Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Dec. 5th, 2013

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Order, colleagues. We're now in public.

Today we have with us as a witness an honoured colleague from the other place, Senator Hugh Segal. The senator has served with distinction here in Canada as both a parliamentarian and, before that, as a commentator and expert on a very wide variety of subjects. He has also served as our special envoy to the Commonwealth and has insights, based on that, into the situation in Sri Lanka.

Senator, you know more than most people what the procedure is at these committees. The length of time that is left over after you're finished with your initial comments will be divided equally among the questioners. That will determine how long they have for questions and you for your answers.

I turn the floor over to you. Please proceed.

[Hugh Segal, Canada's Special Envoy to the Commonwealth, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee today.

I was in Sri Lanka from late March to early April as Canada's Special Envoy to the Commonwealth. My role was not to comment on a sovereign nation's domestic affairs or on the bilateral relations between Canada and Sri Lanka, but rather to assess the situation on the ground with regard to the Commonwealth's fundamental values. Those values include the rule of law, freedom, human rights, judicial independence and freedom of the press.

My mission was to report to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Baird, and to the Prime Minister of Canada.

While in the country, Mr. Chairman, I met with senior government ministers, the leader of the parliamentary opposition, clergy from different faiths, civil society in the south and the north, the military high command in the north, Muslim leadership, law societies, students, journalists, and senior public servants. I spent time in Colombo and in the north, in the east, and in the south. I visited displaced persons camps, and was assisted in this respect by the helpful staff of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

While I found the armed forces to be well trained, disciplined, and professional, it was also apparent that they have adopted the PLA Chinese army approach of expanding in the north to monopolize good farmland, the fisheries, and key areas of business and enterprise, leaving no room for Tamils to regain their land or rebuild their economic prospects as individuals, families, or communities.

What I found was a soft ethnic cleansing and de-Tamilfication process that is clearly under way with government support and encouragement. Lands held for demining—lands promised to the Tamils once the demining was completed so they could return to their homes—were seized under national security provisions for the construction of family homes for the broadly Sinhalese army and their dependants, who now live in the south and will be moved to the north.

A Tamil-language newspaper of record that I had the privilege of visiting, whose publisher is an elected Tamil MP in Colombo, was shot up, with computers destroyed and staff beaten to the point of hospitalization a few days following my visit.

Although we were invited to meet with whomever we wished by Sri Lanka's distinguished High Commissioner in Ottawa, Her Excellency Madam Wagiswara, as well as their High Commissioner in London, Chris Nonis, we were tailed and followed by minders everywhere we went, including in the official Canadian High Commission vehicle.

Members of Sri Lankan civil society, invited to our High Commissioner's official residence in Colombo to offer advice and counsel, had their licences taken down by Sri Lankan police outside our High Commissioner's official residence.

In Jaffna a group of citizens interested in peaceful reconciliation were afraid to come to our modest hotel to meet with the Canadian delegation. The High Commissioner and I drove to the centre of the city after dark in a taxi, while the official Canadian vehicles were dispatched to the other end of town, so as not to put at risk the group of former civil servants, professors, students, and clergy who were offering us a briefing. This was at their request, because of their fear for their own safety.

I very much wanted to meet with the former chief justice who had been set aside by the government for rendering a decision that went against the government's preferences. I was advised that it would not be safe for her for me to call upon her in a Canadian-flag vehicle, and that a telephone conversation was the only means by which we might safely communicate. This was for the safety of her and her own family.

I met with the Minister of Economic Development, the Deputy Speaker of the House, and the leader of the parliamentary opposition. The Minister of Economic Development is a brother of the President. The Ministry of Defence and urban affairs—they're the same ministry—is under a minister who is another brother of the President. The third brother is the Speaker of Parliament in Colombo.

When we visited residents of the displaced persons camp in Kilinochchi, we found hovels that lacked electricity, water, sanitation, or floors. These homes were largely made of cardboard, tin, and burlap. But let me say this about the residents who were living in such difficult circumstance. The hovels were spotless and clean in every respect. These were proud people who merely wanted a chance to go home to their own land and their own communities.

We saw Buddhist temples that had been built in parts of the north where there are no Buddhists living. This, we were told, was a way of marking the territory and letting the Hindu Tamil population know that it's not a territory where they can feel safe to live.

During our visit, we heard of intimidation and violence against the Muslim community. After a speech by the Minister of Defence at a radically nationalist Buddhist temple, thugs proceeded from that temple to the neighbouring Muslim part of town in the east and burned down stores and factories because they were Muslim-owned, while the police stood with their arms folded.

