Foreign Minister Bob Carr will head to London shortly for the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, amid growing calls for the cancellation of this year’s Heads of Government Meeting in the Sri Lankan capital.

It comes as the United Nations is finally preparing for more decisive intervention following the country’s civil war, in which government forces are accused of killing tens of thousands of Tamil civilians.

Australian diplomacy risks sending the wrong signals. Carr visited Colombo in December and pronounced it safe for the return of Tamil asylum seekers – flatly contradicting every independent assessment. The UN Human Rights Council recently voted to send its own investigators after hearing ‘serious allegations of violations of international human rights law’, along with ‘continuing reports of violations… including enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, torture and violations of the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, as well as intimidation of and reprisals against human rights defenders, members of civil society and journalists, threats to judicial independence and the rule of law, and discrimination on the basis of religion or belief’.

Sri Lanka was supposed to be tackling such issues through its self-proclaimed ‘Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission’, but this was a cynical exercise to buy time until international attention moved on.

The final offensive against the Tamil Tigers was planned as a ‘war without witnesses’, but investigative journalism led by the UK’s Channel Four, in collaboration with brave Sri Lankan reporters both in country and in exile, has kept the issue in the public eye.

The Commonwealth summit would be hosted by president Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has been removing political and judicial constraints on his ability to wield despotic power. Two of his brothers also hold cabinet posts. The constitutional limit restricting presidents to two terms in office was removed, and the High Court chief justice was dismissed, after she stood up to him.

The last Heads of Government Meeting, in Perth, strengthened the Ministerial Action Group’s mandate. Empowered to intervene when the Commonwealth’s ‘values and principles’ are threatened, its grounds for engagement now include ‘the systematic denial of political space, such as through detention of political leaders or restrictions on freedom of association, assembly or expression’, particularly in conditions such as ‘systematic violation of human rights of the population, or of any communities or groups, by the member government concerned’ and ‘significant restrictions on the media or civil society’.

Human rights monitors and the UN’s own expert panel, which reported two years ago, show this is an accurate description of Sri Lanka today. Canada has already said it will not attend CHOGM if it is held there, and cites recent developments to support its argument.

So why has Canberra never backed demands for an independent international investigation of the alleged killing of civilians? Why has it not added its voice to calls for CHOGM to be moved? The answer may lie not in Sri Lanka at all but in one of the grimmest places in Australia: the MITA Detention Centre in Melbourne.

There, a group of 30 asylum seekers, most Sri Lankan Tamils, are on hunger strike because, they say in a statement by the Tamil Refugee Council:

We left Sri Lanka because we fear to die. We came to Australia to live, not die. But death would be better than the life we have.

Their refugee claims have been granted, but they cannot leave detention – after three or four years in most cases – because of adverse security assessments by ASIO. The implication is that they are associated with the Tamil Tigers.

Not only is it fanciful to suppose that – even if they were – they would pose any threat to Australians, it is also difficult to imagine how such assessments could be made without collaboration with the Sri Lankan authorities: a source that is inevitably biased, because party to an unresolved conflict, and tainted by credible allegations of torture and abuse.

Is Australian diplomacy being distorted to avoid upsetting Colombo, for fear of an increase in the passage of boats carrying desperate people to our shores?

ASIO assessments cannot be challenged in court, which makes them a convenient tool for a government wishing to send signals to other would-be asylum seekers, without appearing to fall foul of international obligations. It’s a case cited by the NSW Council for Civil Liberties in its campaign to phase out ’emergency’ powers granted to the security agency following the 9/11 attacks.

Tamils fleeing Sri Lanka will have genuine asylum claims for as long as the country’s government attempts to suppress their political aspirations rather than engaging with them. Diplomacy should send a clear signal that Colombo is on the wrong track. Withholding its showpiece summit is among the only meaningful gestures the Commonwealth can make. The Ministerial Action Group, if it is not to belie its name, must now recommend that step.

First published on The Drum 15 April 2013. Associate Professor Jake Lynch, PhD is director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney. View his full profile here.

The post Time for action on Colombo Commonwealth summit appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.

By Professor Stuart Rees

In answer to the comment ‘Stand up for Human Rights in Sri Lanka’, a young man wearing a sombrero and an Australian flag draped around his shoulders, responded, ‘Fuck human rights.’

It was 10:05 am on Thursday January 3rd, a hot blue sky day, perfect for the start of the Australia v. Sri Lanka Test Match. In the company of about thirty others, on a pathway some distance from the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG), I was attempting to hand out leaflets which said, ‘Don’t Let Cricket Hide Genocide, Boycott Sri Lanka.’

The “fuck human rights” man was followed by other expletives from a few others, so several of the boycott protesters changed tack and tried to be informative, ‘40,000 Tamils slaughtered, do you care ?’ A middle aged couple hurried by, looked straight ahead but answered ‘No we don’t care, we’re going to the cricket.’

Others strode along stony faced, some apparently dismayed by the sight of the protest, some obviously embarrassed at the thought that if they took our pamphlets they might be filmed by the accompanying television cameramen.

To add to the ‘40,000 slaughtered’ plea, I tried, ‘Journalists have disappeared and others have been killed for criticizing the Sri Lankan Government.’ Most people stared ahead and kept on walking but a large, swarthy man in short shorts responded ,’That’s bullshit’ and a few meters behind a smaller man said, ‘Don’t support you mate.’

A more understandable response came from groups of young men daubed in green and yellow, some wearing wigs of curled hair in the same colours. They seemed to think the protesters were supporters of the Sri Lankan team, a perception which provoked their patriotic ‘Ossie, Ossie Ossie, Oi, Oi, Oi.’

With a few exceptions most cricket followers did not seem to want to know about the lives of Sri Lankan Tamils, let alone about any past slaughter.

The task of informing the public had been made more difficult when security guards representing the Moore Park Trust forbade the erection of placards outside a main entrance to the ground which they said was SCG Trust Land. The leaders of the protest were directed to move to a pathway 400 metres distant.

This official Sydney reaction, ‘ Don’t let human rights interfere with cricket’ contrasted with the response of officialdom at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) on the opening of the Boxing Day Test when a similar Boycott Sri Lanka protest was permitted at a prominent entrance to the hallowed MCG. There are no regulations about political demonstrations outside the MCG.

That Melbournites might be more sympathetic than Sydneysiders towards protests against the appearance of the Sri Lanka team, could be implied from an Age poll taken on the day after the Boxing Day test . A sample of 650 readers of that newspaper were asked ‘ Should Sri Lanka be banned from world cricket?’ 66 per cent said yes. 34 per cent said no.

The case for boycotting Sri Lanka was listed on pamphlets taken by only a handful of people streaming towards the SCG. At least that small number could have read that the UN has called for a war crimes investigation of the Sri Lankan government over the murder of 40,000 innocent Tamil civilians, that the persecution of Tamils continues and largely explains the numbers of Tamils seeking asylum in Australia.

Former Sydney Morning Herald cricket writer, the late Peter Roebuck, wrote that a TV exposé of the execution, rape and abuse of Tamils had ‘provoked deep consternation’ among Australian cricketers. A heading in the London Guardian said, ‘A Sri Lankan Scandal; Cricket and the Killing Fields.’

The post Boycotting Sri Lanka is not cricket appeared first on Sydney Peace Foundation.