Sri Lanka’s main opposition United National Party (UNP), which boycotted the Commonwealth summit held there, has called on the government to reveal the monies spent to hold the 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).
Addressing a media briefing held at the party headquarters in Colombo on Nov 19, the General Secretary of UNP Tissa Attanayake said that according to party’s estimates the government had spent between Rs. 10 -14 billion to hold the summit.
Breaking down the expenses, Attanayake said the government has spent more than Rs. 4.5 billion to import 400 S-class Mercedes cars, 54 luxury buses and over 100 vans and other vehicles. The government has spent a sum of Rs. 4 billion for food, Rs. 500 million for overseas travels to invite the Commonwealth heads, Rs. 400 million for the opening ceremony and Rs.100,000 per journalist, according to Attanayake.
“All these billions were spent to pose for a photograph with Prince Charles,” he said adding that less than half of the 53 heads of the Commonwealth Union had attended the summit in Colombo. “The government will now try to recover the monies through taxes from the public,” Attanayake said.
The UNP boycotted the summit to protest an attack on the party leader’s vehicle and the attendees to a human rights exhibition organized by the party at the party headquarters by a ‘nationalist’ group supposedly transported by the government.
The UNP would compel the government to uphold Commonwealth values such as good governance, independence of judiciary, freedom of media during the next two years when Sri Lanka performs chair role for the CHOGM), UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said. Attanayake said the government attempted to disrupt the joint opposition human rights event held at the party headquarters. The entry to UNP headquarters was blocked by a mob as party leader Wickremesinghe came to address a human rights meeting. The protesters claimed that the UNP was harbouring a crew of the British Channel 4 TV who had run anti-Lanka documentaries accusing the country of war crimes.
Paradoxically, so much fanfare made by the Rajapaksa regime to host the CHOGM meet had ultimately boomeranged as the international meet, instead of bringing any credit or honour to them, brought international soot on the face of the regime. Never before in the recent past, Sri Lankan regime faced such hostility from a range of nations in the east and west. At the end of the meet, the Rajapaksa regime of Sri Lanka has isolated and shamed that nation in the international arena.
Even as the commencement of the Commonwealth summit in Colombo was nearing, there was more and more close scrutiny of Sri Lanka’s record on the values for which the international forum stands for, which include the promotion of democracy, human rights, good governance, the rule of law, individual liberty, egalitarianism, free trade, multilateralism and world peace.
The report of Katydaigle of Associate Press, world’s oldest and largest newsgathering organisation, filed a news story under the heading “Outcry over Sri Lanka clouds Commonwealth summit” well before the beginning of the meet was widely published in all dailies throughout the world. Excerpts from the report are as follows:
“The palm-flecked island nation of Sri Lanka plays host this week to leaders from dozens of Commonwealth nations at a summit it hopes will generate enough good will and photo opportunities to eclipse three decades of grim history - massive civilian deaths, persistent media harassment and gangster-style politics.
Instead, as Friday’s opening approaches, global focus remains trained on the country’s 27-year civil war and alleged atrocities committed by soldiers who, despite a sustained international outcry, have been spared from investigations and prosecutions since the war ended in 2009.
The leaders of Canada and India are boycotting the summit. Others have had to justify their plans to attend by promising to bring Sri Lanka’s government to task. Queen Elizabeth II, who is 87, is not going, but her son, Prince Charles, is presiding over the meeting.
“It’s a shame the Commonwealth has come to this,” said former Caribbean diplomat Sir Ronald Sanders, now part of a Commonwealth panel charged with recommending reforms in the organization. Choosing Sri Lanka as a summit venue, which gives it the Commonwealth chairmanship for two years, “suggests we are not serious about Commonwealth values.”
For the 53-nation Commonwealth - which has espoused democracy and human rights as its core values since its founding in 1931 - the poor publicity threatens to greatly overshadow the meeting unless it can persuade Sri Lanka to cooperate with international demands for an independent war investigation.
Sri Lanka, seeing the summit as a coming-out party after a long and costly civil war with the Tamil Tiger rebels, was busily building roads, expanding its harbor, polishing monuments and gutting slums.
A U.N. report in August suggested Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-dominated armed forces may have killed up to 40,000 minority Tamils. But Sri Lanka has remained defiant, snubbing the report by U.N. human rights commissioner Navi Pillay, who said she saw no effort by the country to properly investigate despite repeated demands by the U.N. human rights council.
