Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Nov. 28th, 2013

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

The point that you've been making about the shame on the Commonwealth for having this country in the chair is just unbelievable. Sometimes it's very difficult to even envision the future there.

This is a country that's been in civil war for 30 years, with a dictatorship on power on the government's side. There were controls on the media, and controls on messaging. Hate messages were repeatedly delivered. The people are going to be a long time before starting to reflect on the damage now occurring, compared with the damage that they felt they were receiving during the war, and until that happens, I don't think we'll see a lot going on internally in the country.

As to some kind of international inquiry, do you think that would have an effect on them?

[Callum Macrae]

I think the international inquiry is the only way ahead on that, but I appreciate that it's not a simple question of setting one up. It's an enormously complex process.

In the process of calling for that, the process of saying that this ultimately is the only solution if justice is to be done, I think not only does that message begin to get through and begin to be taken seriously but also it has an effect within the country as well. Not just Sinhala businessmen and Sinhala democratically minded people will begin to be concerned about the increasing isolation of Sri Lanka and begin to be concerned about the nepotism and corruption of the government, it will be part of a process of strengthening the opposition.

I think it's worth mentioning that although there is this very solid, hard-core ultra-nationalist...and they're encouraging this kind of base that they have, which will mean that they will continue to win elections. It was very significant when we were in Sri Lanka that actually, increasingly we noticed that people would give us thumbs-up signs discreetly. A large number of people came up to me when they had the opportunity to shake my hand very warmly.

I think there was quite a considerable constituency within the country, not just Tamils but also among Sinhala people, who were very glad—I mean, we were front-page news throughout the entire event—to see us raising questions in a way that the local press couldn't.

In the local press, I think there were many journalists who were quite glad to be able to report on what we were saying, because it was a news event and they could do it without.... It also let them raise these issues.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

They were happy to shake your hand despite the fact that you didn't pay your cab fare.

[Callum Macrae]

Indeed.

We actually did pay the cab fare, in the end. We said, look, if the police won't pay their driver, we will pay him, so we did actually pay, and we tweeted a photograph of us paying him.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Ms. Grewal, you have six minutes.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Macrae, for your time and your presentation.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recently stated that the Sri Lankan government was moving toward an authoritarian system. Do you find this to be a fair assessment?

[Callum Macrae]

I'm afraid it is absolutely a fair assessment. I think things are getting worse. I think there is a strengthening of a kind of, as I say, xenophobic ultra-nationalism. The problem is it's very difficult. This war was so horrible and there is no doubt there's a generation of Sinhala people who grew up scared of bomb attacks, scared of terror attacks. There was this real culture of fear, so in a sense you can understand to some extent the relief that the war is over. The trouble is that what is happening is very dangerous, because many people hoped that despite the events of the last few months of the war, a hand of friendship and reconciliation would be held out.

In fact, what is happening is an absolutely brutal repression of the Tamils in the north. There has been a consolidation of this thing that underlay what happened at the end of the war, which is that the Tigers and the civilians were regarded as indistinguishable, and the Tamils are still regarded as the enemy. Even though the Tigers are utterly destroyed, the perception that the Tamils are in a sense all supporters of terror and all dangerous to the state is very much part of what motivates people.

There's also a kind of brutalization as well, because the reason the war ended as brutally and violently as it did.... I don't think any previous president had the courage, if you like, to sacrifice so many of his own people to end the war. There was an absolute brutalism. It should never be forgotten that an awful lot more soldiers in the Sri Lankan army, Sinhala soldiers for the vast majority, died than did Tiger fighters in the last two months in terms of actual combat deaths. There was a brutal contempt and disregard for the health, safety, and well-being of their own soldiers. There's a kind of brutalized culture within the Sri Lankan army, which I think is also playing a part in the repression of the Tamils in the north.

This is very dangerous because quite clearly, what will happen is.... If you're able to look at my film you will see lots of photographs of very sweet, damaged six-, seven-, eight-, and nine-year-olds mourning and crying and in a terrible state. At the moment those are just utterly destroyed and damaged individuals. It's impossible to stress how awful and how traumatized the community in the north is. There is nobody there who hasn't lost people, who hasn't seen their mother, father, brother, or sister blown up in front of their eyes. They are now growing up watching their parents—if they survive—and their brothers and their sisters being repressed and brutalized and allowed no freedom and allowed no political agency. What's going to happen to these kids when they're 15 or 16 if there isn't justice, if there isn't an international inquiry, if there isn't a sense that the international community has taken this seriously?

