Commonwealth Lawyers Call For CHOGM Boycott
July 16, 2013
Lawyers from more than 50 countries are calling for Commonwealth nations to boycott this year’s Heads of Government meeting in Sri Lanka, the Australian Broadcasting corporation reports.
The Commonwealth Lawyers Association says the controversial removal of Sri Lanka’s Chief Justice shows a lack of judicial independence and transparency.
Alex Ward, vice-president, Commonwealth Lawyers Association
But so far only Canada has threatened to boycott the November meeting in protest against alleged human rights violations, while Australia has dismissed such proposals as ‘wrong’.
Interviewer: Richard Ewart
Speaker: Alex Ward, vice-president, Commonwealth Lawyers Association
WARD: Well, I think there’s a lot of disquiet about it, and the important thing about is what does the Commonwealth mean? And here I mean the Commonwealth of Nations, the former British Empire if you’re looking at it, to say it’s a place if governments, member nations aren’t toeing the line, they’re dealt with quite severe. We look at Fiji, we look at Pakistan, we look at Zimbabwe where they’re saying because you’re not acting in a way that’s consistent with a proper rule of law, which is looking after people, having the independent judiciary and this sort of thing, that we’re going to suspend you from the Commonwealth, that’s how seriously we take it.
And so the problem that we see here, as Commonwealth lawyers dealing in these areas, and hearing from our colleagues in Sri Lanka is that the conduct of the government in Sri Lanka is getting to the point where we’re saying well, isn’t this against the sort of principles of the rule of law that we adhere to and if you go to CHOGM in Sri Lanka aren’t you rather giving them the tick of approval? And that’s the problem, well what’s the point of the Commonwealth, if we’ll kick out a Fiji, but we’ll give Sri Lanka a tick of approval.