Troops remain heavily deployed throughout the northern Tamil heartland on the teardrop-shaped island off southwest India. Provincial elections held in September were seen as a step toward granting Tamils more autonomy, but also drew criticism for falling far below what is needed for postwar reconciliation.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will stay away from the meeting, saying his country was disturbed by ongoing reports of intimidation and incarceration of politicians and journalists, reported disappearances and alleged extrajudicial killings.
Cameron recently said Sri Lanka had “serious questions” to answer after he watched a Channel 4 documentary showing soldiers executing naked Tamils and other gruesome footage from the war’s 138-day final offensive. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that Britain will join calls for an international investigation of the alleged war crimes if the Sri Lankan government fails to undertake a credible investigation of its own. He said he will urge the government to pass strong witness protection legislation to facilitate such a probe.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was opaque on why his Foreign Minister would be leading the Indian delegation….The Commonwealth has seen members fail to meet its standards before. Pakistan, which has long struggled with democracy, was suspended in 1999 and again in 2007, while Robert Mugabe’s dictatorship over Zimbabwe led the country to withdraw altogether after its 2002 suspension.
But the Sri Lanka situation is unique, experts said, in that the country was chosen to host the summit even while the international outcry was mounting for a war crimes investigation.
“The summit’s success now depends on what Sri Lanka does next,” said South Asia expert Gareth Price of the London-based independent think tank Chatham House. “That is one of the justifications used by leaders who are going, that the media is going to shine a spotlight on these issues.”
Australian Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon in an article under the heading “My detention highlights why Australia should boycott Chogm” in ‘The Guardian’ on November 11 stated:
“I went to Sri Lanka to be the voice the Australian government has refused to be. The voice that speaks of the human rights abuses that the Sri Lankan government is allegedly involved in. The voice that is part of a growing international call for an independent investigation into war crimes allegations following a brutal civil war in which more than approximately 40,000 Tamils were killed over five months in 2009. The voice of leadership that says Australia will not reward Sri Lanka for cracking down on journalists, human rights activists, minority ethnic and religious groups.
What I saw in Sri Lanka has convinced me that Australia needs to show courage and boycott the Chogm, as the prime ministers of Canada and India are doing.
The determination of the Australian government, first under Labor and now the Coalition, to defend the Sri Lankan government’s line – that there are no human and legal rights abuses taking place in the country – motivated me to go and learn first-hand about the reality on the ground. I was very pleased to be able to travel with New Zealand Green MP Jan Logie. We had hoped to travel with a Malaysian MP, however Sri Lanka did not grant him a visa in time. I notified the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of my intention to travel, and they had informed the government of Sri Lanka of my trip.
We arrived on Friday after midnight and were taken straight to Vavuniya, a town in the north, roughly a five hour drive. We then had a series of meetings with elected representatives including ministers, MPs and members of the Provincial Council as we continued north to Jaffna. We also visited a newspaper office, where we learnt of shootings and intimidation of local journalists reporting on human rights issues. On several occasions, the extent of the sexual abuse of Tamil women by Sri Lankan soldiers was brought to our attention. We met a lawyer who described to us the evidence collected about these horrendous crimes. Large areas of Tamil land are now occupied by the military. The level of hardship for women and their dependents is shocking. More than 40,000 households in the north and east of the country are now female -headed, and few of them receive any government assistance if they cannot find work.
Our subsequent detention, which has received extraordinary media attention in Australia and overseas, occurred on the last day of our visit. We had begun a series of meetings with representatives of various civil society organisations at 8am, and were planning to hold a press conference at 10.30am. At 9.45am, two immigration officers interrupted our meetings and requested our passports, which we handed over. A further two immigration officers arrived and we were told to go back to our hotel. No reason for our detention was provided – the immigration officials simply stated they had wide discretionary powers.
At the hotel they attempted to separate Jan and myself and take us to different rooms for questioning, but we refused to cooperate. Journalists had arrived by then, but were prohibited from speaking to us. In the meantime, more immigration officers arrived. About three hours later we were told we could leave on the condition that we did not talk to the media without permission from Sri Lanka’s foreign affairs department. Their initial condition was that they would not release us without some kind of statement from us, which we refused to do.