There's an awful inevitability about what those 16-year-olds will think. They will think there is only one way to achieve justice and that's to take it into their own hands. The potential for history to repeat itself is just too awful to contemplate. This is why I think the whole question of setting up an independent inquiry or finding some mechanism for ensuring there is justice is not an academic exercise in historical accountability; it's an urgent task if further bloodshed is to be avoided.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Yesterday there was an article on the BBC website which stated that the Sri Lankan government would conduct an island-wide census to determine the number of dead and missing people, as well as to assess the damage from the civil war. In your opinion, will this help in the process of reconciliation? How does this reflect the current government's attitude towards reconciliation?

[Callum Macrae]

I haven't actually seen that, to be honest. It doesn't surprise me. It's the kind of thing that they say they will do all the time. They've set up commissions into the disappeared that constantly promised to give information to the relatives and that never did.

The trouble is that there is a pattern of the government making these kinds of announcements. It's what it does. They never turn out to be true. You have to remember that this government, during the war, said that not a single civilian had died. At the end of the war, they said they had rescued all of the hostages. They said that not a single civilian had been injured as a result of government shelling. Now, since then, they've revised that to 7,000. They will no doubt revise that up.

It is an appalling indictment that we don't know how many people died. There are a lot of figures circulating. The UN suggested 40,000. The Panel of Experts report suggests in the subsequent internal review that it could be as many as 70,000. The World Bank, I think, has estimated that something like 120,000 people are unaccounted for. That doesn't mean they're dead, of course. Many of them will have left or have gone to India or whatever.

Four and a half years later, the fact that nobody knows is astonishing. This is a country that has censuses, that has votes. It's not a country where they don't know who they have. The fact that nobody knows this late and that the government is leaping from no dead to 7,000 dead is an absolute indictment.

If I believed I could take this latest government announcement seriously, then I would think it was good. The trouble is that there is absolutely no evidence. There is such a historical pattern of these kinds of commissions of inquiry being announced, coming to nothing, and not being reported or just being sheer fakery from the word go, that I'm afraid I'm deeply cynical about it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you, Ms. Grewal.

Professor Cotler, you're next.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Macrae, I want to thank you for your reporting, and particularly the courage that underpins it.

I read recently your article in The Guardian of November 16 on how you became, as you discuss today, Sri Lanka's most hated man, but I will quote from the end of the article:

But look behind these threats and hysteria beyond the front page banner headlines that read “End of the road for Callum Macrae” and you detect a different current underneath.

You made reference to that during our Qs and As. I'm concerned because, as you just mentioned, the fact that nobody really knows what happened is in itself such a serious indictment. What did you find in terms of the people themselves and their appreciation both of what happened and also of the importance of the kind of reporting you're doing?

[Callum Macrae]

The problem among ordinary Sinhala people in Sri Lanka is that they are fed lies. I know I keep saying that I don't use these expressions lightly, but I don't. They're quite clearly just fed categorical lies.

There was an article in the government-sponsored Daily News. There was a full-page investigation into me that quoted e-mails I had been sent by my Tamil Tiger commander instructing me to make these three programs. It described meetings that I had with Adele Balasingham, who is the wife of one of the Tamil Tiger leaders, in my office in Channel 4. This material is believed in Sri Lanka.

The fact is, I don't have an office in Channel 4. I'm a freelancer. I have never met Adele Balasingham in my life. The idea that the Tamil Tigers would pay me to call them war criminals who use terror tactics and shoot civilians and child soldiers is laughable, but actually it is believed in Sri Lanka, and people are denied access to anything resembling truth. That's one of the great problems in terms of getting people to question what the government is doing.

I'm sorry, but I've forgotten the second part of your question.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I might ask it in a different way.

We have been discussing also the culture of impunity in the face of the war crimes and crimes against humanity. While there may be a prospective investigation in March by the United Nations Council on Human Rights, that's still part of the way off.

My concern is not only about the investigative capacity and accountability, but about what can be done to protect journalists like you so that in fact the information can be known, so that in fact the people in Sri Lanka can be exposed to the truth, and so this culture of intimidation and harassment of the media will end. Is there anything the international community, or we as Canadian parliamentarians can do in that regard?

[Callum Macrae]

It is a very difficult problem because the press is so tightly controlled. There are lots of journalists of goodwill trying to work, but they have to self-censor themselves or they will be either disappeared or have to leave.

