Sri Lanka deserves humanitarian award - Niranjan Deva Adithya, European Union Parliamentarian

Remarkable achievement in eradicating terrorism:

Encourage Tamil diaspora to invest in Sri LankA:

by Dhaneshi YATAWARA

Niranjan Deva Adithya, European Union Parliamentarian and the Vice Chairman of the Committee on Overseas Development of the European Parliament says the ‘Sri Lankan Government has done a remarkable job in eradicating terrorism at a time when Britain and many EU states and USA are still trying to fight terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places without success.

Niranjan Deva Adithya, better known as Nirj Deva, is a British politician born in Sri Lanka. Nirj is one of the 27 UK Conservatives who are now part of the European Parliament’s majority political group.

In 1999, Niranjan Deva Adithya became the first Asian-born person to be elected as a Conservative Member of the European Parliament where he represents South East England. He serves as the Vice Chairman on the Committee on Overseas Development and is a bureau member of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly. He is also a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.

He was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Brentford and Isleworth from 1992 to 1997 and during that time served as Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Scottish Office and was a member of the Select Committees on the Parliamentary Ombudsman (1993-1997) and Education (1994-1996).

Nirj Deva has served in diverse fields as a member of the EU Parliament. In 1985, Nirj Deva became the first Asian-born to be appointed by Queen Elizabeth II to the office of Deputy Lord Lieutenant for Greater London - a position which he holds for life.

Q: As a leading member of the European Union, could you explain how the EU can assist Sri Lanka in the post war rebuilding and resettlement process?

A: The strongest asset of the European Union in terms of foreign relations and foreign policy is funding development budgets and assisting poverty alleviation programs of many developing nations. The EU is also very active in post conflict situations as well.

EU is the largest donor of the world. In money terms we give as grant aid about 50 billion euros every year to many countries. We do it through the European Development Fund where the funds go to 79 countries of the Africa Caribbean Pacific (ACP). Of the European Union Budget Fund, about nine billion euros go to Asia, Latin America and other places. All these funds are passed by the European Parliament as it is the budgetary authority. I serve as the Vice chairman of the Overseas Development Committee of the European Parliament.

In the past we have helped Sri Lanka a great deal. During the tsunami the Committee authorised emergency funding worth 370 million euros through its Emergency Fund to the affected countries including Sri Lanka. The Matara - Batticaloa road was built entirely with EU funds amounting to 110 million euros. This is one of the many projects carried out in the rebuilding and reconstruction process soon after the 2004 tsunami.

Q: What is your opinion of the present Sri Lankan situation?

A: This country has scored a remarkable achievement in fighting a war within the parameters of international conventions to eradicate terrorism at a time when Britain and many EU states and USA are trying to fight terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places, but not succeeding as Sri Lankan Armed Forces did. This achievement should be appreciated and acknowledged by the International Community. However, for domestic political reasons many member states of the European Union are not looking at the achievements of Sri Lanka in eradicating a terrorist group. What they are worrying about is their own electoral votes in back home. It is bringing disgrace upon ourselves.

I’m a British Member of Parliament and I’m conscious about the eight million people in Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Sussex, Kent, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire in Britain. Yes, it is of the size of a small country. My party, the Conservative Party will not follow that path. We believe firmly in the rule of law, good governance and anti-terrorism everywhere in the world. The Labour party is now a bankrupt party scratching along doomed senses. I was told recently that in the latest opinion poll, Mr. Gordon Brown has received only 20% support of the people. And it is his Party pandering to all sorts of misfits who have tried to hijack British political system. I find it intolerable.

Q: You have been representing the British public for a long time. Can you explain the real opinion of the segments of the public concerned with Sri Lankan issues? Especially among the Tamil Diaspora.

A: Particularly some of the people who are screaming and shouting about Sri Lanka in Britain have never been to this country. They haven’t a clue of what this place is like. They have not the slightest idea that majority of the Tamil people live freely with the majority of the Sinhala people in the south. They haven’t even a clue that some of the richest people who do business in the south are members of the Tamil community. They haven’t the faintest idea that in boardrooms, meetings and in all the other work places people work together. They are all working together in harmony in the South.

Some young people in Tamil Diaspora who have never been to Sri Lanka do not know this. And not the majority of the British people as well. They do not know that we (Sri Lankans) live peacefully, making money together and live side by side with each other.

And this has not been communicated to these communities properly. What the propaganda says is that there is an ethnic war. In Sri Lanka there is nothing to do with the ethnicity. It is a group of terrorists who were trying to destabilize the country for over thirty years and failed at the end.

Q: How do you see the rebuilding process in the Sri Lankan post war situation?

A: Rehabilitation, resettlement, and reintegration are very important parts for the EU in terms of overseas development. We are trying to do this in Congo (DRC) where there are 2.6 million. Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDP) camps and they are there for six years. And we have been unable to do anything positive successive about the Pakistanis in Bangladesh who have been there for 30 years in IDP camps - approximately 250,000 people are there. And the International community has completely forgotten them. They have left these people to rot.

