UK policy on Sri Lanka timid and inconsistent, say MPs

A UK parliamentary committee has accused the government of timid and inconsistent policy towards Sri Lanka, where it says there are "continuing human rights abuses".

The Commons foreign affairs committee says the government should have made Sri Lanka's bid to host the biannual summit of the Commonwealth – to be held in Colombo next month – conditional on improvements in human rights.

"The UK could and should have taken a more principled … and robust stand in the light of the continuing serious human rights abuses in Sri Lanka," the MPs say in a report.

Activists and NGOs have reported repeated incidents of violence and intimidation directed at dissidents, trade unionists, media professionals and opposition politicians in Sri Lanka.

The United Nations has passed a resolution encouraging Sri Lanka to investigate allegations of war crimes committed by military officials during the bloody last phase of the country's 26-year civil war in 2009.

David Cameron and the foreign secretary, William Hague, have said they will attend the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, which will be chaired by Prince Charles. The meeting will confer leadership of the organisation on Sri Lanka for two years.

Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, has said he will stay away from the meeting. British officials have defended Cameron's decision to attend as "the right thing".

"The government strongly supports [the] Commonwealth, and firmly believes it can continue to be a force for good around the world, promoting freedom, democracy and human rights. But we must be willing to push our fellow members when we do not think their actions reflect the firm values which we all espouse," an FCO spokesperson said.

Officials said Cameron would not hold back in Colombo and would deliver a tough message to Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Sri Lankan president, now in his eighth year in power.
Sri Lankan officials have welcomed Cameron's decision to attend. "Public criticism doesn't help anyone and plays into the hands of extremists forces. These issues are much better raised bilaterally," one senior official told the Guardian this week.

Human rights activists in Sri Lanka have accused Cameron of being naive.

The principal charge made in the MPs' report is that a timid and inconsistent approach has given the government no option but to attend the meeting in Colombo despite widespread reservations in Whitehall and elsewhere.

The report notes that during discussions at the 2009 Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Port of Spain about venues for future meetings, the Foreign Office opposed a proposal that Sri Lanka might host the 2011 meeting on human rights grounds "but did not obstruct a proposal that it might do so in 2013; nor did it insist that Sri Lanka's right to host in 2013 should be conditional on improvements in human rights."

Last year the committee, staffed by backbench MPs from all parties, recommended that Cameron "should publicly state his unwillingness to attend [the 2013 meeting unless he receives convincing and independently verified evidence of substantial and sustainable improvements in human and political rights in Sri Lanka."

"There is scant evidence of progress in political and human rights in Sri Lanka," the new report notes.

The Foreign Office's 2012 human rights and democracy report lists Sri Lanka as one of 27 countries of concern. Others include Afghanistan, China, Zimbabwe, Turkmenistan, Iraq, Russia and Belarus.

Sri Lanka's economy has grown by 6-7% annually in recent years. Tourist arrivals have risen significantly since the end of the war.

Following pressure from the international community, Colombo held an election last month for a provincial council in the north, dominated by the Tamil minority. Despite significant economic development, there is widespread resentment among Tamils in northern towns such as Jaffna and Kilinochchi, the former headquarters of the violent separatist Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE).

Sri Lankan officials say they are repeatedly denied credit for "good things like all the construction and clearing of mines and resettlement" in the war-battered areas of northern Sri Lanka.

The new report asks the Foreign Office whether it has revised its previous view that there is no substantiated evidence of torture or maltreatment of people who have been returned by UK immigration authorities to Sri Lanka. This year the UK Border Agency was ordered to halt the removal of Tamils who have been refused asylum.

"It is a matter of concern … that the UK Border Agency's assessment of risk to Sri Lankans on being returned from the UK to Sri Lanka, which will have been partly based upon information provided by FCO staff in Sri Lanka, was found by the courts to be flawed and in need of revision," the report says.(Guardian)