BDforever
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2013
- Messages
- 14,387
- Reaction score
- 8
- Country
- Location
Despite rights concern, UK sold arms to Lanka
While David Cameron faces awkward questions in India over bribe-tainted British-built helicopters, the prime minister is in a fresh storm over another set of defence deals involving Lanka's war on Tamils.
Government records, revealed by activists in London, show that UK has been supplying weapons - both small and large, worth "millions of pounds" to the Sri Lankan government even though Britain's foreign office (FO) has in the recent past expressed concern over human rights violations by the island nation.
Britain's foreign office calls Sri Lanka "a country of concern" with questionable human rights records.
However the UK based NGO Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) has sent documents to Times of India showing that between July and September 2012, Cameron's government approved export licences on military items to Sri Lanka worth over £3 million. Nearly £2m of the sales were in the category "ML1" label denoting small arms. In total, the UK government approved the sale of 600 assault rifles, 650 rifles, 100 pistols and 50 combat shotguns. The sale also included £330,000-worth of ammunition and £655,000 in body armour.
We're told that the arms industry is essential for jobs and the economy. In the UK, the government uses grossly inflated and out of date jobs figures. We're told that we need to export arms for our national security. Yet the UK sold weapons to Argentina weeks before the Falklands War. It sold arms to Saddam Hussein months before the First Gulf War. It actively courted Gaddafi weeks before going to war with him last year," the group said.
source: Despite rights concern, UK sold arms to Lanka
