Sri Lanka: Human Rights

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

You threw me there, Dame Maria. I expected that the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) would be in front of me. I am very pleased to be called to make a contribution. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. I congratulate the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn), who regularly speaks up for minorities and raises human rights issues in Westminster Hall and the main Chamber; we appreciate his efforts.

I have spoken about human rights in Sri Lanka before. It is hard to come back and say that things have not changed, but unfortunately they have not. That is why this debate is so important—the hon. Gentleman outlined that very clearly. I will speak about the freedom of religion or belief, which is encompassed within the definition of human rights. Taking away human rights affects religious belief, and taking away religious belief affects human rights—the two are married together. Whenever we talk about one, we talk about the other.

The question for us today is how can we address this? More reasonably, how can we be part of the process of securing human rights for a needy people? Their history makes my heart sore, as it does for anyone who has compassion. They have lost everything—their dignity, their possessions, their human rights and their freedom of religious belief—all because of an autocratic regime that, as the hon. Gentleman said, spends more on defence than on feeding the country, health or education. It moves me to tears when I think about it.

I believe that steps can be taken and progress can be made on reconciliation through accountability, justice, acknowledgement and a correction of the situation for religious minorities. That must be considered by our Government and the Minister. I am pleased to see the Minister in his place—I always am—because he clearly understands our feelings and thoughts. I hope that he will provide some assurance on the issues, given that our Government develop foreign policies.

I am also pleased to see in their places the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin), and the shadow Minister for the Scots Nats, the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara). He and I have been good friends in this House for many years. We have spoken on issues together and have had different adventures overseas, visiting some of those countries where the suppression of human rights and religious freedom is rampant. Although we have different outlooks on the constitution, we have the very same opinion on the issue of human rights, and our social consciences are married together, as indeed is our faith, which we hold strongly.

Sri Lankan Government agencies unlawfully occupied the property and religious sites of minority Tamil and Muslim communities. Additionally, in September 2023 a judge resigned and fled the country after he received death threats for a ruling that he made against the Department of Archaeology, which had constructed a Buddhist monument on the site of a Hindu temple. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, I speak out for those with Christian belief, other beliefs and, indeed, no beliefs, because that is what I believe in my heart and that is where I come from. If a Hindu temple is disrespected and a Buddhist temple is built on it, that is against the human rights and the religious belief of those of a Hindu faith in Sri Lanka. That is done because it is encouraged by a Government who have little or no concern or respect for any other religion.

How do we address those issues? I hope to outline that, but the major issue is that we should be using aid to change the opinion of the authorities in Sri Lanka. As acknowledged in the briefing for this debate, Sri Lanka’s Online Safety Act and other proposed and enacted laws have severely limited civil liberties. How are such laws impacting on freedom of religion or belief?

The rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly are heavily intertwined with the fate of FORB, as I mentioned at the beginning. I can never get myself away from that definition of where we are and how I and many others in the Chamber and further afield see it. We must ensure that our foreign policies—this is where the Minister and our Government come in— encourage compliance with article 18 of the universal declaration of human rights and the international covenant on civil and political rights, which Sri Lanka ratified in 1980. It was ratified, but no action was taken, and I am disappointed that the Sri Lankan Government have disregarded article 18 in its totality.

FORB is also intricately linked with women’s and girls’ rights. I mention that because some of the things that are happening in Sri Lanka are bestial and disgraceful. The Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act, which governs marriage in the Muslim community, contains numerous provisions that violate the rights of women and girls, including by allowing child marriage without setting any minimum age.

I get real angst when I think about that. I look at my grandchildren and think how, if they were living in Sri Lanka, they could be abused—they could be married at the age of nine and 15, even though their bodies and emotions are clearly not in any way ready for that to happen. As a father and grandfather, how could I not condemn what the Sri Lankan authorities are doing against young women, and especially young girls? The Act stipulates that only men can be judges in the quazi—family—court, which makes it easier for men than women to obtain a divorce. It does not require a woman’s or girl’s consent to be recorded before the registration of her marriage, which should be an absolute precondition.

I am ever mindful that the Minister is not responsible for what is happening in Sri Lanka. I just ask him if there have been any discussions with the Sri Lankan authorities in relation to this specific issue to ensure that there will be no under-age marriage whatsoever.

