Organisations demand Commonwealth take action on Sri Lanka
Saturday, 21 September 2013 06:28
The Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, CIVICUS (the world alliance for civilian participation) and Forum Asia (the Asian forum for human rights) have today jointly issued a statement demanding that the Commonwealth take firm action on Sri Lanka.
Issued in advance of the influential "CMAG" meeting the statement calls for Sri Lanka to be placed on the formal agenda for the meeting - the first step towards the expulsion of Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth.
It also calls upon CMAG to consider the fact that as things currently stand Sri Lanka's President will become the leader (or Chair-in-Office) of the Commonwealth for the next two years following the biennial summit to be held in Sri Lanka this November.
It further calls upon CMAG to accept a briefing from the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, who has just returned from a fact finding trip to Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka's woeful record on human rights has been a matter of concern for some time, following on from a thirty year civil war which was controversially ended in 2009 by a brutal military assault in which it is thought as many as 70,000 civilians may have died.
As the statement says, "In sum,the allegations Sri Lanka faces are grave and range, across a long time period, from violations of international humanitarian law to extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, impunity and crackdown on freedoms of expression and assembly."
Fred Carver, Campaign Director for the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, said, "Failure to undertake these steps will not merely ensure a worsening of human rights abuses in Sri Lanka - it will also guarantee that the Commonwealth is stripped of all credibility. The Commonwealth is struggling for relevance in the 21st century, however as a brand it still retains considerable diplomatic power. But if it allows Sri Lanka's behaviour to tarnish that brand then it will cease to have any relevance to the modern world."
