British Government Parliamentarian Michael Fallon said that Arms exports to Sri Lanka have increased recently, as the British government has issued a number of licences for weapons and other equipment that will be used by maritime security companies undertaking commercial anti-piracy work.
In a response to question the MP also told in British Parliament on Thursday that, “…Those ongoing efforts to fight piracy are important for international trade and security. Our assessment of those applications has taken into account the fact that the weapons will be held in secure storage while in Sri Lanka and that the companies are fully signed up to the international code of conduct for private security service providers. The licences that have been mentioned were all for anti-piracy, and they were not supplies to the Sri Lankan Government.
“We assesses all export licence applications to Sri Lanka case by case, in accordance with the consolidated and the national criteria. Decisions on Sri Lanka, of course, take into account alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law during the military conflict that ended in 2009, as well as the nature of the equipment—in other words, would it be used in a manner inconsistent with the criteria?” he said.
British Government had issued arms export licence for 100 pistols, 130 rifles, 210 combat shotguns, 600 assault rifles, unknown quantities of small arms ammunition and unknown quantities of machine guns, the parliament was told.