It is a question of constantly monitoring. I think it is useful if people go on fact-finding missions. The problem is that if you go on a fact-finding mission—and this is very much the problem for us. I can go to Sri Lanka. I can announce that I'm going to go there to try to cover what's going on, but of course I can't meet anybody, because if I do, I know what will happen to them afterwards. Indeed, Navi Pillay found exactly the same thing when she spoke to people. Once you leave, the danger is not actually to the foreign journalist; the danger is to the people you meet.

That is a very difficult situation. There is no simple solution except to constantly raise it, to constantly try to keep informed and to monitor what is happening, and to lend support when necessary.

For example, recently a Tamil writer from Sri Lanka, in exile for several years, went to visit his mother-in-law's grave and was arrested. It's important to raise these issues as soon as they're heard about.

One of the problems we have—and the British media and all the media are guilty of this, as well as government—is that in the past, we have ignored the cries of protest coming from Tamils in Sri Lanka, partly because the government had so very successfully identified all Tamils as Tamil Tigers. Internationally, the justifiable suspicion of the Tamil Tigers meant that nobody listens to the cries of democratic Sinhalese oppositionists or Tamils.

I think international scrutiny is absolutely vital. I know that's a trite and easy thing to say, but in the past, the international community failed to exercise that scrutiny and to listen to the news coming out of there. We have to do it much more carefully in the future.

I appreciate that's a rather platitudinous answer, but I can't think of a better one.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

You have one more last question, if it's brief.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Macrae, it is a brief question, but I know it will take more time than you have to answer it.

I get a sense that the whole issue and the question of the Sri Lankan tragedy and the horrors that befell the Tamils has fallen off the radar screen. Apart from the reporting you are courageously doing, it doesn't seem to be part of international attention and involvement.

Is that a fair inference to draw?

[Callum Macrae]

Yes. I think the problem is that it was completely ignored at the time.

In its first meeting after the end of the war, I remember that the United Nations Human Rights Council extraordinarily and shamefully passed the resolution congratulating Sri Lanka on ending the war.

In a sense, the truth is beginning to come out, in that the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which was so surprisingly and appallingly held in Sri Lanka, did actually focus attention to some extent on what's happening.

I hope that perhaps there is a low-level growing awareness of what went on and that the news is beginning to get out. As I mentioned earlier, the problem is that it's seen as a question of historical accountability rather than an urgent matter of addressing human rights abuses and ensuring that this doesn't happen again.

That urgency is what people don't appreciate. There is a growing awareness, in an academic sense, that terrible things happened and that perhaps in the due course of law and justice something should be done. However, I don't think there's an awareness of how potentially dangerous and volatile the continuing oppression and the continual denial of human rights is, and of the trouble and potential violence building up for the future which is represented by that. That is the message that has to be got across; in particular, it's a message that has to be got across to the non-aligned countries.

For example, I showed the film to one African delegation, and I sent it to South American diplomats, and they were truly and genuinely shocked and taken aback. If that kind of message can be got out.... I'm hoping that we can raise the funds, because at the moment, we have absolutely no funds whatsoever, despite what the government says about our Tamil Tiger funding. We're hoping to do a tour of Latin American countries and some African countries in the buildup to the UN meeting, to show this film to people just to get the word out.

It's a difficult low-level process, which I think is slowly getting through, but whether people understand the urgency and the importance of it, I'm not sure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you.

Let's go now to Mr. Sweet.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, Mr. Macrae. It has been good to hear your testimony.

Since you introduced us to Bandula Jayasekara, who I must disclose to the committee I know from his being a consul general here in Canada, I went to Twitter and I went through some of the history. It's rather unusual for a diplomat of his stature to spend, and I haven't been able to get through all of October, but certainly all of November it seems, on a campaign to make sure that your reputation was entirely destroyed.

He mentions a book that was published regarding exposing the corrupt journalism industry. Can you tell us a bit about that?

[Callum Macrae]

Yes. This is an extraordinary publication, which I am hoping to try to find time next week to do a detailed rebuttal of.

Our journalism has been under absolute constant attack by the Sri Lankan government since we started this. We have an independent television regulator in the U.K. called Ofcom, the Office of Communications, to which any member of the public can submit a complaint if any television program is, in their view, unfair, misleading, misrepresenting, or whatever. It's an independent regulator, and a regulator that is more than happy to find TV broadcasts at fault if they are indeed at fault.

