Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Feb. 13th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Let's ask the question this way. First of all, is there unanimous consent to proceed with the motion without any debate?

If there isn't, then I suggest we do what Dr. Hsu is asking. So I'll just ask quickly, is there—

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

We need to discuss it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

We need a discussion. Okay, we'll let that wait until the end of the meeting, then.

Dr. Hsu, you have some remaining time to ask the witness questions.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for entertaining that. I apologize again.

Mr. Keenan, you've spoken about this call for an international investigation.

My first question, which leads into the second one, concerns the non-attendance of Prime Minister Harper at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. What did that do inside Sri Lanka?

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

I'm wondering if we've lost our connection.

Mr. Keenan, were you able to hear the question from Dr. Hsu?

[Alan Keenan]

Yes. With regard to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, there were really two meetings.

There was the meeting as it was represented in the international media and to the rest of the world, in which I think the Canadian Prime Minister's decision not to attend opened the space for a more general criticism of the human rights situation in Sri Lanka. I think it was a valuable stand in terms of the effects it produced. It increased awareness of the issue, and I think that opened the space, for instance, for Prime Minister Cameron to go, but to be very forceful in his words when he was there.

Within Sri Lanka, however, I think in large part due to the government's control of the media, most Sri Lankans—particularly Sinhalese-speaking Sri Lankans whose almost sole source of news is government controlled, either directly or indirectly—if they were aware of the Canadian Prime Minister's non-attendance, it was presented to them as unimportant and an example of western interference and a sort of western hypocrisy, and so on and so forth. It was dismissed as either unfair or unimportant, and probably didn't have much effect on Sri Lankan, or at least Sinhalese, attitudes toward the nature and success, or lack of it, of the Commonwealth meeting.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you.

In light of the significant evidence of an increasing concentration of power in the executive, and what could be called—I think you even used the same words—a culture of impunity around the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the final phases of the civil war, and since then, what can be done besides this international investigation?

Are there things that we can do to counter the culture of impunity?

[Alan Keenan]

That's a direct and really crucial question, but there's no simple answer.

I think one of the things—and I think it began to happen around the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting—is for other governments to stop giving the Rajapaksa government the benefit of the doubt. Stop treating it as a kind of government that isn't exactly what they want but perhaps is moving in the right direction or trying its best and has so many difficult issues, as many governments do. I think that has begun to happen more clearly, with just very clear statements about the nature of the Sri Lankan government and the need for that to change, and with support given to all communities in Sri Lanka and to members of all communities who are trying to resist and to create a more democratic future.

While the issue of what happened at the end of the war and the need for an international investigation is crucial, I think it's important not to frame the problem in Sri Lanka as merely one of what happened at the end of the war, or merely the lack of full democratic rights of Tamils. It's also that there's been a grave deterioration in the democratic rights of Muslims and of Sinhalese, and those need to be addressed as well. Indeed, I think that if you're ever going to address the ultimate issue at the heart of the civil war—how to share power between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities—you need effective, well-functioning, democratic, and liberal institutions to deal with that. You would need to rebuild those, even if you had a government willing to address the ethnic issue.

What can be done? Crucially, I think this means that it needs highlighting internationally, but also working through every available international institution, some of which I just mentioned in reply to your colleague's previous question. All the UN bodies have responsibilities.

On that issue, it's important for Canada, I think, to be pressing for the full implementation of the UN Secretary-General's new Rights Up Front framework, which follows on the report of his own internal review of UN actions in Sri Lanka, and which found, as I mentioned, a systemic failure by the UN. In response to that, he has instituted a new policy, Rights Up Front, but unfortunately there's not yet evidence that it's being applied in Sri Lanka by all UN agencies. I think that's something that Canada could be pushing on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you.

We go now to Mr. Schellenberger, please.

You have six minutes.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Keenan, for your presentation today.

I'm fairly new on this committee, but one thing I have realized in so many troubled areas is the rule of law.... To me, it seems that the rule of law in Sri Lanka is being enforced by the military. I don't think rule of law by a military group is the way that you look towards reconciliation in a country that has been troubled. To me, the only way to address the issue in Sri Lanka is to not pussyfoot around anymore, but to take more drastic action. We have to start playing a bit of hardball with these people.