While I did not fear for my personal safety, I was very aware that my lack of fear was largely due to my foreign passport and the fact that I am an Australian senator. Now I am back safe in Australia with my family and loved ones. By tomorrow, what happened to Jan and I will be old news. However the suffering of the Tamils, human rights activists and journalists at the hands of the government of Sri Lanka will continue. We have a responsibility to ensure they are not forgotten.
The findings of my visit to Sri Lanka trip and my detention has highlighted to me the reasons why Australia must not attend Chogm. If the conservative Canadian prime minister and the Indian prime minister can boycott the meeting while citing concerns regarding alleged war crimes and human rights abuses, Australia can too. If prime minister Abbott refuses to downgrade our delegation and attends Chogm, he should demand a full and independent investigation into war crimes – a call supported by British prime minister David Cameron.
If Chogm goes ahead with Australia’s full participation and Sri Lanka is made chair of organisation, the Commonwealth will have failed the people of Sri Lanka and damaged its own high standing with the international community”.
Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mauritius Prime Minister Navin Chandra Ramgoolam boycotted the summit. A boycott of a meeting of Commonwealth leaders in Sri Lanka could help pressure Colombo to address alleged war crimes against minority Tamils, South African peace campaigner and Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said adding “If there are enough reasons to suggest that the Sri Lanka government have not been doing things with integrity, I think the world has to apply all the screws that it can. And a boycott of the CHOGM could be one of them.”
But it seems British Prime Minister David Cameron’s historic visit to Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged northern province and meeting members of the Eelam Tamil community who narrated harrowing stories to him about human rights violations and atrocities of Lankan armed forces, virtually turned not just the tide, but an international tsunami against the Lankan regime.
Hours after the CHOGM summit opened in Colombo on Nov 15, in a highly symbolic move, Cameron flew to Sri Lanka’s Northern Province becoming the first foreign head of state since 1948 to do so. His visit came against the backdrop of rights violations in the war. Cameron’s car was surrounded by hundreds of Tamil protesters, who were held back by the military when they tried to hand him pictures of their missing loved ones. After arriving in the northern capital here, Cameron tweeted, “Visiting a welfare centre in northern Sri Lanka. The stories I am hearing from the people here are often harrowing. I am the first President or Prime Minister to go to the north since 1948 (when Sri Lanka got independence from Britain). I want to shine a light on the chilling events there first hand. Proud to meet journalists risking lives to put a daily paper in northern Sri Lanka,” he tweeted after meeting with the staff of Tamil daily ‘Udayam’ which had been repeatedly raided by the government.
“This is going to make a very lasting impression on me. That is something you don’t forget,” Cameron told journalists at the Udayam (“The Sun”) daily. “But it’s only when you see it with your own eyes, it really brings home just how much you’re suffering,” Cameron said. Cameron toured a library in Jaffna, which was repeatedly attacked and rebuilt during the conflict and met chief minister Wigneswaran of the Tamil National Alliance. Cameron also visited the Sabapathipillai welfare centre for the war displaced in Jaffna’s Chunnakam area and spent time talking to the displaced people having walked inside tin- roofed huts.
Back in London, Prime Minister David Cameron placed a report on the Commonwealth meet in the House of Commons on Nov 19 and about Sri Lanka, he said,
“Mr. Speaker, the last Government agreed in late 2009 to hold the 2013 Commonwealth Meeting in Sri Lanka. That was not my decision. But I was determined that I would use the presence of the Commonwealth and my own visit to shine a global spotlight on the situation there and that is exactly what I did. I became the first foreign leader to visit the north since independence in 1948 and by taking the media with me, gave the local population the chance to be heard by an international audience. I met the new provincial Chief Minister from the Tamil National Alliance, who was elected in a vote that only happened because of the spotlight of the Commonwealth Meeting. I took our journalists to meet the incredibly brave Tamil journalists at the ‘Uthayan’ newspaper in Jaffna - many of whom have seen their colleagues killed, and themselves been beaten and intimidated. I met and heard from displaced people desperately wanting to return to their homes and their livelihoods. And as part of our support for reconciliation efforts across the country, I announced an additional £2.1 million to support demining work in parts of the north – including the locations of some of the most chilling scenes from Channel 4’s No Fire Zone documentary.