There are four million Iraqi refugees scattered around the Middle East, in Syria and other places in IDP camps. And no one is doing much about these people. There are millions of refugees from Afghanistan in Pakistan living in terrible conditions in those camps - nobody is doing much about them except the EU. And it was reported that Iraq Military forces killed refugees coming from Iran who have been in those camps for about 4- 5 years.

If you look at the UN report on refugees you see huge pockets of refugees are in Darfur - reportedly four million people. Amidst all these facts why has the global attention been paid to Sri Lanka? It is an absolute travesty of what should be the truth.

What Sri Lanka has been doing is extraordinary. I think Sri Lanka deserves a humanitarian award considering the efforts made in resettling IDPs and how the IDP camps and its conditions are maintained and the progress achieved in the de-mining and land clearance programs while restarting the agricultural activities in these areas. But the force of propaganda is such in Western countries that the ineptitude of certain people in the Sri Lankan administration to get the message passed to those communities needs serious attention.

I would recommend a humanitarian award to the Government of Sri Lanka simply because I see what happens elsewhere in the world as it is part and parcel of my job. In camps in Congo and Afghanistan where I have visited seven times and in Darfur and Iraq we observe terrible conditions.

But no one comments about those issues because of political agendas linked to electoral success in Britain in particular. This has turned into a political issue. This is the last grasp of a desperate attempt of a Party to cling to power as it gallops into the forgotten pages of history.

Q: In your opinion is banning the LTTE enough?

A: There are more things to be done. Banning is not enough. The primary source of stopping terrorism is to stop its funding that comes from illegal activities related to drugs, arms smuggling and so on. I think there has to be constant vigilance. For without money these terrorists cannot buy the kit to shoot people! So if you stop the flow of money you can go a long way in eradicating terrorism.

LTTE were very well organized, well equipped. They even had their own little aircraft. I was even told they had buried some submerging vehicles. This was not a ramshackle organization. It was well organized with substantial planning and management control: it was like an international business. And it operated right under our nose. It happened while we were talking, eating and drinking and wandering around.

If that could happen, then it can happen again, may be not in the same form. We must be vigilant. Even the Al Qaeda operated under our nose and we did not know what was going on. So it’s a failure of intelligence.

Q: What are the chances of bringing in more investments to Sri Lanka?

A: Getting money in this economic climate in a global recession is difficult. The economic recession in the world has left us gasping for breath. Britain’s annual deficit is 180 billion pounds. Its total debt is one trillion pounds. Britain is effectively bankrupt. The labour party inherited the best performing economies in the world and turned it into ruin. There are other countries in Europe affected by the economic recession. Mr. Gordon Brown ruined the country. Unemployment is increasing rapidly. Every new born child in Britain is born with a debt of 58,000 pounds on his head.

He has to pay this during his lifetime. So we have very little money in Britain to invest anywhere. So the West is in a regretful state. But look at the East, China is doing well. Even India is doing well. So you have a balance where some countries are growing and some are not. Of course we are very rich in relative terms. So there is a potential to tap to

get money from the West, provided they are long-term funds. One of the key areas where there could be funding is from the pension funds. Even with this economic ruin we have 26 million people in Britain working. If they are paid an average salary of 25,000 pounds a year, under our law 10% of that amount should go to the pension fund. So 2500 pounds per person is going to a pension fund. We are looking at an approximately 80 billion pounds of pension fund. Pension fund managers need to grow their fund. They have to keep up to a certain target so that when a person retires there is enough money to enable him to live a good sustainable life.

That means they are always looking in to opportunities to invest in fast growing but safe, secure and stable economic environments. Sri Lanka has to portray that to those authorities giving the impression that Sri Lanka is now a safe, secure, stable and fast growing economic environment. Then we will be able to attract some of those funds.

Q: How can we get Tamil Diaspora, living in Britain, into the current development activities?

A: This is where we need to think positively. Some of this Tamil Diaspora are rich people. They are also very hard working, enterprising people. They need to be aware that they can use some of their funds like the overseas Indians have done through the NRI program to invest in India. People of the Tamil Diaspora should be encouraged to invest in Sri Lanka to help in the areas where they can have economic opportunities. One of the things I would like to do is to bring in exchange programs for some of the Tamil youngsters of the Diaspora who have never been to Sri Lanka where they can live with the Sinhalese families in the south and see how we live together here in the south. They can visit their relatives in the North and see what they can contribute to make their lives better.

Q: What is your opinion on the situation Sri Lanka is facing in the context of the GSP plus, especially considering the case of the common people who will be affected?

A: This decision does not lie in the hands of the committee which represent. Yet if we had a say in this, considering all the aspect of Sri Lanka we would agree without doubt.

The GSP plus concessions were brought in to strengthen the economy of several countries.

I mean the main objective of the concession is to help the country and not to unemploy nearly 250,000 young men and women working in the garment factories plus approximately an another million of people depending on their income. GSP plus was set up to alleviate poverty in many developing nations by stabilizing their shaken economies.

The entire purpose of the GSP plus is turned on its head with this decision.