One of my colleagues is quite critical of the UN and how effective they are in doing various things. There are so many things since I've been on this committee where the UN rapporteur for human rights.... As you know, they go to various countries that allow them in. Is the rapporteur allowed to go into Sri Lanka to do a human rights account, I guess, or are they even interested in doing something like that?

[Alan Keenan]

There are a series of different UN rapporteurs on various aspects; I think there are dozens of them. The Sri Lankan government did allow the High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit in August of this past year. She then presented an oral statement to the Human Rights Council, in September, in which she was strongly critical about what she saw on her visit, including, she mentioned, the harassment of witnesses and people who had talked to her, by the military and police. That was while she was still in the country, which was quite shocking to her. She referred to what she called the “growing authoritarian tendencies”, or direction in which the government is moving.

The government let her in, I think, to be able to say that they're cooperating with the office of the high commissioner. But crucially, many other special rapporteurs, most especially on extrajudicial killings, on torture, on transitional justice, and the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, have been asking to come, many of them literally for years, and the Sri Lankan government has refused. Unfortunately, there's no way that they can go in if they don't have the invitation of the government.

I agree that the international system doesn't have all of the tools it really needs, unfortunately. And when they are there, it often takes a long time to get the machine up and running.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

When they are there, they're probably chauffeured around to the spots that the government would like them to go to.

Again, has Sri Lanka turned into a family-run country? You mentioned that a brother is head of the military; there are uncles and that type of thing. Has the family taken over?

[Alan Keenan]

It hasn't taken over entirely, but it's certainly a worrisome aspect. One brother is the secretary to the minister of defence and effectively runs the military. The other brother is the minister of economic development. A third brother is the speaker of the Parliament and plays a very important role in parliamentary procedure and in controlling the agenda. Various cousins are ambassadors, heads of ministries, provincial council, chief ministers. It's quite a large list and it's quite unprecedented in Sri Lanka's history. It's extremely worrisome.

They don't fully control the government yet. There's growing dissatisfaction, even within the government itself, and within the ruling party, the Sri Lankan Freedom Party, about the fact that no one really has any power in the government other than the Rajapaksa family. I think it might ultimately come back to cause problems.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

It seems to me that the militarization in northern and eastern portions of Sri Lanka is a primary obstacle to stopping the massive amount of human rights abuses, whether it is the use of racism, sexual violence, etc.

How can we act to encourage the Sri Lankan government to demilitarize in the region? And given that the United Nations is aware of the atrocities in Sri Lanka, why has there not been a concerted effort there to set up a peacekeeping mission and a bid to weaken the power of the Sri Lankan military?

[Alan Keenan]

On that last question, the UN is a complicated body; there are different aspects of it. The most powerful part of the UN is the Security Council, and on the Security Council, five countries have a veto. Two of them are Russia and China. Both of them are significant supporters of the Sri Lankan government and have been for a while. Nothing can be done on the Security Council, certainly no peacekeeping force or intervention of that sort, and I'm not sure that would be the best answer in any case.

For instance, when you do speak about peacekeepers, one aspect is that the Sri Lankan troops are being used as UN peacekeepers in a number of countries. This gives a significant amount of revenue to the Sri Lankan military, and a certain degree of legitimacy to a military. While individual troops may well be honourable and law-abiding, the institution as a whole has refused to accept any responsibility for what are believed to be credible allegations of war crimes. The military itself refuses to investigate those credibly, or allow others to investigate. That should be taken into account when the UN is considering Sri Lankan troops. I think there must be much closer vetting and questioning of that aspect of things.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Do I have any more time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

I'm afraid you're out of time.

[Gary Schellenberger, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Keenan.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Mr. Benskin, you have six minutes.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Keenan, for being here and for the work evidenced by some of the reports that I have managed to read in a very short period of time. I'm new to this committee as well. I have to say that my head's spinning a bit with this information.

