Mirroring the United Nations

"ComSec is either wildly naive or pusillanimous. There appears to be zero consequences for a country that defies principles of press freedom and the rule of law. There couldn't be more explicit gaps between core Commonwealth values and what actually is happening in Sri Lanka."
Senator Hugh Segal

 Senator Segal refers to the zinger of a decision to anoint Colombo as the host of the 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. The vote was taken back in 2009, but four years of anticipation have led to a November date for the meeting to take place in Sri Lanka. This will be the 64th year of Commonwealth solidarity as a social-political group allied to Great Britain's glory days of colonial rule. Britain's outreach was wide and deep.

It was not a unanimous decision by Commonwealth member states to give Sri Lanka this gift of peer regard. But Sri Lanka took the opportunity to work ceaselessly, lobbying enough support to host the summit. Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced he would make no effort to attend the summit if Sri Lanka failed to progress in cleaning up its human rights situation.  To at least make an effort to reflect Commonwealth democratic values.

Commonwealth countries are various and widespread. They run the range from the brutal, war-mangled, mass-raping Democratic Republic of Congo, including also Zimbabwe with its record of human rights abuses under the indefatigable Robert Mugabe, and Nigeria, with its Islamist-hued bloodshed and abuses. And, of course, Pakistan, with its support for Islamist terror groups, and attacks against India, another member.

The decision in Sri Lanka's favour came hard on the heels, so to speak, of the country's army crushing the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels in a final paroxysm of violence and shedding of innocent Tamil civilian blood. According to the United Nations, 40,000 people were killed in the process of putting an end to the raging conflict led by the Tamil Tigers. And human rights abuses against Sri Lanka's Tamils continue.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was not reminded strenuously and emphatically enough that there were expectations that his regime would lift its repressive human rights abuses, to enable it to qualify for the proposed hosting honour. In so doing he would only be upholding the core values of Commonwealth democracies. Nothing was extracted, however in reciprocal response to the hosting of the summit.

The prospect of the event coming off with no hint of Commonwealth pressure on Sri Lanka to conform to and acknowledge the values of the greater Commonwealth community has led to a situation where some window dressing in that direction has taken place, but nothing of real substance. Leaving Colombo with the belief that it is entitled to the prestige the summit hosting would bring, under his semi-democratic standards.

Validated reports have arisen of vicious attacks against journalists, refusal to issue visas to prestigious international groups wishing to check out the human rights situation in the country and the regime's firing of the country's chief justice, Shirani Bandaranayake, after he produced rulings that didn't quite suit the government's expectations.

Human Rights Watch's Asia director has urged the United Nations to begin a "credible" international investigation of violations of human rights law in Sri Lanka. "Over the past year, the Sri Lankan government has alternated between threatening activists who seek justice and making small, cynical gestures to keep the international community at bay. The Human Rights Council should dismiss these tactics, end the delays and authorize an independent, international investigation into the estimated 40,000 civilian deaths at the conflict's end."

Because of the emerging controversy and a situation that has a high odour of corruption along with a thin veneer of respecting human rights, it is likely that high-level Commonwealth representatives will elect not to appear at the summit, sending instead their deputies. And in this way indicate their displeasure, causing Sri Lanka to lose face.

As for the United Nations Human Rights Council involving itself in a Sri Lankan human rights abuse scenario, the message there is rather hilarious.