{"id":54057,"date":"2016-04-25T13:48:22","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T20:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=54057"},"modified":"2016-04-25T13:48:22","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T20:48:22","slug":"war-not-over-until-sl-tamils-achieve-justice-and-self-determination-british-opposition-leader-jeremy-corbyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/04\/25\/war-not-over-until-sl-tamils-achieve-justice-and-self-determination-british-opposition-leader-jeremy-corbyn\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018War not over until SL Tamils achieve justice and self-determination\u2019 \u2013 British Opposition Leader, Jeremy Corbyn"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Sujeeva Nivunhella in London<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/em>Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

British Opposition Leader, Jeremy Corbyn said that until Sri Lanka\u2019s Tamils achieve justice and self-determination the “war is not over”.<\/p>\n

Addressing a meeting organized by \u2018Tamils for Labour\u2019 at the committee room in the Houses of Parliament last week, Corbyn said the Labour Party is committed to the cause of the Tamil people.<\/p>\n

Although it is said that 2016 marks the seventh anniversary of the end of the conflict, it was not the end until Tamils achieve justice, self-expression and self-determination, he said.<\/p>\n

Corbyn, who is also the Leader of UK\u2019s Labour Party, further noted: “You have to go into the question of the human rights abuses, the camps that were set up, the missing people, the lack of freedom for journalists and independent observers, and about the issue being properly being taken up at the UN.<\/p>\n

“Those issues have to be dealt with. Unless you solve the issue of the rights of people for their cultural identity, their rights, their language, their freedom, their ability to organise themselves as a community, then the war is not over, the conflict is not over. The situation will only rear its head again.<\/p>\n

“Thousands have died during that war, thousands have lost their lives and families have suffered. Do we say it\u2019s all over? No we don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

“When it comes to trade treaties, they must include a very clear definition of what human rights abuses are. If the trade partner is abusing human rights\u2026then quite simply, we should not be treating them as a normal equal trading partner, we should put all the demands and pressure we would put for anybody else where there is abuse of rights going on. We, as a party, are very committed to the issues of human rights and justice.<\/p>\n

“We are very committed to the rights of peoples, Tamil people, in this case, to achieve their justice, their self-expression and their self-determination.<\/p>\n

“When I was first elected to parliament in 1983, there was a useful rule that any MP could take up any immigration case in the country, wherever it was. So every MP had the power to intervene on behalf of an asylum applicant to make representations to the home office. Because of the work of\u00a0volunteers that did hundreds of cases<\/p>\n

“As a result of this hard work, a very large number of people were not deported to Sri Lanka in 1983, \u201884 and \u201885. They were able to remain in this country, build their lives, run their businesses and be active in Tamils for Labour.<\/p>\n

“When we had the camp in parliament square, people were staging hunger strikes to draw attention to the situation in Sri Lanka. 200,000 people marched through the streets of London and I was one of very few people who were not part of the Tamil community to join that march. I remember to this day, and am still angry about it, the utter silence of the majority of British and world\u2019s media to the demonstration as well as the cause on the issue.<\/p>\n

“The meeting tonight draws attention to the abuse of human rights and attention to the demands you are making. I hope \u2018Tamils for Labour\u2019 continue ensuring that we, as a party, remain committed to the needs and justice for the Tamil people”.<\/p>\n

Responding to Corbyn\u2019s speech, President of the Sinhala Association in the United Kingdom, Douglas Wickremaratne, said that the Sinhalese living in London should not vote for Labour at the forthcoming London Mayoral election. “They should not do so at the general election as well”.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Comments\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

Dev H Says;<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Douglas<\/p>\n

This man makes my blood boil. What is our Yahapalanaya doing about it. Nothing By not appointing a High Commissioner capable of tackling LTTE supporting\u00a0idiots\u00a0 like Corbyn they are making things worse for us . I dont know why he wont appoint the present deputy HC who is doing an excellent job as our HC I hear Minister Chapika is having a meeting in London today. Perhaps you could go there and discuss how to reply to Corbyn)<\/p>\n

I support your initiative \u00a0 . Lets start to campaign\u00a0among\u00a0Srilankans not to vote any Labour man in future elections\u00a0including the\u00a0Mayoral. I mean we must have at least 80,000 Srilankns living in UK to take a stong stand .<\/p>\n

Before that a delegation from our community \u00a0must go and meet Cameron and tell him that not to play in LTTE hand by \u00a0making statements favourable to Diaspora like at last election time. He should know LTTE Tamils would never vote for \u00a0any of the Tory candiadtes , Cameron should know \u00a0at every election time they play a double game and pretend to vote Conservatives during the campaign to get them to make anti Srilankan statement . Then \u00a0on election day they all go and vote for Labour<\/p>\n

If Corbyn becomes \u00a0PM in 4 years time God helps Srilanka<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sujeeva Nivunhella in London\u00a0Courtesy The Island British Opposition Leader, Jeremy Corbyn said that until Sri Lanka\u2019s Tamils achieve justice and self-determination the “war is not over”. Addressing a meeting organized by \u2018Tamils for Labour\u2019 at the committee room in the Houses of Parliament last week, Corbyn said the Labour Party is committed to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}