The Hon. G.G. Ponnambalam

¶ 01 …and the war crimes which came out, came out through the military because there are people of conscience who could not bear the way in which the military behaved. They leaked those out; they took recordings. That is how the evidence went out. That is how, today, the Sri Lankan military and the Navy are being accused of such heinous crimes, because there were right-thinking people who said, “No, this is not the way a decent military or a decent military establishment must behave.”

¶ 02 But I cannot see the difference between those persons who thought correctly and those violators, and it is not just me who cannot, but also the entire world. When General Sarath Fonseka was a Member of this House in the previous Parliament, on numerous occasions, whenever the Vote of the Ministry of Defence was discussed, he would stand up and say that there are over 50 very senior officers at the highest of ranks who have travel bans on them. They are unable to go abroad because they are on some list; not only them, but their families are also on the list. So, do you all not want to clear your names? Is this a legacy you want to keep? If that is to be done, the military must stop opposing a genuine international inquiry because that is the only real genuine way that this curse of the past war could be put to rest, where the guilty are found guilty, the people would know who did what and those who did the worst are punished. You had punished the LTTE; summarily, you had destroyed them. There were no trials and you executed them. You had already given your judgment, not before a court of law, but you decided that they all must die and you killed them. That is what happened. But, it is not only them; in trying to kill them, you killed the people as well. That is why I say it is genocide. So now, it is your name that must be cleared; it is only you and there is nobody else. You—the Sri Lankan State and its military structure—are the only accused party today who have not been tried and you cannot try yourselves. It is the military and the police that must agree to an international investigation, if you are to clear your names. So, for as long as the Government does not agree to that, Sir, they are no different from the previous governments who were very clearly complicit in all those crimes.

¶ 03 Now, the issue is this. Why is there a conflict of interest? Why the JVP would worry about dealing with this in the way we say they must deal with it is because of their own complicity. The Mahinda Rajapaksa Government could not mobilize people for a war. All they could do was talk about a racist war; their rhetoric was racist. I am finishing up, Sir.

¶ 04 So, they wanted somebody else who could go and make a credible case for war, to mobilize the war. And it was the JVP who did that; it was their former comrade Wimal Weerawansa, Anura Kumara Dissanayake and many of the other frontbenchers who went around from military camp to military camp mobilizing the military and the South. So, you might be feeling guilty that you mobilized the public and the military to, ultimately, do the crimes that were done, but if you want to clear your own names, that change must start with you. If you genuinely want to make the Tamil people believe that you are not part of the past of Sri Lanka, that you are not the JVP of that time—we will not forgive you for that—because this is not a war time and your attitudes are different, then you must deal with those issues that I have raised. And I am telling you again with responsibility and I appeal to you, do not take the comments that we, the Tamil Members from the benches opposite, make with regard to the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs as something simply to find fault with you.

¶ 05 We are saying it because if you do not deal with it, these two Ministries would be the singularly most important Ministries which would constantly call us to question the legitimacy of the Sri Lankan State.

¶ 06 Thank you.