It seems to me that a lot of things are being looked at as conjecture, not the least of which is the issue of sexual violence in Sri Lanka. You spoke to that a little earlier. There seemed to be a hedging—not saying outright that this is happening—because it's so hard to quantify.

From my previous work being, I guess, a study of human nature, I think there's nothing new under the sun. If we look at other countries that have verifiable instances of sexual violence used as a weapon, is it so difficult to believe or so difficult to, one, take a view that this is possibly happening and, two, bring it to the forefront in such a way that some concrete action can be taken on this issue as soon as possible?

[Alan Keenan]

Well, yes. The way I would frame it is that, certainly, when you have a situation in which you have a military almost entirely of one ethnicity in a context where there is virtually complete impunity for crimes committed by government forces, and has been for many years, and when you have it effectively controlling a population of another ethnicity, many of whom are living in female-headed households due to the deaths of husbands or fathers, you certainly have a situation where it would be surprising if there weren't a lot of either direct sexual violence or coercive sexual relationships of some sort or another, where women who are poor and don't have significant economic opportunities or options basically trade sex for food or for money. It would certainly be surprising if that didn't happen.

But we need to be careful. Until we're able to get the real stories and begin to put together a real dossier of cases, I wouldn't want to make a claim stronger than I am able to on the evidence. Certainly all the conditions are there and the anecdotal evidence is significant that there is a very serious problem of sexual violence and, of course, of sexual relationships and growing prostitution, often with effectively the de facto support of the military and the police. So there are a lot of reasons to believe there's a real problem.

But impunity and intimidation against witnesses are such that it's very risky for women to speak out. There is one case that has proceeded to court of a woman who was raped a few years ago in the north. She repeatedly goes to court, I've been told by lawyers who've appeared with her. She is questioned in intimidating ways, her lawyers say. One of the main suspects is absconding. In that context, how many women would like to take their cases to the police or to the courts, if the few brave ones who do are treated in this way? It's a very hard situation to really get strong evidence on, if people are so afraid of speaking up.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Thank you.

I just want to throw this out for your thoughts. My concern is that, with regard the comments made by the president's brother about the Sinhalization of the north, we've seen in the past in other countries—and human nature is human nature—the act of ethnic cleansing using sexual violence as a means of creating that wave, where women are then shunned due to culture. Women are then kicked out of their society because of something that has happened to them outside of that.

That seems to me, potentially—theoretically, anyway—to be an essential component of this whittling out of the Tamil people in the north. Would that be a far-fetched conjecture on my part?

[Alan Keenan]

I don't know. It's certainly not absolutely implausible, and it's certainly something that we need to be worried about and to be careful to look at as closely as we can. But I think there are enough problems in Sri Lanka, enough very serious and grave human rights problems for all communities, but particularly for Tamils in the north, that we need to be careful not to go beyond what we already have evidence of.

Certainly, as I've said before, women in the north are particularly vulnerable, economically and socially, and vulnerable to violence. That's a structural vulnerability, given the heavy military presence, the ethnic imbalances in power, the economic weakness of women, and all the other sorts of negative factors in the north.

Is it—I think this is your basic question—plausible that sexual violence is being used as part of a plan to change the nature of the north and to weaken the Tamil people? I don't know. I don't think the evidence is there yet that it is part and parcel of a plan, but I don't think it needs to be for it already to be a significant enough problem that there needs to be much more international awareness and active work by all international agencies that work in the north.

While there are many fewer than there used to be, there are still many UN and INGO humanitarian agencies that work in the north. There are development agencies that work in the north. They need to be doing much more, I think, to use their presence to find out what's going on and to speak out about what they can find out about what's going on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

I'm afraid, Mr. Benskin, that we actually are out of time. I let you run over by about a minute and a half. I guess if I read the clock the wrong way, our meeting will end, so I read the clock as not yet being at two, but you all have eyes.

Let me now turn to our witness. I thank you very much for your testimony today. It has been very useful to the subcommittee. We really do appreciate you staying up late and putting up with the peccadilloes of our communication system.

Thank you.

[Alan Keenan]

You're very welcome.

Thank you for having me. Thank you for all the good questions.