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Sri Lanka

I shall be brief, as I can see the Minister champing at the bit, ready to reply to the debate. We want to hear what he has to say. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) on securing the debate and on a consistent interest in Sri Lanka over many years. He and I have attended many wet weekends in Trafalgar square to discuss the plight of the people of Sri Lanka, and I congratulate him on that. The history of Sri Lanka since 1983 and even back to 1958 has been one of almost unremitting tragedy. I was first elected to the House in 1983. The riots broke out at that time. Large numbers of Tamil asylum seekers came to the United Kingdom and to other European countries at that time. The loss of life goes on and on. There are generations of people who have never known anything but a state of war in their country—young people growing up who have never known anything other than bombardments and all the accompanying problems. I echo the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy). There is a massive peace dividend to be had, not just for the Tamil people but for the Sinhala people, the Muslim people and everybody else across the whole country. If a ceasefire can be renegotiated and put in place, followed by serious negotiations that can bring about a long-term and lasting settlement, everybody will be a lot better off. As the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey pointed out, if a country the size of Sri Lanka, with all the problems that it has—and it also has huge opportunities—spends £1 billion a year on arms, plus all the expenditure made by all the other groups, that is money denied to development, education and housing. Until the breakdown of community relations, Sri Lanka probably had the best record of education, health care, literacy levels and all the other indices that one would care to measure across the whole of Asia. It also had a sophisticated intellectual society and sophisticated political development and process. All that has imploded and collapsed, which is tragic to see. There are serious problems of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. They have been brought to the attention of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and to the UN Human Rights Council. I have been in Geneva when many such representations were made. Although I acknowledge the replies given by the Sri Lanka High Commission in the UK and the views of the Sri Lankan Government that they should conduct their own human rights process, the time has passed for that. There must be a permanent—that is, for as long as necessary—independent UN representation in Sri Lanka that can go to all parts of the community, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen was able to do, and verify abuses of human rights wherever they occur and whoever has caused those abuses. There is no alternative solution as the start of a confidence-building process. The Minister should give all the encouragement he can in support of the efforts of the Norwegian Government and others to get the ceasefire back in operation as quickly as possible. That must be followed quickly by serious peace negotiations with the LTTE and with every other group in the society as a whole. If there is merely a ceasefire and nothing changes other than a cessation of the worst kinds of violence, the factors that provoked and promoted the violence in the first place will still exist. A longer-term peace process must be promoted. My final point is that made by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey. Historically, Sri Lanka has been occupied by colonial powers, latterly by Britain. The British record all over the world was often one of almost deliberately provoking conflict between different linguistic and different ethnic groups. There is a legacy of that in many former colonies around the world and its price tends to be the collapse of societies. However, it is possible for there to be a multilingual, multi-ethnic society on one island and degrees of autonomy within the national state framework. Such things are possible. If we do not achieve them, what is the future for Sri Lanka? It is another 30 years of war, another 30 years of bombardment and another 30 years of damage to people's lives. I hope that the Minister can help with getting the ceasefire back on track. Above all, I hope that the Sri Lankan Government recognise that those of us who take up the cause of human rights and speak up for the cause of Tamil refugees are not anti-Sri Lanka—quite the opposite. We are pro-Sri Lanka, because we want peace and justice for all the people of that island.