Colleagues, let me end by making this final point. What happens within Sri Lanka is the business of the people of Sri Lanka and certainly beyond my remit as an envoy to the Commonwealth. But what happens within the Commonwealth in violation of core Commonwealth values, signed by Her Majesty in the new charter of the Commonwealth that was accepted by all heads of government, including Sri Lanka, is the business of the Commonwealth and every one of its members.

The Commonwealth Secretary-General, while no doubt well-meaning, has been absent and impotent on this file. This is in direct opposition to the tradition of leadership established by former secretary-general Sir Shridath Ramphal who, with the prime minister of India, two successive Canadian prime ministers, and the front-line states in sub-Saharan Africa, led a vigorous campaign of sanctions and engagement in opposition to apartheid. The Commonwealth that Canadians have always believed in expelled Nigeria when it had a military coup and readmitted it when democracy was reinstated. It suspended Pakistan when it fired its supreme court and its president couldn't decide if he was running a democracy or a military junta. When democracy came back, it was welcomed back into the family, as was South Africa after Mandela.

The Commonwealth has no role to play in the internal affairs of its members. On this I am in agreement with G. L. Peiris, Sri Lanka's foreign minister. But the Commonwealth has the responsibility to maintain its own rules and sustain the integrity of its own fundamental principles. When it fails to do that, it raises serious questions about its own relevance.

Sri Lanka has been backsliding and in violation of core Commonwealth principles for some time. The Colombo CHOGM has been viewed as one of the least successful in the history of the Commonwealth, with fewer heads of government showing up than at any other Commonwealth meeting in the Commonwealth's history. That absence was added to by the absence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, this country's head of state.

The reality now facing the Commonwealth is one of crisis, in my judgment. It either steps up to the table and becomes a force for good, as it has tried to be in the past, or it lives in this “go along to get along” ignorance of what's happening on the ground. In Sri Lanka, journalists are being murdered and people are being white-vanned if they're seen to be dissidents, disappearing with no investigation as to where they are. There has been a move to a kind of authoritarianism that has little to do with democracy and even less to do with the traditions of the Commonwealth.

Mr. Chairman, I am in the hands of you and your colleagues. I will do my best to answer questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you, Senator.

We have enough time for six-minute questions and answers in each round.

Before we go to the other members, I just have a quick background question. You and a number of witnesses before you have made reference to the fact that the Queen was not present at this Commonwealth heads of government meeting. Is this the first one she's been absent from?

[Hugh Segal]

No, it's not.

About 40 years ago, she did not attend a meeting after Prime Minister Heath had agreed to sell arms to the apartheid regime of South Africa. For various reasons her schedule didn't make her presence possible at that session, but to the best of my knowledge, that is the only time since the inception of this organization and her titular headship of it that she has been unable to attend.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Okay, thank you.

We begin with Ms. Grewal.

Please feel free to start.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Senator Segal, for your time and your presentation. Certainly we do appreciate that.

In a recent article that you wrote in The Globe and Mail, you mentioned that you saw some evidence of development in the country. From your observations, has this development kind of contributed to the process of reconciliation and the development of national unity?

[Hugh Segal]

There's no question about it. I said in my report to the minister and the Prime Minister that there has been significant investment by the Colombo administration in what I would call the infrastructure of economic growth and opportunity—roads, hospitals, schools. There has been almost no investment in the infrastructure of civility and rule of law. With the help of the Chinese, who are dominant investors now in that part of the world, they are finding the capacity to make these hard investments. On the issues of genuine reconciliation, rule of law, and accountability, there is simply no evidence of progress.

In fact, even among the recommendations of their parliamentary Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission, which did a lot of hard work and tried to make constructive recommendations, the recommendations of substance have simply not been acted upon. The Canadian expression I would use is there's an active program of ragging the puck on those issues, which are most fundamental to the rights and privileges of the people of Sri Lanka.

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

Senator Segal, many witnesses who have come here earlier to our committee have testified to the Sri Lankan government's lack of action in implementing the recommendations such as full reconciliation and protecting human rights. In your opinion, has the recent Commonwealth heads of government meeting had any impact on this government's attitude towards reconciliation and securing human rights?

[Hugh Segal]

The only development that I have seen is the notion of having a “census of the dead”. The hope is that there would be some record that might begin to put into hard data who disappeared and when they disappeared. There are many families who have no idea where their civilian family members are as a result of the war that ended in 2009. All they can find out is that someone they knew was missing for four or five years and may have died in a particular prison.

