ERASING THE EELAM VICTORY Part 18 No 6 B
Posted on December 4th, 2025
KAMALIKA PIERIS
Lord Naseby is recognized in Sri Lanka for his work on the war crimes charge against Sri Lanka , His main contribution has been described earlier . This essay looks at his continuing efforts regarding this issue.
UNHRC 2017, 2021
In 2017, Naseby wrote to UN Human Right Council in Geneva . He sought re-examination of the Sri Lanka resolution and was ready to come before UNHCR at his own expense to back his claim . Geneva ignored his communication.
In 2021 Lord Naseby responded to the Report on Sri Lanka issued by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, issued ahead of the 46th sessions of the Human Rights Council (UNHCR), recommending punitive measures against Sri Lanka.
He wrote to Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. He said that UK, Leader of Sri Lanka Core Group, has suppressed official documents that could have helped UNHRC to establish the truth pertaining to war crimes allegations, including the number of deaths on the Vanni east front in 2009. He does not seem to have received a response to this either.
UK Parliament 2017
Lord Naseby was also active in the British Parliament, on Sri Lanka ‘s behalf . Naseby had met British Premier David Cameron , in November 2013, before he left for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), in Colombo. Cameron was heavily influenced by the Tamil Diaspora. Naseby told Cameron that lies were being propagated at Sri Lanka’s expense and asked Cameron to examine the dispatches from Colombo-based British Defence Attaché
In October 2017 there was a House of Commons debate in the British Parliament on Sri Lanka’s UNHRC Resolution passed in February 2017. Naseby spoke on behalf of Sri Lanka using British High Commission war dispatches from January-May 2009.
Lord Naseby urged the UK to terminate the UN resolutions, saying that there is no basis for the allegation that 40,000 civilians were killed, on the Vanni front in 2009. He said that the number of dead couldn’t have exceeded 8,000 and one fourth of them were LTTE cadres. UK Foreign Ministry dismissed Lord Naseby’s statement. The British High Commission in Colombo, too, adopted a similar stand.
Lord Naseby’s office then issued the following statement, (I assume that this was in 2017). “Lord Naseby believes that Britain’s own Military Attaché Lt. Col. Gash, who was stationed in Sri Lanka during the final stages of the conflict, had unparalleled access to the war-time events and that his full reports need to be placed in the public domain. Lord Naseby began his long and determined battles with British authorities to release these dispatches under a Freedom of Information request in 2014.
The statement continues, following an appeal to UK’s Information Commissioner, the FCO eventually agreed in May 2017 to publish 39 pages of heavily redacted reports, commonly referred to as the Gash Dispatches. Whilst even the censored information provides adequate evidence that Sri Lanka’s armed forces behaved entirely appropriately, Naseby believes that a full disclosure would provide greater confirmation that Sri Lanka’s security forces observed the laws of armed conflict, namely proportionality, distinction and military necessity.
UK Parliament , 2020
Lord Naseby made a statement with reference to Sri Lanka at the House of Lords on 07 January 2020. in the statement he said, inter alia, There are complaints about torture. I have seen the ICRC three times and asked it whether it has seen torture in Sri Lanka. Every time, the answer has been clear: no. I have spent 10 years looking at the reports by Gash and the Tamil university teachers, at the census and at all the coverage I could find. The net result is about 6,000 people killed, of which a quarter are Tamil Tigers.
Despite all this, we now find that the UNHCR has decided that it wants to try to get war crimes pinned on the Sri Lankan army. Yet the reports of Colonel Gash made it clear that that army behaved admirably and looked after the civilians. If it had wanted to knock them off, then over 295,000 would not have been safely brought across the lines, would they? I believe that the time has come for the March review, when it takes place, to be the wind-up time for that phase of life in Sri Lanka.
UK Parliament, 2021
In 2021 Naseby delivered a statement on Sri Lanka at the Debate on the Queen’s Speech at the House of Lords I will specifically address Sri Lanka, he said, and I declare an interest as Joint chair of the All-party group. UK is the chair of the Core Group. Unless UK changed its attitude to Sri Lanka ,there is a clear risk to our strategy on Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka will be forced to rely on China, he warned.
The war of 2009 was not some minor insurrection, continued Naseby so judgment must be made on the basis of the law of armed conflict, known as the international humanitarian law. . It was a war partially conducted from Camden in London, at the Tamil Tigers’ international HQ, led by Anton Balasingham, a UK citizen. Millions were raised illegally here on the ground in this country. His wife, Adele, was closely involved in recruiting over 5,000 child soldiers, as stated by UNICEF. This is a war crime by any yardstick.
Naseby went on, the claim is of Tamil genocide, but my firm conclusion is that there were a maximum of 6,000 to 7,000 deaths. My evidence comes from sources such as US Ambassador Blake, the UN in-country team, the census done after the war by the Tamils, University Teachers for Human Rights, the UK’s own expert military attaché in the field and many others, all of whom confirm the figure of 6,000 to 7,000. There was no genocide.
But just recently, Her Majesty’s Government stated in a letter sent to me from the MoD on 25 March, and in another from the FCO, that despatches written by Lieutenant Colonel Gash reported on isolated information from a number of different sources without offering any independent verification of this information. As such, they cannot be considered an evidenced-based assessment”. Naseby wanted to know why the dispatches were so heavily redacted if that was so.