“When I met with President Rajapaksa, I pressed for credible, transparent and independent investigations into alleged war crimes. And I made clear to him that if these investigations are not begun properly by March, then I will use our position on the UN Human Rights Council, to work with the UN Human Rights Commissioner and call for an international inquiry…But I made clear to President Rajapaksa, that he now has a real opportunity, through magnanimity and reform, to build a successful, inclusive and prosperous future for his country, working in partnership with the newly elected Chief Minister of the Northern Province. I very much hope that he seizes it. …Achieving that potential is all about reconciliation. It’s about bringing justice and closure and healing to this country, which now has the chance, if it takes it, of a much brighter future. That will only happen by dealing with these issues and not ignoring them…..And I commend this statement to the House”
Members of both Treasury and Opposition Benches in the House posed many questions to Cameron and even asked why he failed in getting Rajapaksa out from chairing the meetings in the next two years.
For the first time, China called on Sri Lanka to “make efforts to protect and promote human rights”, amid continuing debate over the island nation’s hosting CHOGM. While calling on other countries to “provide constructive assistance”, the Chinese government, which has in the past been among Sri Lanka’s strongest supporters against the international community’s criticism following the end of the war, said it was important for Sri Lanka to protect human rights, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Qin Gang told reporters at a press briefing on Nov 18, in response to a question about the CHOGM summit.
The comments appear to mark a significant shift in China’s earlier strong backing to Colombo on the issue. Only last year, when asked about international criticism aimed at Sri Lanka in the lead-up to a United States-backed resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council, China lauded Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government for making “great strides” in promoting human rights and said it believed that the “Sri Lankan government and people are capable of handling their own affairs”. Last week, China was granted a seat on the 47-member Human Rights Council for a three-year period.
The international community must keep up pressure on the Sri Lankan government to address its human rights crisis, Amnesty International said as the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo drew to a close.
“Sri Lanka may well regret having hosted the Commonwealth summit which has proved a PR disaster for the government. Most of the focus has rightly been on the country’s appalling human rights record,” Steve Crawshaw, Director of the Office of the Secretary General at Amnesty International, said from Colombo.
“The challenge for the international community is now to keep up the pressure on the Sri Lankan government. Those responsible for past violations, including war crimes, must be held accountable, and ongoing human rights violations stopped irrespective of rank - victims and survivors must see justice done. The past week has provided clear examples of the government’s repressive tactics.”
Backing the call already made by UN human rights chief Navi Pillay, the UK prime minister, David Cameron, said that, if no credible domestic investigations are carried out by March next year, there should be an international inquiry. Prime Minister Navin Chandra Ramgoolam of Mauritius, who boycotted CHOGM over Sri Lanka’s human rights situation, stressed that Sri Lanka must cooperate with such an inquiry. “The strong words by Mauritius, the UK and others have bolstered calls for an international investigation into credible war crimes allegations. But we need action, not just words. The upcoming UN Human Rights Council session in March can and must establish the international inquiry that is long overdue,” said Crawshaw.
“By awarding Sri Lanka the chairmanship for the next two years and membership of the organization’s human rights oversight body, the Commonwealth has confirmed its failure to address the country’s human rights crisis,” said Crawshaw. “It beggars belief that a country with Sri Lanka’s appalling human rights record can be accorded this honour,” he added.
While not underestimating the impact of sustained struggles of the Tamils settled in many countries, the protest actions of many political parties and groups in Tamil Nadu, on international opinion against genocide, war crimes and human right violations in Sri Lanka, it cannot be denied that it was the TESO and DMK which constructively mobilised and molded national and international opinion through continuous actions, like holding a conclave and conference in Chennai in August 2011 on the rights life and means of livelihood of Eelam Tamils, with the participation of leaders of national parties and delegates from many other countries followed by DMK Treasurer Thalapathi M.K.Stalin and Parliamentary Party leader T.R.Baalu presenting the resolutions adopted there and briefing UNO Deputy Secretary General in New York and UNHRC Commissioner Navi Pillay in Geneva and later addressing a meeting held in the British Parliament building in London, conducting a national seminar participated by leaders of national parties in New Delhi, taking up the issue in both Houses of Parliament and keeping sustained political pressure on the Centre to back a US sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka in the session of UNHRC, besides holding rallies, picketing and bandh in Tamil Nadu. r
Addressing a media briefing held at the party headquarters in Colombo on Nov 19, the General Secretary of UNP Tissa Attanayake said that according to party’s estimates the government had spent between Rs. 10 -14 billion to hold the summit.
