SRI LANKA

David Cameron on his difficult visit to Sri Lanka deserves credit insofar that he has certainly shown to the rest of the world that there are serious human rights problems afflicting the Tamil people in the northern part of Sri Lanka.

It is, however, the Sinhalese majority and the Sinhalese ministers of state who run Sri Lanka who must acknowledge and accept the grievous abuses occurring in their name and under their jurisdiction and authority. There, in the north, the British prime minister’s impact is much more questionable.

Mr Cameron has been the first significant government leader to travel to the north. By doing so – amidst the publicity and grandstanding of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting – ensured that his trip has received wide notoriety and one that has reached well beyond the Commonwealth itself. If this will help to sustain the international pressure on the Sri Lankan government to stop the torture, rape, and other crimes being committed there, the prime minister’s efforts deserve praise.

The difficulty of such a trip is not just to bring a light to bear on the harrowing plight of the Tamil people, but in spreading afar the ghastly stories of how people were not just held captive and beaten (for doing no more than travelling from place to place), but also tortured and the repeated rape of women. The lists of crimes committed are too many and too well catalogued for the Sri Lankan government’s protestations of innocence to be anywhere near credible.

There clearly continues to be an authorised campaign of intimidation, designed to punish an ethnic people long after the war of liberation has ended – an emancipation from, and terrorism against, the Sinhalese people. It is also a continuing campaign of repression, and one that is designed to force a beaten people into a submissive acceptance that they have no rights and that there is no Tamil future. The prime minister heard accounts of brutality for himself: surely no person in his position can fail to have his heart wrenched by hearing such things and then do nothing.

Undoubtedly, this is a humanitarian tragedy, entirely man-made, and one which exasperates the deep wounds of war. It is likely such damage will cause the horror stories and lesions to fester, building up more trouble for the future.

It is time for the brutality to end and for the process of healing to begin. This is the forceful message that Mr Cameron should be delivering to his hosts.

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