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"The Commonwealth is publicly honouring a state which faces very grave allegations of human rights abuses."
It borders on the absurd that the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) is taking place in Sri Lanka this week. That only two of the 53 member states, Canada and India, thought that Sri Lanka, with its appalling human rights record, should have been barred from hosting this meeting speaks volumes about the Commonwealth.
In its Harare Declaration, the Commonwealth pledged to uphold democracy, rule of law and human rights across all member states. In enabling this meeting to take place in Sri Lanka, the organisation has not only failed to maintain its own standards, but is publicly honouring a state that is in violation of these principles.
Sri Lanka has in the past four years faced two resolutions from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and a barrage of national and international criticism on its human rights record. A UN expert panel in 2010 concluded that there was credible evidence of violations of both human rights and international humanitarian law, including war crimes, committed by both Sri Lankan government forces and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009. The UNHRC has called for these allegations to be investigated.
The Sri Lankan government continues to mock these claims, maintaining that they conducted a "humanitarian operation" to "liberate" minority Tamils from militant captivity and incurred no civilian casualties, despite clear evidence that civilians were killed when medical facilities were hit as well as when firing affected special "no-fire zones" which they themselves had created.
UN experts estimated that up to 40,000 civilians were killed in just a few months in the last stages of the conflict; some experts put the figure even higher.
In 2010, Sri Lanka appointed a Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) that whitewashed the military, and the Sri Lankan army conducted its own investigations which did the same.
Thousands who survived the months of brutal fighting were unable to even accord burial rights to their family members. Most still haven’t been given death certificates, and they aren’t allowed to mourn their dead as the Sri Lankan government keeps up the pretence that these killings did not occur.
MISSING PEOPLE
There are 89,000 war widows in the former conflict areas and thousands more women whose family members are missing, have disappeared or are in arbitrary detention. Many women who were interviewed for Minority Rights Group’s latest report, Living with insecurity: Marginalization and sexual violence against women in north and east Sri Lanka, don’t even have any information of their loved ones and continue to live in the desperate hope they will find them some day. They struggle in poverty and have to survive in a heavily militarised society, fearing for their security amidst continuing cases of torture and sexual violence.
Elsewhere in the country there is a breakdown of rule of law, from extra-judicial killings, to attacks on the media and human rights defenders, to attacks on places of religious worship, which occur with widespread impunity. Following a visit to the country in September, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that the country was heading towards authoritarianism.
Supporters of the government of Sri Lanka argue that the country needs time for reform, adding that in any case many Commonwealth states have poor rights records. The fundamental question though is, apart from snubbing international calls for change and continuing to perpetrate violations, what constructive measures has Sri Lanka taken in the last four years to better the situation? It has not even fully implemented recommendations made by its own LLRC.
The allegations Sri Lanka faces are very serious, as outlined in the two UNHRC resolutions.
To allow such a country to be host of CHOGM and as a consequence take on chairmanship of the Commonwealth for two years is shocking.
For months now, workers have been repaving the streets of Colombo and painting buildings in preparation for CHOGM. The city is now ready to showcase the mantra of today’s Sri Lanka - development and prosperity after successfully defeating terrorism. Development, tainted in corruption, is clearly manifest in the huge infrastructure projects across the country. Lasting peace, justice, accountability, rule of law and reconciliation are nowhere to be seen.
The Commonwealth has shown it is willing to compromise its principles. The question now is what the rest of the world is willing to do to hold a state accountable for violations of international law?
In March next year the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights will formally report to the Council on her visit to Sri Lanka and another, much stronger resolution is expected against the country. An international investigation into past violations and a UN monitoring mechanism on continuing violations must be a part of that resolution. There are hundreds of thousands of people in Sri Lanka who have suffered unimaginably; they have been betrayed by both their government and the international community this week, and will now have to cast their hopes on the UN next March.