Following on from that, in cases of child marriage, the penal code in Sri Lanka permits under the MMDA what would otherwise constitute statutory rape. In no country in this world should the statutory rape of young girls be permitted. Those girls, who have not reached puberty, can be abused by people just because they have got the right to do it by the law of the land. When it comes to the MMDA and the divorce Act, what are the Government and the Minister doing, and what are we doing as a people of conscience, to help those young ladies in Sri Lanka?

The UK must take laws into account as well as helping to develop aid strategies and distribution policies for Sri Lanka. Additionally, the UK must consider the position of refugees in Sri Lanka. There are lots of refugees there. I think that the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington referred to 14 divisions in the north of Sri Lanka who are there primarily and objectively to intimidate all the Tamils, the local populations, and local religions as well. How can that be disregarded by our own Government or by our own people?

There are several religious minorities in Sri Lanka, including the Ahmadis. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute and I were in Pakistan and had an opportunity to see and meet the Ahmadis on a regular basis. I really have to make a plea for them. They fled from persecution in Pakistan and are still awaiting resettlement in other countries.

I am conscious that I am asking the Minister a lot of questions, but I do so because I feel they must be put on the record, and very strongly feel that we need answers to them. While the resettlement considerations may not be in the realm of the UK’s authority, are there ways in which we can help Sri Lanka to develop policies and processes to ensure that the rights of refugees are protected? Can we work with Sri Lanka, for instance, and relevant communities and Governments to resettle the refugees in third countries? We should have a role, working alongside other countries to make that happen.

Finally, will the UK be able to take in such refugees as part of its UK resettlement scheme for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees? That is a question that we must ask ourselves. We cannot solve the world’s problems by ourselves, but we can play a role in making lives better by bringing such refugees to our shores. Equally, we can help them to resettle elsewhere. We have international obligations to fulfil.

I conclude with this as I am ever mindful that others want to speak and want to give them all a chance to contribute to the debate. I have spoken about human rights in Sri Lanka on many occasions, because the stories that I and others hear in this House move me to do all that I can. The question for our Government must be: have we been moved as much to do all we can? If not, will we begin to be moved today?

We take the right to live, the right to work and the right to hold our own beliefs for granted in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but we are tasked with the responsibility of speaking up for those who do not have those human rights—including freedom of religious rights—in Sri Lanka. I believe that we must speak for those who have no voice. In our debate today, I want my voice and the voices of others in the Chamber to be the voices for the voiceless of Sri Lanka, who need us to speak up for them and to do our best for them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dame Maria. I too would like to thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for securing the debate and for the way he opened it. I would also like to thank the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) for their excellent contributions. As hon. Members will be aware, this House is well acquainted with the issue of Sri Lankan human rights. We have discussed it often because it is important. It should matter not just to us and to the diaspora, but to all who care about human rights, international law, justice and accountability.

However, we have to be realistic. We have debated and highlighted these issues for decades in this place, and yet the situation in Sri Lanka remains largely unchanged; unfortunately, I suspect the community will say they have heard it all before. From a glance at Hansard this morning, I found Russell Johnston, the Liberal MP for Inverness, urging the Government in 1975 to do more to end human rights abuses in Sri Lanka; in 1984, Plaid Cymru’s Dafydd Wigley pleading with the Government not to forcibly repatriate the Tamils to Sri Lanka, given the levels of sectarian violence; in 1985, a very young right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), demanding an arms embargo on Sri Lanka due to its appalling human rights record; and, exactly a decade later, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) asking for those fleeing the regime’s persecution to be granted asylum in the UK. Even at the start of the new millennium, Elfyn Llwyd from Plaid Cymru was urging the cancellation of arms export licences to Sri Lanka following verified reports of extrajudicial killings. On and on it goes: as recently as last December, Members of this House quite rightly and properly raised the hugely important issues of fundamental human rights in Sri Lanka.

If nothing else, we in this House have over many years shown tenacity and resilience. We will appeal once again to the UK Government, as a believer in the rule of law, to use their position and strength to encourage the Sri Lankan Government to finally abide by their international obligations and act in accordance with the accepted international standards of human rights.

As we have heard so often in these debates, Sri Lanka is a founding member of the Commonwealth, and we know that the Commonwealth foundational principles are peace and democracy. By no stretch could Sri Lanka be considered to be a champion of those principles when the Tamil minority, numbering just around 11% of the population, is still subject to human rights violations at the hands of their Government.

