Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to make some remarks about the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the civil conflict occurring in Sri Lanka. This separatist Tamil movement sparked a bloody civil war that has carried on for the last 23 years. It is estimated that, in those two decades of fighting, some 64,000 people have been killed, and a further one million people have been displaced. This conflict has been characterised by brutal terrorism that has targeted innocent civilians. The tragedy of the situation is highlighted even more by the fact that the combatants have mostly been ordinary people, many of them women and children, caught up in this net of fanaticism.

The Tigers were formed in 1976 as a response to ethnic tensions between the minority Tamils, who make up about 18 per cent of the Sri Lankan population, and the majority Sinhalese. The Tigers led the armed civil conflict that erupted in 1983 and that has continued to this day. It has been a ruthless organisation, eliminating not only its enemies in the Sri Lankan government but also rival Tamil groups, eventually taking complete control of the Tamil areas in the country’s north and east.

During the two decades of fighting, there have been hopes for peace. In 2002, Sri Lanka and the Tigers sat down and brokered a ceasefire agreement with the assistance of Norway. This was undoubtedly the most promising development in the history of the conflict, with Sri Lanka going so far as to remove its proscription of the Tigers, and the Tamil rebels beginning to decommission their weapons. However, this ceasefire was not the first. Even as far back as 1985, two years after the first outbreak of hostilities, the Sri Lankan government and the Tigers sat down at the peace table. They again attempted to make peace in 1995.

I have received a number of representations from the Sri Lankan community in my electorate, a number of them members of the ALP, who are concerned at the fact that the Tamil Tigers are not demonstrating a clear resolve to continue in the peace talks. As I have said, so far the talks seem to be failing. Since the last ceasefire there has been a suicide bomb blast in the capital, Colombo, in 2004; the assassination of the foreign minister in 2005; and the horrible escalation of violence in the first half of this year, with bomb attacks on military targets. An April attack in Trincomalee, an area with an equal mixture of the three ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, left 16 people dead, many of them civilians. Only yesterday an LTTE claymore mine attack was conducted in Sri Lanka. At latest count 68 people were killed, 15 of them children and a number of them pregnant women who were on a bus going to a prenatal care clinic. What may have begun as an independence movement has now just debased itself into thuggery, and it should be condemned in all quarters.

The issue that is very disturbing, of course, is the use of child soldiers. The Tamil Tigers have a conscription policy where you join or die. Families must provide a child to the movement. If those families do not, they are harassed or threatened. Once the children join, they are allowed no further contact with their families. They are subjected to brutal training within the Tamil Tiger regime. One case that has been brought to my attention is that of a 12-year-old lad who refused to join the Tamil Tigers. He made it clear that he wanted to be a 12-year-old lad. He was then harassed by the Tamil Tigers. They hunted him down to where he had taken refuge in his grandmother’s house. They shot him dead at the front of her house in her presence.

This happened despite the fact that the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers have signed an agreement to put an end to using child combatants. UNICEF still receives reports of children being recruited by the Tamil Tigers. In just the first months of 2004, it received 160 reports of children being forced into armed service by the rebels. In 2004, UNICEF estimated that there were still more than 1,000 children forcibly enlisted in the LTTE army, and at least 44 per cent of these were girls.

These actions are not the actions of a group seriously attempting to consolidate peace; these are the actions of cold-blooded killers who are not interested in bringing to a conclusion the conflict that is tearing their country apart. If they were serious, there would be no child soldiers, no suicide bomb attacks on civilians and no assassinations of members of the government. It is little wonder, then, that they have attracted the condemnation of the international community. The LTTE has been listed as a proscribed terrorist organisation by the United States, Canada, India, Britain and Germany. Most recently, the EU agreed in May to also proscribe the LTTE. What this means is that any level of participation in, or support for, the organisation is an offence.

In 2001 in Australia, the Tamil Tigers were included on the consolidated list of terrorist organisations for the purposes of this country’s terrorist asset-freezing program. Under this regime, it is an offence to provide or even possess any asset belonging to a listed terrorist group or individual, of which there are currently 540, and this offence is punishable by up to five years imprisonment. It is one of a number of measures that are essential in stemming the flow of funds to organisations like the Tamil Tigers, who use the funds to arm their child soldiers and their suicide bombers.

There is scope, however, for Australia to go further—to follow the examples of the EU and North America and proscribe the Tamil Tigers. There are currently 19 proscribed terrorist organisations, including al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Jemaah Islamiah. These are without doubt the most brutal terrorist organisations in the world and they deserve their proscriptions. So, too, I am sure you will agree, do the Tamil Tigers. This is particularly pertinent in light of the reports of the LTTE attempting to raise funds from its worldwide Tamil diaspora for its final war. Human Rights Watch reported this year that ethnic Tamil residents in countries like Canada and the United Kingdom were being routinely harassed and threatened with violence if they did not pay Tamil Tiger organisers. Just prior to the inclusion of the Tamil Tigers on Australia’s consolidated list of terrorists, similar moves had been attempted here in Australia, with a Hindu temple in Perth being used by LTTE agents as a fundraising base.

I am told there will be a rally outside this place next Monday morning by members of the Australian Sri Lankan community to lobby the government to clamp down on the Tamil Tigers. It is important to maintain the pressure on this group to show them that these terrorist activities will not be tolerated and that they should return to the peace table.