Breaking down the expenses, Attanayake said the government has spent more than Rs. 4.5 billion to import 400 S-class Mercedes cars, 54 luxury buses and over 100 vans and other vehicles. The government has spent a sum of Rs. 4 billion for food, Rs. 500 million for overseas travels to invite the Commonwealth heads, Rs. 400 million for the opening ceremony and Rs.100,000 per journalist, according to Attanayake.
“All these billions were spent to pose for a photograph with Prince Charles,” he said adding that less than half of the 53 heads of the Commonwealth Union had attended the summit in Colombo. “The government will now try to recover the monies through taxes from the public,” Attanayake said.
The UNP boycotted the summit to protest an attack on the party leader’s vehicle and the attendees to a human rights exhibition organized by the party at the party headquarters by a ‘nationalist’ group supposedly transported by the government.
The UNP would compel the government to uphold Commonwealth values such as good governance, independence of judiciary, freedom of media during the next two years when Sri Lanka performs chair role for the CHOGM), UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said. Attanayake said the government attempted to disrupt the joint opposition human rights event held at the party headquarters. The entry to UNP headquarters was blocked by a mob as party leader Wickremesinghe came to address a human rights meeting. The protesters claimed that the UNP was harbouring a crew of the British Channel 4 TV who had run anti-Lanka documentaries accusing the country of war crimes.
Paradoxically, so much fanfare made by the Rajapaksa regime to host the CHOGM meet had ultimately boomeranged as the international meet, instead of bringing any credit or honour to them, brought international soot on the face of the regime. Never before in the recent past, Sri Lankan regime faced such hostility from a range of nations in the east and west. At the end of the meet, the Rajapaksa regime of Sri Lanka has isolated and shamed that nation in the international arena.
Even as the commencement of the Commonwealth summit in Colombo was nearing, there was more and more close scrutiny of Sri Lanka’s record on the values for which the international forum stands for, which include the promotion of democracy, human rights, good governance, the rule of law, individual liberty, egalitarianism, free trade, multilateralism and world peace.
The report of Katydaigle of Associate Press, world’s oldest and largest newsgathering organisation, filed a news story under the heading “Outcry over Sri Lanka clouds Commonwealth summit” well before the beginning of the meet was widely published in all dailies throughout the world. Excerpts from the report are as follows:
“The palm-flecked island nation of Sri Lanka plays host this week to leaders from dozens of Commonwealth nations at a summit it hopes will generate enough good will and photo opportunities to eclipse three decades of grim history - massive civilian deaths, persistent media harassment and gangster-style politics.
Instead, as Friday’s opening approaches, global focus remains trained on the country’s 27-year civil war and alleged atrocities committed by soldiers who, despite a sustained international outcry, have been spared from investigations and prosecutions since the war ended in 2009.
The leaders of Canada and India are boycotting the summit. Others have had to justify their plans to attend by promising to bring Sri Lanka’s government to task. Queen Elizabeth II, who is 87, is not going, but her son, Prince Charles, is presiding over the meeting.
“It’s a shame the Commonwealth has come to this,” said former Caribbean diplomat Sir Ronald Sanders, now part of a Commonwealth panel charged with recommending reforms in the organization. Choosing Sri Lanka as a summit venue, which gives it the Commonwealth chairmanship for two years, “suggests we are not serious about Commonwealth values.”
For the 53-nation Commonwealth - which has espoused democracy and human rights as its core values since its founding in 1931 - the poor publicity threatens to greatly overshadow the meeting unless it can persuade Sri Lanka to cooperate with international demands for an independent war investigation.
Sri Lanka, seeing the summit as a coming-out party after a long and costly civil war with the Tamil Tiger rebels, was busily building roads, expanding its harbor, polishing monuments and gutting slums.
A U.N. report in August suggested Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-dominated armed forces may have killed up to 40,000 minority Tamils. But Sri Lanka has remained defiant, snubbing the report by U.N. human rights commissioner Navi Pillay, who said she saw no effort by the country to properly investigate despite repeated demands by the U.N. human rights council.