Naseby pointed out that all reports said that the Sri Lankan army behaved appropriately under the leadership of General Shavendra Silva. He also commented on the allegation that the IDP camp was a quasi concentration camp. How so, when the Red Cross was there from day one asked Naseby ,concluding his speech
British High Commission , Colombo, 2017
Lord Naseby wishes to state the following with regard to the response attributed to the British High Commission in Colombo following a query raised by the Sri Lankan newspaper ‘The Island’, published on 6 December 2017.
In his statement Naseby said it is disappointing that the British High Commission fails to acknowledge the importance of the dispatches of its own former Defence Attaché and the insight that is provided by his communications with the British Government.
Lord Naseby takes issue with those in authority be they the UK Government or any other Government as well as the UN and, particularly the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Human Rights Council in Geneva, if they circumvent the significance of the insight provided by Col. Anton Gash, which corroborates a large number of other sources that confirm a casualty figure of around 7,000-8,000 (Of whom about 20% were LTTE cadres, who are said to have thrown away their uniforms resulting in Tamil civilian casualties of about 6,500).
Lord Naseby is concerned that the principles of natural justice are possibly being disregarded as the Gash Dispatches reveal that British authorities knew that the estimates propagated by the Darusman Report were based on flawed information.
The FCO in Britian had this information at their disposal to disprove some of the Darusman Report’s contentions, especially to counter that the estimated casualty figures could not have been as high as 40,000.
Almost every Western media report to this day, continues to quote this high estimate of 40,000 for war casualties, without questioning its reliability, whilst failing to mention the numerous other independent assessments, from sources that were present on the ground in Sri Lanka during 2009, that consistently point to an estimated death toll in the region of 7,000 – 8,000.
After not disclosing its own military attaché’s evidence to the Human Rights Commission, the FCO then took the unhelpful step of attempting to suppress this information when Lord Naseby sought a Freedom of Information request.
Lord Naseby fought for the full disclosure of the Gash Dispatches, yet this was not finally granted as the Information Commission Tribunal sided with the FCO, which insisted on heavy redactions being maintained. Nevertheless the redacted Gash Dispatches do provide an invaluable insight.
UK’s own defense specialist, who was allowed access to the theatres of the conflict in 2009, found nothing which indicates that Sri Lanka’s security forces were directed by their Government to break the principles of conducting operations in a way that was beyond the bounds of military necessity, nor that Sri Lanka’s armed forces did not take due diligence to avoid civilian casualties by conducting their operations with regard for distinction and proportionality.
The British Government should acknowledge the evidence of their own Military Attaché
Lord Naseby has forwarded a full set of papers to the Secretary General of the United Nations, the Human Rights team at the UNHRC in Geneva, and its High Commissioner, Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein and the nine UN Special Procedures mandate holders, each of whom had visited Sri Lanka in his/her official capacity.
They all received a personal letter from Lord Naseby outlining the key issue of the hugely misleading figure in the Darusman Report of 40,000 Tamil civilians killed whereas the truth is about 6,500 and seeking their support for a correction.
The set of papers sent out consisted of the Hansard Transcript of the debate he initiated in the House of Lords on October 12, entire copies of the heavily redacted pages of Col. Gash’s Despatches, Naseby’s interpretation of the un-redacted parts and the substantial corroborative evidence from many other sources.
The statement ends saying Lord Naseby makes it quite clear that he shall pursue every organisation and the persons involved to ensure that the Darusman Report figure on civilian casualties is publicly amended to reflect that the truth about an estimated 6,500 Tamil civilians who died at the end of the Sri Lanka conflict.
In November 2025, Natasha Gooneratne assessed his contribution. Throughout a political career that has spanned decades, Michael Morris, Baron Naseby or Lord Naseby as he›s better known, has emerged as perhaps Sri Lanka’s most steadfast and longstanding advocate in the Global North.
His intellectual rigor, normative commitments, and personal affection for the island position him uniquely in the arena of post-conflict discourse, international law, and diplomatic contestation. His book, Sri Lanka: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, narrates more than five decades of engagement.
His interventions in the House of Lords have raised fundamental normative questions about the application of jus in bello within the Sri Lankan context and in terms of suppression of facts for narrative-building purpose within the broader internationalization of that context.
In 2017 for instance, Lord Naseby brought to light a previously suppressed British diplomatic cable from 2009 drafted by Lieut. Colonel Anton Gash, then Defence Attaché at the UK High Commission in Colombo.
This disclosure followed a protracted legal struggle with Lord Naseby first submitting a Freedom of Information request, which was refused, then appealing to the UK’s Information Commissioner. Only after persistent pressure did he secure 39 pages of dispatches, heavily redacted, including correspondence that had been kept out of public and institutional scrutiny.
What emerged from these dispatches was, to say the least, politically provocative. For one thing even the minimal sections that were not redacted, diverged significantly from the international portrayal of the final stages of the conflict.
It detailed how the Sri Lankan military was consciously and strategically attempting to minimise collateral damage and civilian casualties. The reports detailed measures the Government had instituted to protect non-combatants, a narrative that sharply diverged from the widespread portrayal in international fora.[1] CONCLUDED
[1] Natasha Gooneratne https://www.ft.lk/opinion/Lord-Naseby-in-theory-and-practice/ 27.11.25