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Sri Lankan government must talk to Tamils: Keith
Vaz
(IANS) Britain’s longest-serving Asian Member of Parliament
Tuesday hit back at critics of his recent speaking appearance at
a London rally with Tamil Tiger sympathies, saying he will seize
any opportunity to bring peace to Sri Lanka.
Keith Vaz was criticised by the Sri Lankan High Commission in London
for being in violation of British anti-terrorism laws after the
rally attended by 10,000 Tamils on November 27 heard a speech by
Velupillai Prabhakaran, Chief of the banned Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE), broadcast live from his hideout in Sri Lanka.
Two other ruling Labour party MPs, Joan Ryan and Virendra Sharma,
spoke at the rally and a message from Liberal Democrats Leader Simon
Hughes was read out.
Vaz told the rally, “I understand the demands made by some
for an independent Tamil state. They will grow, unless there is
a just peace.”
Ryan, MP for Enfield North, said: “I am sorry to have to remember
the 70,000 innocent Tamils who lost their lives in the struggle.
We must pursue the aims and values for which they lost their lives.”
But Vaz, who is the chairman of the powerful Commons Home Affairs
Select Committee, said Tuesday he would make his appearance and
say the things he said again if he thought it would help the peace
and reconciliation process between Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka.
“He will continue to search for peace and resolution and speak
when he thinks he can help the process,” a spokesman for Vaz
told IANS.
He said Vaz, who also chairs an all-party committee for Sri Lankan
Tamils, is in favour of the two warring sides returning to the 2002
Ceasefire Agreement and condemns all terrorism, including that practised
by the LTTE, which is banned in Britain and India.
“But the key is to get the two sides talking again, which alone
can bring about a restoration of the ceasefire.”
Vaz, who has been an MP for two decades, says he went along to the
rally on the invitation of Tamil constituents in his Leicester East
constituency and that he had no idea the organisers would broadcast
a speech by Prabhakaran.
Sharma, who has succeeded the late Indian-born MP Piara Khabra in
the London suburb of Southall, explained his action saying: “Along
with my many colleagues from Parliament we went along to pay tribute
to all these people who died, irrespective of their creed or colour.
“It’s not a question of support for the Tamil Tigers.
It was just a straight forward tribute meeting. That is my interest
and that is what I said. I have a large number of Tamil people in
my constituency and they expect their MP to be there,” he told
a constituency newspaper.
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