Troops remain heavily deployed throughout the northern Tamil heartland on the teardrop-shaped island off southwest India. Provincial elections held in September were seen as a step toward granting Tamils more autonomy, but also drew criticism for falling far below what is needed for postwar reconciliation.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will stay away from the meeting, saying his country was disturbed by ongoing reports of intimidation and incarceration of politicians and journalists, reported disappearances and alleged extrajudicial killings.
Cameron recently said Sri Lanka had “serious questions” to answer after he watched a Channel 4 documentary showing soldiers executing naked Tamils and other gruesome footage from the war’s 138-day final offensive. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that Britain will join calls for an international investigation of the alleged war crimes if the Sri Lankan government fails to undertake a credible investigation of its own. He said he will urge the government to pass strong witness protection legislation to facilitate such a probe.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was opaque on why his Foreign Minister would be leading the Indian delegation….The Commonwealth has seen members fail to meet its standards before. Pakistan, which has long struggled with democracy, was suspended in 1999 and again in 2007, while Robert Mugabe’s dictatorship over Zimbabwe led the country to withdraw altogether after its 2002 suspension.
But the Sri Lanka situation is unique, experts said, in that the country was chosen to host the summit even while the international outcry was mounting for a war crimes investigation.
“The summit’s success now depends on what Sri Lanka does next,” said South Asia expert Gareth Price of the London-based independent think tank Chatham House. “That is one of the justifications used by leaders who are going, that the media is going to shine a spotlight on these issues.”
Australian Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon in an article under the heading “My detention highlights why Australia should boycott Chogm” in ‘The Guardian’ on November 11 stated:
“I went to Sri Lanka to be the voice the Australian government has refused to be. The voice that speaks of the human rights abuses that the Sri Lankan government is allegedly involved in. The voice that is part of a growing international call for an independent investigation into war crimes allegations following a brutal civil war in which more than approximately 40,000 Tamils were killed over five months in 2009. The voice of leadership that says Australia will not reward Sri Lanka for cracking down on journalists, human rights activists, minority ethnic and religious groups.
What I saw in Sri Lanka has convinced me that Australia needs to show courage and boycott the Chogm, as the prime ministers of Canada and India are doing.
The determination of the Australian government, first under Labor and now the Coalition, to defend the Sri Lankan government’s line – that there are no human and legal rights abuses taking place in the country – motivated me to go and learn first-hand about the reality on the ground. I was very pleased to be able to travel with New Zealand Green MP Jan Logie. We had hoped to travel with a Malaysian MP, however Sri Lanka did not grant him a visa in time. I notified the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of my intention to travel, and they had informed the government of Sri Lanka of my trip.
We arrived on Friday after midnight and were taken straight to Vavuniya, a town in the north, roughly a five hour drive. We then had a series of meetings with elected representatives including ministers, MPs and members of the Provincial Council as we continued north to Jaffna. We also visited a newspaper office, where we learnt of shootings and intimidation of local journalists reporting on human rights issues. On several occasions, the extent of the sexual abuse of Tamil women by Sri Lankan soldiers was brought to our attention. We met a lawyer who described to us the evidence collected about these horrendous crimes. Large areas of Tamil land are now occupied by the military. The level of hardship for women and their dependents is shocking. More than 40,000 households in the north and east of the country are now female -headed, and few of them receive any government assistance if they cannot find work.
Our subsequent detention, which has received extraordinary media attention in Australia and overseas, occurred on the last day of our visit. We had begun a series of meetings with representatives of various civil society organisations at 8am, and were planning to hold a press conference at 10.30am. At 9.45am, two immigration officers interrupted our meetings and requested our passports, which we handed over. A further two immigration officers arrived and we were told to go back to our hotel. No reason for our detention was provided – the immigration officials simply stated they had wide discretionary powers.
At the hotel they attempted to separate Jan and myself and take us to different rooms for questioning, but we refused to cooperate. Journalists had arrived by then, but were prohibited from speaking to us. In the meantime, more immigration officers arrived. About three hours later we were told we could leave on the condition that we did not talk to the media without permission from Sri Lanka’s foreign affairs department. Their initial condition was that they would not release us without some kind of statement from us, which we refused to do.
