Hon. Harshana Nanayakkara, Attorney-at-Law - Minister of Justice and National Integration

¶ 01 Thank you for giving me this opportunity, Hon. Presiding Member. Having worked hard the whole day, in the last few minutes we heard a very entertaining speech. Thank you for that.

¶ 02 First of all, Hon. Presiding Member, I would like to thank the Hon. Sivagnanam Shritharan for bringing in this Adjournment Motion on a very timely and important matter. We, as the NPP, regard this topic very highly and as timely with the Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to take place shortly. You can see that there are six or seven Ministers sitting on our Front Benches and also other MPs to support this topic. I believe there are also about nine to ten MPs representing the North and the East. I thank you all for being here even at these late hours. I would have thanked the main Opposition party, the SJB, if at least one of its Members had been present in the Chamber, but they are not. Even when I looked at the speakers’ list, Sir, out of the 19 speakers from the Opposition, there were only three MPs who are neither Tamil nor Muslim and they, too, are junior MPs. Out of the three, two did not even come to speak. So, it is obvious what the SJB thinks of this topic. They think that human rights is a problem for the Tamil and Muslim people.

¶ 03 We are the NPP. Look at our speakers’ list. It is all-inclusive and very attentive because we understand human rights from the perspective of human rights.