Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird waits to appear before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development on Parliament Hill Tuesday February 12, 2013 in Ottawa.PHOTO: THE CANADIAN PRESS/ADRIAN WYLD
Lee Berthiaume
Published: May 1, 2013,
It appears Canada’s call for the Commonwealth to address Sri Lanka’s human rights shortcomings by, among other things, refusing to allow it to host November’s Commonwealth leaders’ summit has generated mixed reactions abroad.
According to the Australian news agency ABC, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr disagrees with Canada’s position, but one government backbencher has supported Canada:
A federal Labor backbencher has broken ranks and called for Australia to boycott the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Sri Lanka later this year.
Canada’s government has already threatened to boycott the November meeting in protest against alleged human rights violations.
A newly released Amnesty International report has accused the Sri Lankan government of intensifying a crackdown on critics through violence and intimidation.
Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr has said Canada’s boycott would be counter-productive and it would be better to stay engaged with Sri Lanka to directly raise concerns.
But backbencher John Murphy says he thinks it is too late for that.
“All the empirical and other evidence today indicates an arrogant reluctance by the Sri Lankan government to deal properly with these very, very serious allegations and so I’ve reached the conclusion that the best step would be for our country to boycott CHOGM,” he said.
“The Sri Lankan government is not listening to the international community in relation to conducting an independent and credible investigation into the allegations and violations of international human rights.
“I think the time has come to send a powerful message to the Government that international leaders should boycott CHOGM.”
Meanwhile, New Zealand Herald columnist Brian Rudman applauds Baird and blasts the Commonwealth for its silence on Sri Lanka:
Until Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird’s outburst against Sri Lanka’s “appalling” record on human rights and democratic accountability last week, it’s a fair bet that most New Zealanders had no idea that this island off the bottom of India would be hosting the biennial Commonwealth heads of government meeting in November.
The Canadians certainly do, and have been campaigning to have the venue shifted. At last week’s meeting of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group in London, Canada’s plea was turned down yet again. In fact, it was not even on the official agenda. This despite a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution the previous month censuring Sri Lanka for its slow progress in investigating alleged war crimes and other human rights abuses during the final stages of the bloody 26-year civil war in May 2009.
On the other side of the spectrum is Kamal Wickremasinghe, who writes in the Sri Lankan newspaper the Daily News that Canada should “clean their own backyard” before criticizing Sri Lanka, taking specific issue with Canada’s treatment of its Aboriginal Peoples and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “anti-democratic practice of proroguing whenever he is about to face difficult questions in Parliament.”
The Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Foreign Minister John Baird are leading the charge against Sri Lanka as the venue for this year’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in November. The language used by Harper and Baird, including references to “evil” and “appalling”, seems quite out of proportion to the significance of CHOGM as an international gathering, as well as its utility to Sri Lanka as perceived by Sri Lankans.
The snarling of the two men carry no weight because both have little credibility – Stephen Harper has never managed to win a national election in Canada in his own right, and resorts to the anti-democratic practice of proroguing whenever he is about to face difficult questions in Parliament; Baird is a buffoon, a former provincial politician and ‘wannabe’ future leader of the Conservatives trying to achieve his aim by kow-towing to the monied Israeli lobby in Canada. The two men, not known for their intelligence or subtlety in international affairs, are the butt of jokes among the Canadian media and bureaucracy.
