War Crimes and Human Rights Abuses

"Nothing I have learned would cause me to give advice to the prime minister to change his opinion. We're appalled that Sri Lanka is about to host the Commonwealth leaders and be chair in residence of the Commonwealth for two years.
"We had hoped that the leaders' summit would be a cause for accountability, reconciliation and hopefully a reverse of their (Sri Lankan government's) growing authoritarian trend.
"That has not only not happened, but has got worse in recent months. Sri Lanka should not be hosting the leaders' summit and we condemn the lack of progress on accountability and a lack of progress on reconciliation."
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird

Canada has a very large Sri-Lankan-originated immigrant group of Tamils, the minority ethnic group that majority Sinhalese Sri Lankans have traditionally oppressed. In their zeal to convince the government of Sri Lanka that Tamils deserve a homeland of their own, militant Tamils tailored themselves as guerrilla fighters, opposing the government and battling with its military at every opportunity. In the process inventing the tactic of suicide bombing, and being responsible for thousands of deaths of innocent civilians, both majority Sinhalese and Tamils at the hands of fanatical Tamil Tigers.

When the government of Sri Lanka decided it would finally wage an all-out war against the Tigers to expunge them permanently by killing their leader and as many of the Tigers as they could manage, they did destroy the functionality of the rebel group but in the process they also sacrificed the lives of thousands of desperately conflict-fleeing Sri Lankan civilians. The barbaric savagery of the Tigers was reflected in a like response from the government forces. And it is this issue that is front and centre of the United Nations Human Rights Council having recently declared Sri Lanka guilty of human rights offences.

Canada is offended at the prospect of Sri Lanka which violated Commonwealth values being given a two-year leadership role of the 54-member organization. This would result in grievous damage to the moral authority of the organization, and as a result harm its intentions to persuade others within its membership to heighten their determination to enact legislation respecting human rights. It looks quite possible that Prime Minister Stephen Harper will decide that Canada should boycott the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, unless the government of Sri Lanka intends to respect the need to dramatically improve its human rights record.

Canada has taken its own principled position on the issue, and it does so alone. None of the other Commonwealth countries has seen fit to stand beside Canada in its opposition to Sri Lanka being viewed so positively that it is entitled to carry the leadership. Commonwealth scholar Derek Ingram, founder of the Commonwealth Journalists Association, one of the professional Commonwealth bodies that has urged just such a boycott does, however, support Canada's position.

"The Commonwealth is faced with a most serious, extraordinary crisis and I'm firmly of the view that the leaders should not meet in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has done a remarkably good job getting other governments onside, especially in Africa. But there is still time to move it -- probably to London as a fallback but that could be very divisive."

Particularly in light of the fact that Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma insists that he is "fully persuaded" that the Sri Lankan government is sincere in its respect for Commonwealth values, alleged war crimes and continuing human rights violations in the country aside.