We have a huge problem. For many Sri Lankans, particularly from the Tamil community, there are huge gaps in their family and community—children who are missing, sons and aunts and brothers and fathers. There really has been no substantive effort to address that question that I could see or find. Let's hope that the census of the dead will be a beginning. But it will be a very long time before it gets to any of the names that are most pressing for the families who are so concerned.

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

The Sri Lanka government has recently announced that they would conduct an island-wide census to determine the number of dead and missing people, as well as to assess the damage done from the civil war. In your opinion, will this help in the process of reconciliation? How does this reflect on the current government's attitude towards reconciliation?

[Hugh Segal]

As was said to us by one of the law professors with whom we met, you cannot have a process of reconciliation until someone admits that something bad happened. It may have happened on both sides. There may not be just one group of people at fault. But we should look at the remarkable example set by our commonwealth brothers and sisters in South Africa, with their Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was based upon the premise that people admitted that something bad had happened during the time of apartheid, that people were brutalized, that their rights were crushed, that individuals were killed in police and other actions that were excessive.

Someone must be prepared to make admissions. To be fair, the absence of accountability exists on both sides. There's been no accountability for the Tamil Tigers, who are a brutal terrorist organization. Nor has there been any accountability on the part of the Sri Lankan government, its armed forces, and its authorities. This is why the United Nations Human Rights Council said that if Sri Lankans do not begin their own inquiry into excesses around torture and war crimes, the UN will be seeking to have an international inquiry developed.

I want to point out that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has indicated that if there is not sufficient action by the Sri Lankans themselves, the United Kingdom will be very supportive of any proposals that would come forward for an international inquiry on that issue.

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

Senator, is there any way the Canadian government and the other international communities can help Sri Lanka to overcome all these challenges they are facing today?

[Hugh Segal]

As some members of the committee may know, Canada has been providing funding for the translation into Tamil of the reports of the LLRC, for example, so that Tamil Sri Lankans can have access to those documents and understand them, and they can therefore assess how they might engage.

I don't think there would be any concern on my part if there was a proposal made by the Sri Lankan government for assistance with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for example. I'd be surprised if Canada and others were not prepared to be constructive. I do know from my time in the country the South Africans have been giving substantial advice and counsel to their Sri Lankan colleagues about how one might structure this kind of truth and reconciliation commission, and they have offered substantive assistance.

So I think the Commonwealth if it were properly engaged would not have been worrying about the logistics of a conference and who sits where. Rather, real progress on these issues is where the Commonwealth should be playing a much more activist role than it is as we sit here today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Mr. Marston, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And welcome Senator. In these days, you're giving a very clear demonstration of some very good work that comes through the Senate of Canada.

I just want to say to you, sir, that you have also confirmed something I've suspected for a bit of time since our witnesses have been coming forward, that is, the problems you are describing within the Commonwealth, and the inaction, and to some degree an abdication of an opportunity, to build on what happened in South Africa.... The Truth and Reconciliation Commission there was seen as a template, and it would be such a shame that the reputation that evolved from that is tainted to some degree by the LLRC.

It leads me to ask you this. Looking at the LLRC, do you see as worthwhile the recommendations that have come out of there? It's not just window dressing?

[Hugh Segal]

No. To be fair there were some recommendations in the LLRC about reconciliation, about actually dealing with the hundreds of names that are still missing. Some people estimate they are in fact in the thousands. The notion of having a process whereby war crimes can be addressed, they have made these recommendations, and I think they are worthwhile.

The Government of Sri Lanka has not shown the slightest interest in engaging on any of the substantive recommendations. They have been ragging their puck around the edges, but not really engaging on matters that would be most substantial in building a measure of confidence that this is a genuine effort to go forward together with due respect for all the ethnic groups in the country, not just the Sinhalese.

If I may say, the problem has been in a sense a terrible terrorist-driven war for 30 years. There have been things like suicide bombers. This was not invented in the Middle East. This was invented in Sri Lanka. There's a lot of relief about the war coming to an end, but we also have to understand the Tamil Tigers were as brutal with large parts of the Tamil population as they were with their perceived enemies.

One can understand the sense of relief, but the notion of going forward by trying to build some common sense of citizenship, of trying to work through these problems together, there is no simply no indication of that, and I'd be very surprised if we saw any from the present administration in that country.

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

I put a note down here as you spoke. You have the former Tamil Tiger group over here, the Tamil community, and then you have the so-called government, and then the military. It's not one of those situations.... We're used to hearing where the military's in charge and doing everything. It seems like the heads of the government are almost a form of gangster, in the sense that they have their community people around them, and the military is supporting them but not driving this.

