By Charunya Rajakaruna Courtesy Adaderana

Lord Naseby from the British House of Lords calls upon the United Kingdom and United States of America to withdraw their human rights violations motion against Sri Lanka.

He stated this joining in a discussion on human rights violation allegations on Sri Lanka ‘At Hyde Park’ program on Ada Derana 24×7.

Lord Naseby stated that it was obvious that there never was a policy (in Sri Lanka) to kill Tamil civilians and secondly, the numbers killed were certainly not 40,000, which is what the UN suggested. Figures there were 5000-6000.”

What was happening in Sri Lanka which was a war, yes, but not with all these torture and other dimensions on top”.
At the same time when Sri Lanka was doing that as a country, the UK and US were doing some of these horrendous humanitarian activities. So I thought that was wrong”

And I now call upon the UK and USA to withdraw their motion against Sri Lanka because the Sri Lankans were not involved in this sort of thing. And it is quite wrong of this motion.”

Lord Naseby goes on to say that he had talked to International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) officials who were stationed in Sri Lanka regarding the torture allegations against Sri Lanka. He points out that ICRC members are everywhere in Sri Lanka.

I have asked the ICRC , quietly and privately, three different senior people, on three different visits ‘have you seen any evidence of genuine torture as defined by the Human Rights Convention?’. The answer each time was ‘no, we have seen some heavy handling and that is debatable; but not real torture’.”

The Lord Naseby further said, There is a big difference on what the West allows to happen in relation to terrorists and what Sri Lanka has done in relation to terrorist”.