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Sri Lanka

It is not only morally wrong, but stupid. If one has surrounded an area, there is a fair chance that if one starts lobbing artillery shells around one will get overshooting and might kill and injure some of one's own troops. Without being facetious, it is, as Talleyrand might have said, more than a crime—it is a mistake. Sadly, it is one of many mistakes that the Sri Lankan Government have made. As the Minister said, in excess of 140,000 civilians are now in IDP camps. Although the conditions in those camps are not as bad as in some that hon. Members have visited in other parts of the world, such as Darfur, they are not good, and they are not open to proper international inspection or to the media. What evidence do the Government have as regards the accusation made by several people who have had access to the camps that the Sri Lankan Government are weeding out young Tamils, not only directly because they are thought to have been active on the military side, but because they are young men, and they have gone into a category that I can only call "the disappeared"? Are we any closer to being able to persuade the Sri Lankan Government to respond to the request by the United Nations, the UK Government and other Governments for greater access to the camps? On the demonstration in Parliament square by the British Tamil community, I would like to support the Ministers' comments. I think, on the whole, that although they have inconvenienced large parts of London, they have been within the natural bounds of such demonstrations. Given that many of them have relatives who have been killed, injured or wounded, or are under threat of all three, there is a natural emotion there. Following the demonstrations, the debates that we have had in this House, and the formal requests made by the Government to the Sri Lankan Government, is there any evidence that the Sri Lankan Government have in any way moderated any of their policies? I said in our last debate, although I did not wish to be a Jonah, that I feared that they are not open to any persuasion at all. Indeed, I get the impression from colleagues who have recently returned from Sri Lanka that, if anything, they become even more intransigent in having these legitimate points put to them—although that is not a reason for us not to do it. The House should recognise—this is not to undermine the activities that have been undertaken—that, sadly, there seems to be no evidence that the Sri Lankan Government are prepared to moderate their policies. I suspect that that is because they still believe that in a matter of days or weeks they will have gained a military victory over the LTTE. However, as the Minister and other hon. Members have said, they will win the narrow military war but lose the peace; this will rebound on them.