“David Cameron – Don’t Go To Sri Lanka” – Co-Sign The UK Labour Party Letter To PM Cameron

October 24, 2013 

Ed Miliband - The Labour Leader

“David Cameron – think again on Commonwealth summit” the Labour Party UK launched a campaign last night.

Tell David Cameron to reverse his decision to attend the Commonwealth summit and send a powerful message to the Sri Lankan government on human rights, says the Labour party.  To sign click here

David Cameron Should Boycott The Commonwealth Summit In Sri Lanka

By Douglas Alexander -October 24, 

Douglas Alexander

Next month Commonwealth leaders gather in Sri Lanka amid a bleak human rights situation as the country emerges from two decades of civil war that saw 40,000 civilians lose their lives.

Last week Britain’s cross-party foreign affairs select committee criticised the “scant evidence of progress in political and human rights in Sri Lanka” and Amnesty International has condemned the ongoing “deterioration” of human rights there. Even the government’s own reports warn of “a number of negative developments” there, echoing the statement of the UN high commissioner for human rights that Sri Lanka was “heading in an increasingly authoritarian direction”.

This followed the worrying decision to impeach the country’s chief justice, through a process held to be illegal both by Sri Lanka’s supreme court and by international experts. Tragically, rather than making progress since 2009, these developments paint a worrying picture of further decline.

Against this backdrop, the hosting of the Commonwealth summit in the capital Colombo and the attendance of the British prime minister will undoubtedly be presented as a major coup by Sri Lanka’s government.

Labour believed that Britain could and should have used the issue of David Cameron’s attendance as crucial leverage to encourage Sri Lanka to address human rights concerns in the months running up to the summit. Instead, the prime minister simply chose to hand away all his cards more than six months ahead of the summit by confirming that he and the foreign secretary, William Hague, would attend.

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