For those people who cannot speak for themselves, we have a duty to speak.” – Jan Logie

Dec 3rd, 2013

On the 17th of November a room in the Mt Eden War Memorial Hall was overflowing with a tense and attentive crowd. We were all there to hear from Jan Logie, the MP recently returned from a fact-finding mission to Sri Lanka where she had been detained under claims of violating immigration laws. The meeting was hosted jointly by the National Council of New Zealand Tamils and the Green Party, and the crowd was a congenial mixture of supporters of both organisations.

After a welcome and introduction, Keith Locke provided some useful background; he had visited in 2003 when the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were engaged in peace talks. What was striking about his contextualisation was a rejection of the dominant international narrative around the Civil War.

“There’s often an assumption that there had to be a war, and it was a war against terrorists or terrorism. I don’t accept either of those things. You have to look back into history to see that the truth is a little bit different. There have been terror tactics used on all sides, and the impetus to the development and strength of the Tamil Tigers was as a result of Government-sponsored terrorism against the Tamil people.”
- Keith Locke

Logie explained that Australian Senator Lee Rhiannon and she had been careful to get advice on visas before the trip because of the Sri Lankan Government’s record. Two Australian journalists were recently interrogated for over 15 hours and deported – internationally it is increasingly accepted that Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Government has scant regard for freedom of speech.

“Closing down a press conference for a New Zealand MP and an Australian Senator is not a visa problem; it’s an utterly contemptible violation of free speech.”

- Keith Locke

There was an atmosphere of resentment and ample expressions of distaste around the room when the topic turned to the New Zealand Government reaction to the incident. Both Prime Minister John Key and Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully had effectively sided with Sri Lanka detaining a democratically elected MP on a human rights fact-finding mission. That could be looked upon as lèse majesty - at a minimum it is damaging, arrogant tribalism.

She went on to reveal some of the horrific abuses perpetuated on a regular basis by the Sri Lankan Government. Tamil children have been taken from their families and put into special homes, where they’re taught only Sinhalese and some are abused, physically and sexually. When the family had gone to the police not only was no action taken, the accused had been seen with military protection in the town. Politically-motivated rape and sexual abuse was a ‘very common thread, backed up by all of the external reports from the UN and Human Rights Watch’.

“We spoke to a man who had been in prison for ten months with no charge and had been tortured during that time.”
- Jan Logie

Another recurring theme was frustration with a deeply partisan and unethical justice system. President Rajapaksa impeached the Chief Justice and replaced him with his own legal advisor. Understandably public ‘confidence in the police and court system has been fundamentally undermined’. There were reports of buildings being bugged to covertly record people giving evidence. The elections had not been free and fair. People had been stopped by the police and told not to vote.

“So there’s no independent justice system, there’s no or very constrained media, there is regular intimidation and abuse of people who are trying to speak out or organise around issues. There is an active program of displacing the local people that is being lead by the Government. That was a consistent message – from Sinhalese and Tamil. My hope is that New Zealand will go back to our tradition of standing up for human rights internationally as well as in this country. For those people who cannot speak for themselves, we have a duty to speak.”

- Jan Logie

Unfortunately the New Zealand Government has a long way to go if we are to be seen as upholding human rights. Although John Key did raise disappearances at CHOGM, he did not condemn Rajapaksa. Given that David Cameron made headlines with his criticism, and

Stephen Harper boycotted CHOGM, it is truly telling that our Prime minister’s position is divergent. Key is of the bewildering opinion that ‘people now feel safe’ and ‘The rights and wrongs of all the issues are not for us to really delve into’. While Cameron spoke of the ‘harrowing’ experiences of those he met in the North, McCully talked about new roads. National MP Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi has even praised the Sri Lankan government and said that their resettlement process was ‘impressive’ and going ‘in the right direction’. Key is determined not to support an independent investigation, and did not support Jan Logie when her fact-finding mission was compromised. Perhaps our government is not much better than Sri Lanka’s when it comes to discovering and communicating truth.

The day after the meeting, Amnesty International released a press release, echoing Jan Logie’s sentiments, and calling John Key’s performance at CHOGM a ‘failure’ 

‘by choosing self interest over a principled stance and effectively giving his seal of approval to a country whose Government stands accused of war crimes, John Key missed that opportunity (to stand up for our values) and in doing so has let New Zealand down.’

- Amnesty International Executive Director Grant Bayldon