news.com.auPRIME Minister Julia Gillard has used a meeting with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to stress the need to address allegations of human rights abuses in his country.
Their meeting in Perth today came as damning photographs emerged allegedly showing executions and abuse by Sri Lankan soldiers.
The pair are in Perth for the Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting (CHOGM) but Mr Rajapaksa has been surrounded by controversy since his arrival in Australia.
As he and Ms Gillard prepared to meet, the president of the International Commission of Jurists' Australian chapter, John Dowd QC, said photographic evidence of war crimes in Sri Lanka had been sent to him.
The images showed the execution and degradation of female victims as the bloody fighting in the internal separatist war against the Tamil Tigers came to an end in 2009, and had been sent by an Australian union official two weeks ago, he said.
Mr Dowd said he had sent the evidence to the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
"(The evidence) deals with executions, it deals with such (things) as shooting through the forehead ... it deals with the exposure of women's bodies, presumably after death, and it deals with other evidence showing Sri Lankan army officials and officers," he told reporters in Sydney.
"All members of the Commonwealth, if the Commonwealth is going to be taken notice of as a human rights body discussing human rights, should take this fact into account."
On Tuesday, a court action was filed by a Sri Lankan-born Australian man in Melbourne, accusing Mr Rajapaksa of war crimes during his government's final offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009.
But federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland moved quickly to quash the court action, saying the Foreign States Immunity Act extended immunities granted to diplomatic missions to heads of states.
After Ms Gillard's meeting with Mr Rajapaksa today, the prime minister's office said she had asked about progress in Sri Lanka's Lessons Learned And Reconciliation Commission.
She had underlined the importance of this process in addressing allegations of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka at the close of the civil war.
"The prime minister noted Australia's support for reconstruction, resettlement and reconciliation efforts in Sri Lanka, including through the development cooperation program," her office said.
Ms Gillard told reporters before the meeting that Australia took allegations of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka seriously.
Earlier, Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd told reporters in Perth that the next Commonwealth leaders' meeting was set to go ahead in Sri Lanka.
He said that at the last meeting in Trinidad and Tobago, Sri Lanka and Mauritius had been named as hosts for the next two meetings.
"Therefore, it will be a matter for individual governments how they then view matters unfolding in Sri Lanka between now and when that next CHOGM is held," Mr Rudd said.
Some Commonwealth leaders have already made statements on the issue, including the Canadian prime minister, who has called for a boycott of a Sri Lankan CHOGM.
Ms Gillard said there were no plans for Australia to boycott the CHOGM in 2013.
