British Tamil Forum members and local constituency residents met the Labour Party leader Ed Miliband MP yesterday to express their views on the UK’s participation in the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

The BTF press release from the event is reproduced below.

British Tamils Forum members and local constituency residents met Labour Party leader Ed Miliband MP today to discuss the UK’s participation in the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which is due to take place in Sri Lanka later this month.

The delegates encouraged the Labour Party to continue its tough stance against the UK’s participation in the summit while grave human rights abuse continue to occur and there has been no accountability for past crimes.

Delegates recounted the horrific abuses of the 2009 war, in which Sri Lankan security forces are accused of killing tens of thousands Tamils, and 147,000 Tamils still remain unaccounted for. They also handed Mr Miliband a copy of BTF’s recent report, Reconciliation in Sri Lanka?, which describes the human rights abuses, land grabs, economic persecution and other crimes that continue to be perpetrated against Tamils by the Sri Lankan state today.

Mr Miliband was shocked by the statistics of the dead, missing, injured, widowed and orphaned given to him by his constituents. Mr Milliband also reassured the delegates that he shared the views of his colleague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander MP, who recently wrote an article in the Guardian newspaper calling on the UK Prime Minister to boycott the Commonwealth summit.

Mr Miliband also confirmed the Labour Party’s stance that an international, independent inquiry must take place into allegations that war crimes and crimes against humanity were perpetrated during the war in 2009.

Today’s meeting took place the day before British Tamils Forum holds a mass rally in Central London against the UK’s participation in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka.