The text of Dr Joyce's full statement follows:
Dr. Rachel Joyce
Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in
part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.
A legal definition is found in the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2 of this
convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed
with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group;
causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing
measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly
transferring children of the group to another group."
I believe that since independence [Independence from the Colonial Rule
of Great Britain was achieved in 1948] the acts perpetrated by the
Government of Sri Lanka on the Tamils including the burning down of the
Jaffna Library, the refusal to act on the Vattakottai [Vattukottai]
resolution,
disappearances of Tamil individuals, refusal to allow Tamil to be an
official language of Sri Lanka, firing on the so-called "safe zone",
the relocation of Tamils and moving in of Sinhalese into traditional
Tamil areas, and the use of concentration-style camps for internally
displaced Tamils should be classed as Genocide.
I will work with the Tamils to get the acts perpetrated on the Tamils
classed legally as a genocide so that the UN Convention can be used to
address the problems.
Dr Rachel Joyce
Conservative Parliamentary Candidate, Harrow West
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