Tamil People Of Sri Lanka

EDM number 537 in 1996-97, proposed by Dafydd Wigley on 14/02/1997.

That this House calls on Her Majesty's Government to intervene urgently with the government of Sri Lanka to put an end to gross human rights abuses of rape, torture and extra-judicial killings; notes that since the army occupation of Jaffna peninsula, massive numbers of the disposed and uprooted civilians are disappearing in a secret and systematic ethnic cleansing and ecological genocide; records its opposition to Her Majesty's Government's arms sale and military assistance, knowing that this destructive support is used in the furtherance of the Tamil ethnic cleansing, in Tamil concentrated areas of Colombo and Northeast homelands; recognises that Britain has a special obligation to protect ethnic Tamils, who were put at the mercy of a majority Sinhalese 48 years ago by the British government; calls upon Her Majesty's Government to act urgently in the withdrawal of the armed occupation forces in Jaffna and to join the United Nations Secretary General to find an early negotiated political solution to this conflict; notes that international human rights organisations continue to accuse the Sri Lankan authorities of engaging in rape, torture, death and disappearances; and further calls upon Her Majesty's Government, in view of the escalation of arrests and detention of Tamils in Colombo, to impose a moratorium on all removal notices on Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers.

This motion has been signed by a total of 27 MPs.