The Sri Lankan government orchestrated—quite clearly they orchestrated—over 100 complaints about our first two television programs, including what I think is the longest complaint that Ofcom has ever received, allegedly from a member of the public. In fact, it was 600 pages long, written by lawyers, and an incredibly detailed attack on which a lot of the content of this book is now based. Every single one of those complaints was considered by the Ofcom regulator. Obviously, we had to submit at great length long defences to all of these allegations. Every single one of them was rejected, and that's extremely unusual. Not a single damn point was upheld in any of the complaints by the independent regulator.

The fact is that our journalism has stood up to the most extraordinary scrutiny. They have continued to do this. They published a 220-page book, a full, large book, which I have a copy of, which they initially were going to distribute to every single journalist. I've had various academics and journalists here in Britain phone me to tell me that they've now been sent it. It is an absolutely scurrilous and unsubstantiated document full of the most.... Ironically, they call it, Corrupted Journalism: Channel 4 and Sri Lanka. It is, in fact, in itself the most appalling piece of journalism, with misrepresentations, and so on. It does things like quote at great length Jaffna University teachers.... I can't recall exactly what they call it; I don't have it in front of me. It quotes documents at great length that it cites as supporting their case, which, if you actually read the document, completely condemn their case and indeed back up everything that we have said.

It is an extraordinary, very expensive exercise in public relations, which has clearly been funded. We don't know who funded it, but it certainly is impossible to imagine who else would want to fund it besides the Sri Lankan government. It's a disgraceful and appalling document, which I am hoping to find time next week to try to do a detailed rebuttal of. It won't be that difficult, but it will take time.

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

We'll look forward to that, Mr. Macrae.

Mr. Chair, if my colleagues would agree, I'd suggest that the researchers spend a bit of time on this particular diplomat, who is from New South Wales, a diplomat from Sri Lanka, Bandula Jayasekara, who also in many of his comments says that Canada is guilty of exporting terror. That gives you an idea about what's on here. If they would extract some of the tweets that are pertinent to our investigation, that would be very helpful, at least in my regard. I hope my colleagues will agree to that.

[Callum Macrae]

If I could, I would say one other thing on Bandula Jayasekara. On one level, his tweets are clearly libellous and demonstrably libellous. The idea that I'm funded by an organization I condemn as guilty of war crimes is absurd. That manner of speaking was extremely dangerous. I was not able to walk on the street in safety in Sri Lanka because of that kind of material, these kinds of lies, which are, in the context of Sri Lanka today, quite clear incitements to violence and incitements to hatred. I was considered to be partially responsible for the death threats that were made against me. On one level, one would sort of laugh off his comments because they're so absurd, but on another level they are actually quite dangerous and extremely irresponsible.

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

I concur.

I wanted to ask you about the militarization of the public service. One of our witnesses mentioned that pretty well everywhere you go, there's a militarization of the public service in just about every dimension. Did you witness that when you were on the ground in Sri Lanka?

[Callum Macrae]

Even in Colombo you can see that, and I think that the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission did say that the MOD, should withdraw from inappropriate civilian administrative activities. Their response to that, I think if you look up the website of the Ministry of Defence of Sri Lanka, you will see that it is called the ministry of defence and urban renewal. I think it's urban renewal, but it's a phrase along those lines. Again, it's kind of laughable on one level, but really quite sinister on another.

It demonstrates the increasing...the regime is based on the military. The regime is based on its military loyalty, and if you look at what's happening.... Another sort of key factor.... Actually last year, the Ministry of Defence's budget—this is the fourth year after the end of the war—went up something like 25%. There are huge, huge numbers, and I wasn't able to get up there to see because I was stopped, but there are huge numbers of military in the north.

The military is taking over. There is a massive land grab going on there. There is something like 7,000 acres of land subject to legal proceedings just now. The military are building bases on Tamil lands. The military are running hotels and whale watching trips for tourists. The military are running shops; they're running groceries. They have a huge military with not a lot to do, and they are being used to, if you like, destroy the ethnic identity of what are seen as the Tamil homelands in the north. The vast majority of the military are back up in the north, in the northeast and in the Tamil areas. They have been given a bonus for having a third child, a quite clear and open and blatant attempt to ethnically re-engineer the north, a really quite sinister process.

The military are also the power base of the president's brother—the defence secretary—who is seen by many as the power behind the throne, and has played a critical role in the conduct of the war, and is now playing a critical role in the conduct of the country.