s disappointment that the UK Government

“failed to assert that the Commonwealth Heads of Government should not be hosted by Sri Lanka unless there were significant improvements in human rights”.

I remember the terrible stories constituents used to tell me about their friends and family. For example, my local newsagent had lost contact with his sister who was trapped with her family in a bunker in the so-called no-fire zone, being shelled by the Sri Lankan Government every day. So incessant was the bombing that, in desperation, she made a run for it across open land that was heavily bombarded. No one has heard from her since. A young man who lives near the tube station told me about his aunt, whose body had been so badly mutilated that her family had to take a box to pick up all the pieces.

Channel 4’s groundbreaking “Killing Fields” documentaries have drawn the world’s attention to a major human rights catastrophe—what the UN panel of experts called a

“grave assault on the entire regime of international law”.

The latest figures show that more than 146,000 Tamils remain unaccounted for, with the World Bank estimating that 100,000 people are still missing, probably dead. Justice must prevail, yet there has been no independent international commission of inquiry to investigate these crimes.

There is still no civil administration in the north. Instead, the area has a military governor. The people have no democratic representation of the kind we would recognise in the west. Tamils continue to suffer due to the Sri Lankan armed forces’ military control of the north and east, and resettled war victims have no say. The situation on the ground is not good.

Speaking at the end of her visit to the country in August, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said that

“although the fighting is over, the suffering is not.”

She argued that Sri Lanka

“is showing signs of heading in an increasingly authoritarian direction.”

She raised concerns about the

“curtailment or denial of personal freedoms and human rights…persistent impunity and the failure of the rule of law.”

She also warned:

“There are a number of specific factors impeding normalisation, which—if not quickly rectified—may sow the seeds of future discord.”

Meanwhile, even a recent Foreign and Commonwealth Office human rights report has named Sri Lanka as one of its 27 countries of concern. It is no wonder the Foreign Affairs Committee concluded last November that holding the Commonwealth meeting in Colombo was “wrong” and urged the Prime Minister to avoid going unless he received

“convincing and independently-verified evidence of substantial and sustainable improvements in human and political rights”.

No such improvements have taken place. According to Freedom From Torture,

“for the first time in years, Sri Lanka has replaced Iran at the top of the shameful table that tallies the country of origin for the thousands referred to us each year for clinical services here in the UK.”

As time goes by, it becomes increasingly clear that the war and all that has followed have been a criminal venture. The International Committee of the Red Cross has described the conflict as an “unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe”. Tens of thousands of people were massacred, and oppression on a scale beyond our imaginations really did take place.

Thanks to the amazing work of brave journalists such as Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin, we know that the Sri Lankan Government were firing cluster bombs, white phosphorus and rockets at civilian areas, including hospitals and so-called safe zones. In previous debates, I have reflected on the dreadful loss of Ms Colvin. It is a cruel irony that she was killed covering human rights abuses in Syria, where the world has so far done little to stand up to a brutal regime that has no qualms about mass killings of civilians and abuses of the rules of war, when she spent so many years campaigning against similar abuses in Sri Lanka.

As the UN has stressed,

“not to hold accountable those who committed serious crimes...is a clear violation.”

When we hold no one to account, we get what we now witness in Sri Lanka: extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, gender-based violence and torture. Despite that, a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting is still scheduled to take place in Colombo, and our Government are doing nothing to stop it. What sort of message does that send?

The Commonwealth was right when it took from Sri Lanka the honour of hosting the previous Commonwealth summit, and Britain was right to be in the group of nations leading the way in calling for that honour to be taken away. If that was right then, how can it be right now to bestow honour on a regime that has not changed?

The truth remains that Sri Lanka has still not undertaken a truly independent international investigation into war crimes. Were such an investigation enforced, there might be reconciliation and lasting peace. The British Government clearly disagree. They have sent the wrong message by not boycotting the summit, and that is made worse by policies such as deporting Tamil asylum seekers and selling weapons to Sri Lanka’s military.

The coalition’s actions stand in marked contrast to those of the previous Labour Government. We helped to bring an end to Sri Lanka’s preferential trading status in the EU, we voted against an International Monetary Fund loan deal worth $2.5 billion and we blocked Sri Lanka’s bid to host a Commonwealth summit.

If we just roll over and let the Sri Lankan Government take the mickey out of us, whatever will people think in Syria? For the sake of other civilians around the world who are under threat from their Governments, we have a responsibility to be strong when it comes to Sri Lanka. Justice will not be served by giving the Sri Lankan regime a platform or by giving President Rajapaksa dozens of photo opportunities alongside leaders such as our Prime Minister who were too weak to say they would not go to the summit. Every brutal dictator around the world will look at those pictures and think, “Yes, Sri Lanka is respectable now. They ignored the rules of decency. They committed atrocities against their own people. The world did nothing. And now tribute is being paid to them. Crime does pay.” Is that the message we want to send? Not in my name.