Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Nov. 26th, 2013

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

We have heard numbers of 40,000 to 90,000 war widows. Have you heard any kind of intelligence from on the ground about their disposition, what they're going through right now, or if there is any effort on the part of the Sri Lankan government to house them and resettle them?

[Frances Harrison]

People were resettled from the Menik Farm refugee camp, but certainly one hears of a lot of poverty and lack of income amongst these women, and the physical insecurity as well, especially amongst those who are in some way connected to the LTTE. The community shuns them now, too, for fear that they bring the scrutiny of the security forces.

Also, for the women who are released from some kind of detention or rehabilitation, who had some association or presumed association with the LTTE, the communities don't want to have them. They treat them like tainted goods. They presuppose that they have been sexually abused even if that's not the case, and they assume they will bring the scrutiny of the security forces, so that makes their lives doubly unpleasant.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Actually, you've used up your time.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Mr. Jacob, go ahead.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Harrison, thank you for joining us to speak to the human rights situation in Sri Lanka.

Here is my first question. According to your research, how is the Sri Lankan government treating public servants who have accused security forces of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or serious violations against international human rights?

[Frances Harrison]

By government workers, are we referring to any particular employees?

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

No, I am talking about government workers in general.

[Frances Harrison]

Well, to take one example, there were five civil servants—government doctors, Tamils—who stayed on during the war in the war zone, and were extraordinarily brave. They probably saved tens of thousands of lives with no thought to their own.

Of those, four were detained at the end of the war and forced to basically renege on everything they'd said during the course of the war. They were put under extraordinary pressure and forced to recant. They had previously talked about war crimes but were then forced to take that back.

I don't think that it's now particularly a category of government employees as opposed to just any civilian or citizen who can't really raise these issues. Certainly it's something that I think is very difficult for people to confront openly in Sri Lanka.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you.

I have a second question.

In December 2012, you wrote an article in Huffington Post UK about the opening of a new hotel operated by the Sri Lankan army and located, according to the official advertisement, in a place where thousands of war heroes, terrorists and others died.

Could you tell us about that project? Do you think the advertisement and the hotel are a unique case? Do they represent a trend in the government's measures to revive the development of northern and eastern regions?

[Frances Harrison]

Yes, this was a hotel called Lagoons Edge. It was built as a resort hotel, a place for parties—it had a dance floor. It was right in the heart of the war zone overlooking the massive lagoon where hundreds if not thousands of people probably died. When I talk about people, both sides, soldiers as well as LTTE and civilians, would have died there. It's a place where Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, wanted to sprinkle flower petals in commemoration of the dead. It's one of those quite eerie places where a lot of blood has been shed. To have a sort of party hotel there, owned, run, and promoted by the Sri Lankan military, was pretty crass.

On top of that, the military has been grabbing land from civilians for, it says, future hotel developments in that area. You have to remember the coast along that eastern stretch is stunning. It's very beautiful.

As well, the military has created a sort of terrorism-tourist trail, where you can go as a Sinhalese tourist—primarily it's the Sinhalese who go from the south—and you can see the LTTE leader Prabhakaran’s bunker and his various weapons, and you can see how the LTTE leader operated his prisons, and this kind of thing. In a way, it’s run by the army, or certainly the facilities around it. There are souvenir shops and cafes. It's obviously a very one-sided view, but beyond that it's also, I think, about keeping the bogeyman of the LTTE alive. I think the government needs to keep the fear psychosis going among the majority of the Sinhala community, and that's what this is about.

There's a real problem about the military in the north more broadly taking over many of the economic roles that normally would be left for local people to do, and pushing them out of these areas. We hear about a lot of cultivation of agriculture in military camps, for example, which then puts local farmers out of business.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Harrison.

Here is my last question. How do you think the international community could best exert pressure to ensure the establishment of responsibility and reconciliation in Sri Lanka?

[Frances Harrison]

Broadly speaking, support an independent international commission of inquiry. It's very clear that kind of accountability process will not come from inside Sri Lanka.

What is worrying is the South African proposal for a truth and reconciliation commission in Sri Lanka. However that would look, I don't think the Sri Lankans would embrace that in the spirit of truth and reconciliation, basically, and it would buy them time. What we've seen is an approach that stalls for time, delays, obfuscates, and confuses the issue, in the hope that the international community will get bored, distracted, and deal with the next war, and eventually saying, “Okay, these problems are historical and why don't you just move on?”

I think that would have happened by now if the scale of what occurred in Sri Lanka in 2009 had not been so enormous and if the crimes had stopped. But they haven't.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Ms. Harrison, thank you for your testimony.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you, Mr. Jacob.

Mr. Sweet, you were in the midst of asking a question that I thought was on a very promising avenue when you ran out of time. With the permission of the committee, I'd like to go back to you for a minute.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

I'm sorry, Chair. This may disappoint you, but the question I had on my lips has now left the forefront of my consciousness. I did have another question, if you don't mind my asking that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Yes, please.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

As Ms. Harrison said, we're both citizens of Commonwealth countries. I think it's safe to say that Sri Lanka’s behaviour impacts the reputation of the Commonwealth, to a great degree.