Is that a good way to describe it?

[Hugh Segal]

There are many dynastic family-based governments around the world. In some parts of the world that's the way in which politics is done. I don't pass judgment on that. That's beyond my remit.

But the notion that there is less and less room for dissidence, for journalists who disagree, even for members of the military who want to discuss what transpired is now very apparent. That kind of drift towards authoritarianism is in violation of Commonwealth rules and principles and is problematic in terms of Sri Lanka following in the tradition of democracy that is now growing in that part of Asia, in countries with a strong Commonwealth connection. In Sri Lanka, I would argue, it's headed in the opposite direction.

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

It's not often that I give credit to our current government, but I think it was a wise decision not to attend. If you had to sit back and look at the Commonwealth nations, who could be the major leaders here besides Canada and Britain? Who else is there? Would India fall in?

[Hugh Segal]

Well, India is a keystone player in that part of the world. It's the hegemonic power, number one; second, it has taken a very constructive interest in the rights of the Tamil minority that is largely concentrated in Jaffna.

Members may be aware of the fact that just before the Commonwealth conference, there were elections for the northern council in Jaffna where the Tamil population, Tamil National Alliance, did very well, winning a large majority of the members on that council. The election took place because of an agreement between the Indian government and the Sri Lankan government relative to some measure around reconciliation and some decentralization and autonomy.

The moment that government was elected, motions were brought forward by parts of the government coalition in Colombo to pretty well reduce the powers of the council. Imagine us having an election where a provincial government that was not favourable to the present administration in Ottawa swept into office and we had a government who tried to remove the authority of that provincial government to discharge its responsibilities. I think the fact that it was done by Sri Lankans had a significant impact on the decision of the Honourable Prime Minister of India not to attend, because it was such a core violation of what had been a reasonable agreement between those two countries.

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

How's my time, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

You have one minute.

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

I guess in any dealings, in any exchange you have with people.... What does the Commonwealth provide that can be a lever in this instance to have this government at least start to pay some genuine attention? We saw a lot of lip service before the nations got together, but what do we have that we can actually work with?

We've got the UPR coming up at the United Nations, but I suspect that's not going to be particularly listened to unless we have an investigation. Is there any other avenue that you can imagine we could use?

[Hugh Segal]

In the past, the leverage that the Commonwealth used when countries headed in this direction was to begin a process of staged disengagement and sanctions, of which expulsion is the last step. But there is a series of interim steps: suspension, a committee of inquiry, and the creation of a sanctions committee. For example, there was a sanctions committee of which the Honourable Roy McMurtry, our High Commissioner, was the chair during the period of apartheid. So this is not about an in, out, black, or white decision. There is a series of stages that should be taken.

Sadly, the present Commonwealth Secretariat, aside from a few symposia and hollow statements of concern, have really not been prepared to engage on that side. I would argue that our failure to do so as a Commonwealth is, in fact, contributing to the sense of excess and the sense of being able to do whatever one wants. In my view, if the Commonwealth is going to be a force for good, it has to array some consequences.

You know when Musharraf and his administration had been suspended from the Commonwealth for trying to fire the entire supreme court and really operate a junta, the Pakistanis were very interested in getting back in. They engaged in a series of constructive discussions. Distinguished experts from Canada were sent to help with constitutional and federalism discussions to assist the Pakistanis because they did want to be back in the family, back in the club.

I think that's the only sanction we have, and our failure to use it leaves the United Nations Human Rights Council as the only body that really has some capacity to engage.

Sadly, this is beyond my remit, but I would say the Chinese role is to reassure the Sri Lankan government that if there is any lack of investment from abroad or any sanctions imposed by our friends in the Commonwealth, the Chinese will be there to soften the blow. Whatever one can say that is constructive about the Chinese, democracy, diversity, and pluralism are not among their strong points as a society and that, of course, is not helpful.

I think part of what drove the British Prime Minister to attend was the notion that, if there's a withdrawal of Commonwealth presence, the Chinese will occupy all the space. Well, the Chinese are in the business of occupying all the space they can. The issue is that they're going to be a countervail presence about democracy, rule of law, judicial independence, and human rights that is a competitor force in that process in that part of the world. I would hope the Commonwealth continues to embrace at some point that mission.

I doubt it for the next two years, but after Mr. Rajapaksa steps down as chair and we have a new secretary-general in Malta, a new chair in office, hopefully, the Commonwealth can re-engage in the way that it should.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

We'll go on to Mr. Schellenberger, please.