While I did not fear for my personal safety, I was very aware that my lack of fear was largely due to my foreign passport and the fact that I am an Australian senator. Now I am back safe in Australia with my family and loved ones. By tomorrow, what happened to Jan and I will be old news. However the suffering of the Tamils, human rights activists and journalists at the hands of the government of Sri Lanka will continue. We have a responsibility to ensure they are not forgotten.
The findings of my visit to Sri Lanka trip and my detention has highlighted to me the reasons why Australia must not attend Chogm. If the conservative Canadian prime minister and the Indian prime minister can boycott the meeting while citing concerns regarding alleged war crimes and human rights abuses, Australia can too. If prime minister Abbott refuses to downgrade our delegation and attends Chogm, he should demand a full and independent investigation into war crimes – a call supported by British prime minister David Cameron.
If Chogm goes ahead with Australia’s full participation and Sri Lanka is made chair of organisation, the Commonwealth will have failed the people of Sri Lanka and damaged its own high standing with the international community”.
Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mauritius Prime Minister Navin Chandra Ramgoolam boycotted the summit. A boycott of a meeting of Commonwealth leaders in Sri Lanka could help pressure Colombo to address alleged war crimes against minority Tamils, South African peace campaigner and Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said adding “If there are enough reasons to suggest that the Sri Lanka government have not been doing things with integrity, I think the world has to apply all the screws that it can. And a boycott of the CHOGM could be one of them.”
But it seems British Prime Minister David Cameron’s historic visit to Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged northern province and meeting members of the Eelam Tamil community who narrated harrowing stories to him about human rights violations and atrocities of Lankan armed forces, virtually turned not just the tide, but an international tsunami against the Lankan regime.
Hours after the CHOGM summit opened in Colombo on Nov 15, in a highly symbolic move, Cameron flew to Sri Lanka’s Northern Province becoming the first foreign head of state since 1948 to do so. His visit came against the backdrop of rights violations in the war. Cameron’s car was surrounded by hundreds of Tamil protesters, who were held back by the military when they tried to hand him pictures of their missing loved ones. After arriving in the northern capital here, Cameron tweeted, “Visiting a welfare centre in northern Sri Lanka. The stories I am hearing from the people here are often harrowing. I am the first President or Prime Minister to go to the north since 1948 (when Sri Lanka got independence from Britain). I want to shine a light on the chilling events there first hand. Proud to meet journalists risking lives to put a daily paper in northern Sri Lanka,” he tweeted after meeting with the staff of Tamil daily ‘Udayam’ which had been repeatedly raided by the government.
“This is going to make a very lasting impression on me. That is something you don’t forget,” Cameron told journalists at the Udayam (“The Sun”) daily. “But it’s only when you see it with your own eyes, it really brings home just how much you’re suffering,” Cameron said. Cameron toured a library in Jaffna, which was repeatedly attacked and rebuilt during the conflict and met chief minister Wigneswaran of the Tamil National Alliance. Cameron also visited the Sabapathipillai welfare centre for the war displaced in Jaffna’s Chunnakam area and spent time talking to the displaced people having walked inside tin- roofed huts.
Back in London, Prime Minister David Cameron placed a report on the Commonwealth meet in the House of Commons on Nov 19 and about Sri Lanka, he said,
“Mr. Speaker, the last Government agreed in late 2009 to hold the 2013 Commonwealth Meeting in Sri Lanka. That was not my decision. But I was determined that I would use the presence of the Commonwealth and my own visit to shine a global spotlight on the situation there and that is exactly what I did. I became the first foreign leader to visit the north since independence in 1948 and by taking the media with me, gave the local population the chance to be heard by an international audience. I met the new provincial Chief Minister from the Tamil National Alliance, who was elected in a vote that only happened because of the spotlight of the Commonwealth Meeting. I took our journalists to meet the incredibly brave Tamil journalists at the ‘Uthayan’ newspaper in Jaffna - many of whom have seen their colleagues killed, and themselves been beaten and intimidated. I met and heard from displaced people desperately wanting to return to their homes and their livelihoods. And as part of our support for reconciliation efforts across the country, I announced an additional £2.1 million to support demining work in parts of the north – including the locations of some of the most chilling scenes from Channel 4’s No Fire Zone documentary.
