Locke Keith: Budget Debate 
Locke Keith: Budget Debate 
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KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
 I wish to speak on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s budget and explain some matters that the Government should be paying particular attention to. Too few Governments on this planet treat matters of peace and human rights with the attention they deserve. One of the matters that I think our Government should give immediate and ongoing attention to is the horrific situation facing the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. Their aspiration for an autonomous Tamil region within the Sri Lankan State has been crushed by massive force. 
This year anything up to 20000 Tamils have been killed by huge air and artillery bombardment of the territory that for some years has been under the administration of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam known as the LTTE. Most of the population of that territory—around 300000 people—has been herded into what can best be termed concentration camps. I think that term is apt because what is happening to the Tamil people in those camps is similar to what happened in Hitler’s concentration camps but without the mass extermination programme. The Sri Lankan Government aims to use the camps to destroy all traces of the former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam administration in the same way that Hitler used concentration camps to eliminate the German communists and socialists as a political force. All those associated with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam will either be imprisoned long term and re-educated or will perhaps disappear. There have already been reports from the camps of what are called “white van disappearances” of young Tamil Tiger activists. Hitler believed that anything was justified in the war against communism and the Sri Lankan Government proceeds as though anything is justified in the so-called war against terrorism. 
The situation need not have been like this. There was a chance of negotiated autonomy for the Tamils in the north of Sri Lanka during the 2002-05 ceasefire. I toured Sri Lanka in October 2003 to monitor that process and I saw that it was going well. I talked to negotiators from both the Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. They were all quite hopeful and indicated respect for each other. While I was in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam capital of Kilinochchi a Tamil proposal for an interim self-governing authority was presented to the Norwegian peace negotiators and was covered by the international media but substantive discussions on an autonomy solution never eventuated. There was probably blame on both sides for that but most damaging was the failure of the international community to keep the pressure on the Sri Lankan Government to go down the negotiating track and to not resort to war again. In order to do that the international community should have consciously taken the conflict out of the context of the Government on the one side and the terrorists on the other. 
During the 2002-05 ceasefire the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was made a legal organisation by the Government of Sri Lanka and could freely operate anywhere in that country yet the US British and Australian Governments kept on their designations of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam as a terrorist organisation and the European Union added the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to its terrorist list. Of course it is true that the Tamil Tigers have engaged in terrorist actions in the past including political assassinations but so has the Sri Lankan Government on an even larger scale according to the statistics of civilian deaths in the reports of human rights monitors like Amnesty International. In 2003 and 2004 the two sides that had done such bad things to each other and to civilians were talking and could have reached a solution with enough pressure and involvement from the international community. But the negotiating process lost momentum and when President Rajapaksa came to power in 2005 he decided on a military solution. The tragic consequences for the Tamils are there for all to see. 
What is New Zealand’s responsibility now? This Parliament took a good step in passing a resolution on 2 June “That this House notes its deep concern at the dire humanitarian situation in northern Sri Lanka and call upon the Sri Lankan Government to accede to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call for UN agencies to be given ‘immediate unhindered access’ into the internally displaced persons camps in order to bring aid to those who desperately need it and ask the Sri Lankan Government to allow media access to the camps.” However the New Zealand Government must take the next step and engage both directly with the Sri Lankan Government and through United Nations organisations to enable full access to the camps for international humanitarian organisations human rights monitors and the media. At present the media is allowed into the big detention camps only on guided tours and is not allowed to talk freely and privately with camp inmates. I think it is appropriate to use the prison term “inmates”. 
We must insist that all members and former members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam whether combatants or non-combatants and their families be treated fairly and without discrimination. Surely it is now time for reconciliation not for punishment and further suffering. People should be able to leave the camps and return to their homes if they so wish. Yes war crimes have been committed by some actors on both sides of the conflict but the identification of those and the prosecution of those responsible will have to be done with the direct involvement of the international community. Human Rights Watch has rightly called for an impartial international commission of inquiry to investigate the alleged crimes that were committed during the war including the repeated bombing of civilians crammed into the small amount of territory held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the last phase of the war and accusations that Tamil Tiger fighters prevented civilians from leaving that territory. 
The tragedy of Sri Lanka is very personal to many people in the New Zealand Sri Lankan community. Many of them have lost family members and friends back in Sri Lanka or are desperate to find out their fate. We have a responsibility to them as citizens of our country now to take up the humanitarian and political issues involved to help the Tamil people who live here to find out what has happened to their relations to help those who survived the conflict in northern Sri Lanka to return home to their towns and villages and to help survivors to get welfare assistance through the various agencies including international agencies. 
We should also not forget the underlying cause of the conflict and suffering: the failure of successive Sri Lankan administrations to allow the Tamil people their full rights including their right to an autonomous area in the north of Sri Lanka. That issue arose from the time of independence well before the Tamil Tigers were ever thought of. The personal stories of Tamil refugees living in New Zealand include terrifying stories of earlier times during the repeated pogroms in places like Colombo when Sinhalese militia one might call them went door-to-door with knives and people were hiding in cupboards to try to avoid being killed. 
I feel sadness myself because when I visited Sri Lanka in 2003 two of the people I met Mr Nadesan and Mr Pulidevan were key people in the political side of the involvement of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the negotiations. At the very end of the recent conflict they phoned their international contacts and one of the reporters they talked to relayed the whole story to us in the  
Dominion Post 
 late last month. Contact was also made with the Red Cross the Sri Lankan Government and the United Nations while Mr Nadesan and Mr Pulidevan were trying to work out a way to surrender and they were told to carry white flags to the Sri Lankan Government’s line which they did. As they were carrying these white flags they and their families were gunned down. 
Sri Lanka faces a very tragic situation today and we want to engage in dialogue with Sri Lanka’s politicians to help to find a way forward. That includes the 22 Tamil MPs who are at present under some siege.