Do you feel that decisive action by the Commonwealth is necessary in regard to Sri Lanka, in order to maintain a level of, for lack of a better word, respect for the institution itself?

[Frances Harrison]

Yes, it's absolutely damaging to the reputation of the Commonwealth if it's to stand for anything other than a club based on its historical links and its trade ties. I think that it's going to be extremely difficult for the Commonwealth now, or for CMAG, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, to take action against any other country over its human rights record unless it's very clearly a violation of elections and a military coup. Other countries will simply say, “Look at Sri Lanka, your chair has done all these things. Why are you picking on us? We're not as bad as them.” That will make it very difficult for Sri Lanka to be part of CMAG and be, in a sense, policing other countries' records.

The fact that Sri Lanka is going to chair the Commonwealth for the next two years and potentially might even get into a position where it chairs and hosts human rights meetings on Sri Lankan soil is a bit of a travesty, isn't it?

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

I would agree.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you.

I have a further question. I wanted to follow up on Mr. Sweet's earlier line of questioning and on the very first thing that was in your testimony. This relates to the women who had the experience of being confined, subject to sexual abuse, and then were dropped off in front of a relative after they thought they were being taken out for execution. In trying to posit a model that would explain this, nothing, not even horrible human rights abuses, happens without a reason.

It occurred to me that, if the goal was just to sexually abuse the women, it would be more convenient to dispose of them by killing them or just keep them perpetually imprisoned than to release them to relatives. There must be a value to those who are doing this in having the knowledge relatively widespread that if their wives or daughters have been imprisoned and the individuals are, then, approached to be informed as to where their loved one is, they would be aware of the kind of abuse that they've been subject to. That would create the same kind of incentive as a relative of a kidnapping victim's having an ear arrive in the mail would feel.

[Frances Harrison]

I think there are a number of reasons why they're doing this. Obviously, at a very simple level is a degree of sexual gratification for the torturers, or psychological gratification.

Sometimes it appears to be about getting information, and they're showing photographs of other people they might be able to identify, including in the diaspora. Generally, what you hear from people who've been in detention is that the authorities already have all the information and the intelligence, and that their intelligence is now excellent, which it certainly used not to be. It's less and less about information, but I think there's an attempt to get some.

I think there are two other aspects. I think it's about money. It's a torture industry because we're talking about thousands and thousands of pounds changing hands in order to release somebody. That's the value for them to keep the person alive. What happens when they're released is often the captors say that they haven't formally been released on the books, they escaped. So, if they get picked up again, they're in trouble. Obviously, part of the branding and cigarette burns is about literally leaving marks so that the next time you're strip-searched somewhere, the authorities will know that you've already been in detention once.

Also, for the women, it's about making sure their families know they've been sexually abused because the cigarette burns are in places where—you know, their breasts, their backs, their thighs—there's no way that could happen unless they were stripped naked, and often on their genitals as well. It's about humiliating them and letting families know what's happened to them.

When they say, “Okay, you will be picked up again” sometimes they're also saying, “You'd better leave the country”. At a certain level, it's about driving them out. It's about revenge, it's about teaching them a lesson, it's about getting money out of them, it's about gathering information—if there is any—and it's a whole range of different things.

I have to say, actually, the money aspect is also interesting. I was given a so-called torture video by some diaspora Tamils who had paid for it from some policemen in Sri Lanka. It seemed to show people in police cells being beaten, tied up, and tortured—not to the full extent, but there was a woman with a plastic bag over her head with a man sitting on top of her, and it sort of suggested rape, although you didn't see that, thankfully, in the video.

I think that, basically, what was happening—with all the circumstantial evidence about it—was that the security forces in Sri Lanka were creating a torture video in order to make money. They knew there was money in war crimes videos so they thought they'd make a torture video and get lots of money from diaspora Tamils. The torture was real for the victims, but the reason for doing it was to make money, which is quite disturbing because that money now comes from Tamils abroad who are paying for fellow Tamils in Sri Lanka to be tortured.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

That is a theme that has occurred over and over again in different hearings we've conducted on a number of subjects from countries around the world: the worst and most alarming human rights situations occur when abuses of human rights become self-financing. As long as they're a budgetary issue, they suffer from the same problems that anything that costs money to the treasury suffers from, but once they can start financing themselves....

The worst example of this ever in the history of the world is the SS, which essentially turned the Holocaust into a self-financing institution. One should always be careful about making such comparisons. I'm not doing that here, but that is a concern.

Thank you very much for what has been extraordinary testimony. I'm very grateful to you, as is every member of this committee.

[Frances Harrison]

You're most welcome. Thank you for listening.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Colleagues, the meeting is adjourned.