In its 2022 country report, the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor said that Sri Lanka’s human rights practices included credible reports of unlawful and arbitrary killings, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, a lack of an independent judiciary, violence against journalists, serious restrictions on internet freedom, restrictions on freedom of movement, serious Government corruption and a lack of accountability for gender-based violence and crimes involving violence targeting members of national, racial and ethnic minority groups. The US State Department concluded that the Sri Lankan Government took minimal steps to identify, investigate, prosecute and punish officials who committed human rights abuses or were engaged in corruption, saying there was impunity for both. By any standard, that is a damning report. If we are honest, though, none of it would come as a surprise to any of us in this House who have watched Sri Lanka’s treatment of the Tamil minority over the years.

From the state’s inception, the Tamil minority has been treated as outsiders in their own land. The Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948 effectively rendered Tamils stateless, leading to the deportation of many thousands of Tamils to India between the 1960s and 1980s. That was quickly followed by the 1956 Sinhala Only Act, which made Sinhalese the only official language of Sri Lanka, completely excluding Tamil and making it abundantly clear that Sri Lanka’s Tamils, as well as their history, language and culture, had no place in that new country. Given that level of state-sponsored discrimination, it is little wonder there has been such an appalling catalogue of violence and atrocity crimes perpetrated on the Tamil people.

Time and again, Tamils have been the victim of oppression and systematic violence, which dates back to the 1950s and continues to the present day. Violence, including serious accusations of widespread sexual violence, is being perpetrated against women and girls by both the Sri Lankan military and Sinhalese mobs during the numerous anti-Tamil pogroms, which stretch back decades.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Gentleman just reminded me in what he said that along with the things that we ask for, we need accountability for those who carried out some of those despicable—and worse—crimes. That ensures that they do not think they are getting away with the crimes that they have carried out and that there will be accountability in the courts of the land. They will get their justice in the next world, but you, Dame Maria, I and many others want to see them get their justice in this world.

[Brendan O’Hara]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. He is right, and I will touch on that momentarily.

It is absolutely essential that there is accountability and that people are held to account. We must use what powers we have to ensure that that happens, because various UN bodies, Human Rights Watch and other human rights organisations have long criticised successive Sri Lankan Administrations for failing to investigate seriously and prosecute those responsible for the most grievous of human rights abuses. Amnesty International has identified that despite mounting global pressure to act, those violators have gone scot-free. The issues have remained unaddressed, and groups pressuring the Government to act have been harassed and marginalised.

The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington talked about the 1979 Prevention of Terrorism Act. That has been an area of real, grave concern for many of us. The Act has allowed arbitrary arrests, detention without charge, false confession and torture of anyone suspected of terrorism. The Government have used that Act for 40 years to arrest and detain opponents and suppress the Tamil community. More recently, it has been used to detain protesters and anyone speaking out against the Government, even if their comments were made on social media. However, there are now real fears that its replacement, the Anti-Terrorism Bill, may be actually worse, and that the Government’s attitude towards minority groups has not changed one iota.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has already stated that the new Anti-Terrorism Bill does not get anywhere close to sorting out the defects in the Prevention of Terrorism Act, saying:

“It is deeply regrettable that the proposed legislation does not remedy any of these defects”.

Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch reported on the proposed new laws, which it says will “severely curtail civil liberties”. The new laws, including an Online Safety Act, an Electronic Media Broadcasting Authority Bill and a Non-Governmental Organisations (Registration and Supervision) Bill, will grant broad powers to security forces and severely restrict the right to freedom of assembly, association and expression. They will impact on not only the civic space, but the business environment.

Sri Lanka appears to be going backwards in its adherence to the principles of upholding and protecting fundamental human rights that we hold dear. As the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden said, that represents a collective failure by the international community. It says that we and our partners have not done nearly enough to pressure the Sri Lankan Government to change their behaviour. Thus far, I believe that we have not used all options open to us. Is it not time that, as well as discussing and debating in this place, and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office persuading and pressuring in its place, the UK actually flexes its muscles where it can? It should apply targeted Magnitsky sanctions against those who can be identified as active or complicit in human rights abuses. Other countries can do it, and other countries have done it. That is the very least that the victims of the war—both living and dead, both here and in Sri Lanka—could and should expect from us.