“When I met with President Rajapaksa, I pressed for credible, transparent and independent investigations into alleged war crimes. And I made clear to him that if these investigations are not begun properly by March, then I will use our position on the UN Human Rights Council, to work with the UN Human Rights Commissioner and call for an international inquiry…But I made clear to President Rajapaksa, that he now has a real opportunity, through magnanimity and reform, to build a successful, inclusive and prosperous future for his country, working in partnership with the newly elected Chief Minister of the Northern Province. I very much hope that he seizes it. …Achieving that potential is all about reconciliation. It’s about bringing justice and closure and healing to this country, which now has the chance, if it takes it, of a much brighter future. That will only happen by dealing with these issues and not ignoring them…..And I commend this statement to the House”
Members of both Treasury and Opposition Benches in the House posed many questions to Cameron and even asked why he failed in getting Rajapaksa out from chairing the meetings in the next two years.
For the first time, China called on Sri Lanka to “make efforts to protect and promote human rights”, amid continuing debate over the island nation’s hosting CHOGM. While calling on other countries to “provide constructive assistance”, the Chinese government, which has in the past been among Sri Lanka’s strongest supporters against the international community’s criticism following the end of the war, said it was important for Sri Lanka to protect human rights, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Qin Gang told reporters at a press briefing on Nov 18, in response to a question about the CHOGM summit.
The comments appear to mark a significant shift in China’s earlier strong backing to Colombo on the issue. Only last year, when asked about international criticism aimed at Sri Lanka in the lead-up to a United States-backed resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council, China lauded Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government for making “great strides” in promoting human rights and said it believed that the “Sri Lankan government and people are capable of handling their own affairs”. Last week, China was granted a seat on the 47-member Human Rights Council for a three-year period.
The international community must keep up pressure on the Sri Lankan government to address its human rights crisis, Amnesty International said as the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo drew to a close.
“Sri Lanka may well regret having hosted the Commonwealth summit which has proved a PR disaster for the government. Most of the focus has rightly been on the country’s appalling human rights record,” Steve Crawshaw, Director of the Office of the Secretary General at Amnesty International, said from Colombo.
“The challenge for the international community is now to keep up the pressure on the Sri Lankan government. Those responsible for past violations, including war crimes, must be held accountable, and ongoing human rights violations stopped irrespective of rank - victims and survivors must see justice done. The past week has provided clear examples of the government’s repressive tactics.”
Backing the call already made by UN human rights chief Navi Pillay, the UK prime minister, David Cameron, said that, if no credible domestic investigations are carried out by March next year, there should be an international inquiry. Prime Minister Navin Chandra Ramgoolam of Mauritius, who boycotted CHOGM over Sri Lanka’s human rights situation, stressed that Sri Lanka must cooperate with such an inquiry. “The strong words by Mauritius, the UK and others have bolstered calls for an international investigation into credible war crimes allegations. But we need action, not just words. The upcoming UN Human Rights Council session in March can and must establish the international inquiry that is long overdue,” said Crawshaw.
“By awarding Sri Lanka the chairmanship for the next two years and membership of the organization’s human rights oversight body, the Commonwealth has confirmed its failure to address the country’s human rights crisis,” said Crawshaw. “It beggars belief that a country with Sri Lanka’s appalling human rights record can be accorded this honour,” he added.
While not underestimating the impact of sustained struggles of the Tamils settled in many countries, the protest actions of many political parties and groups in Tamil Nadu, on international opinion against genocide, war crimes and human right violations in Sri Lanka, it cannot be denied that it was the TESO and DMK which constructively mobilised and molded national and international opinion through continuous actions, like holding a conclave and conference in Chennai in August 2011 on the rights life and means of livelihood of Eelam Tamils, with the participation of leaders of national parties and delegates from many other countries followed by DMK Treasurer Thalapathi M.K.Stalin and Parliamentary Party leader T.R.Baalu presenting the resolutions adopted there and briefing UNO Deputy Secretary General in New York and UNHRC Commissioner Navi Pillay in Geneva and later addressing a meeting held in the British Parliament building in London, conducting a national seminar participated by leaders of national parties in New Delhi, taking up the issue in both Houses of Parliament and keeping sustained political pressure on the Centre to back a US sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka in the session of UNHRC, besides holding rallies, picketing and bandh in Tamil Nadu. r
No comments:
Post a Comment