David Miliband
I want to very warmly welcome all of you to the House of Commons if you’ve come from around
It’s also important to recognise the history that’s associated with
I also want to recognise on the platform with me here are three Members of Parliament who have played an outstanding role in the British debate about the future of
I also want to say that the foundation of the Global Tamil Forum, the inauguration of its international work, is an important moment for politics and above all politics in
I want to commend very, very strongly your decision to, not just to support non violence, but to advocate non violence. I think that history has shown time and again that lasting peace is not found through weapons and through warfare but through politics, however hard it is to persevere with it. We’ve seen this in our own
Perhaps I should say why I’m here. It’s not just that
For twenty six years all the peoples of
We know that civilians were displaced, individuals, children separated from their families, homes and livelihoods destroyed and we know also that the Tamil diaspora around the world reflects conflict and it reflects fear around the world. We are proud in this country, very proud, of the contribution that British Tamils are making to our country. You are our neighbours, our friends, our relatives. We’re proud of your role in business, in commerce, in politics. But you know very deeply that you would like to be making a contribution above all in Sri Lanka and it is that tension, that dual focus first of all on Britain and first of all, and secondly on Sri Lanka, that brings us together.
It’s also important to say as Tamils lived in fear, some expelled from their country, that they, you also lived in the shadow of the LTTE, a terrorist organisation which committed countless atrocities itself, which refused to tolerate dissent, which forcibly recruited children as soldiers and which again refused to allow Tamil civilians to escape from the fighting. I think it’s important to say those things as well.
And we know that today land mines are still scattered across the former conflict zone, the lack of infrastructure and the lack of electricity, the lack of irrigation, poverty rates in Tamil areas are at least double those in the other provinces. And after the spike in violence that preceded the end of the civil war, nearly a hundred thousand Tamils still remain in the IDP camps, unable to return to their homes. And I will never forget the faces that I saw in the IDP camps in
We try in the short term to alleviate the suffering. We try to send money and we do send money, tens of millions of pounds are sent from
Now despite the scale of this humanitarian crisis and the need for us to focus on it as a matter of urgency, we do not forget the longer term, because anyone who cares about the future of Sri Lanka knows that it will not be built by aid alone. It must be built through a new political settlement. Since the end of the civil war, since the re-election of President Rajapaksa, as we look forward and await the parliamentary elections, we continue to make the case that the President should use his mandate for a real drive for national reconciliation, a real drive to respect the rights of every single Sri Lankan, a real drive to fulfil the commitments, constitutional and other reforms, that would make a difference.
Now to do this there needs to be greater effort to respect the rights of all Sri Lankans. It is because of our concern about the implementation of core commitments in respect of human rights conventions that we along with twenty six other members of the European Union supported the European Commission’s recommendation to suspend
We also believe that as well as the GSP issue there is an issue of history because history is there to be learned from. We cannot live in our history, but we have to learn from it and I think that my reading of reconciliation around the world is that if history is buried then reconciliation never happens. We have recently celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the release of Nelson Mandela and the commitment to expose history to the full glare of publicity, the commitment to reconcile history as well as reconcile people has been an important part of the South African experience and I think is an important lesson from the South African experience. That is why we continue to call as a Government for a process to investigate serious allegations of violation of international humanitarian law by both sides in the conflict. If credible and independent, such efforts could make an important contribution to reconciliation between
I’ve also said repeatedly that the concern with civil and political rights today, concern with the history, concern with the IDPs, feeds in to a constitutional point that there needs to be a genuinely inclusive political process in
I just want to conclude on the following point. Politics is about Governments, it’s also about people, it’s about people in countries that are trying to chart a peaceful future, but it’s also about those with links around the world and that relates to the significance of today’s event. This democratic group, this heartily engaged forum is well placed to influence debate, well placed because of its commitments and well placed because of its contacts.
And it is my view that political reconciliation will require the active engagement of Tamil communities around the world. It will require you to speak up for your values of non violence. It will require you to speak up for a vision of a decent
These commitments are easy to say, especially easy to say from the relative comfort of a democratic country like the
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