THE CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER, Stephen Harper, will send only a low-level delegation. The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has refused to go. Jan Logie, a Green Party member of New Zealand’s parliament was illegally detained there by immigration officials and ordered to leave the country. Her companion, an Australian Green Party Senator, Lee Rhiannon, suffered exactly the same fate. And yet, in spite of the fact that the 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) is being hosted in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo (Nov 15-17) by a regime in clear breach of the Harare Declaration, the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand are all determined to attend.
So, why are David Cameron, Tony Abbott and John Key going to Sri Lanka?
Or, perhaps the question should be: “Why shouldn’t they be going?”
To answer that question we have to go back to 2009 and the climactic events marking the end of the bloody civil war between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority over whether or not Sri Lanka’s north-eastern provinces should become an independent Tamil homeland or remain an integral part of the Sri Lankan Republic.
After years of bitter fighting, the insurgents – known as the Tamil Tigers – had been driven back on to a narrow peninsula by the Sri Lankan armed forces. As they retreated, the Tamil Tigers had taken thousands of unarmed civilians with them – hoping to use them as human shields against the Sri Lankan Government’s onslaught. Sensing that, this time, the Tamil Tigers had nowhere to go, the Government’s commanders resolved to bring the war to a conclusion, once and for all, regardless of the cost. To that end, they unleashed a massive artillery and air assault upon the Tamil positions. The collateral damage: tens of thousands of civilians blown to pieces by bombs and shells; was immense, but the assault succeeded. Sri Lankan infantry over-ran the Tamil positions and the Government’s victorious soldiers indulged in an orgy of indiscriminate killing – slaughtering their enemies even after the Tamil Tigers commanders had surrendered and agreed to lay down their arms.
Such is the awful logic of war – especially wars fought between mutually antagonistic ethnic and religious communities living within a single political entity. The Tamils battle against the Sinhalese majority had been fought with a singular and terrifying ferocity. (The Tamil Tigers were the inventors of that most feared of terrorist weapons, the “suicide bomber”.) Hardly surprising, then, that the legatees of all that hurt and hatred, accumulated over three decades of bloody conflict, turned the war’s final moments into a cataclysm of vengeful violence.
The Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, played a decisive role in the campaign that brought the Tamil insurgency to an end. In a secret cable to Washington from the US diplomat, Patricia Butenis, he is also identified as the man most responsible for the deaths of 40,000 Tamil civilians and captured Tamil Tiger fighters in the war’s final days. Released by Wikileaks, Butenis’s cable lays the responsibility for these alleged war crimes at the door of the country’s senior civilian and military leadership, including Rajapaksa, his brothers and the Commander of the Sri Lankan army, General Fonseka.
The “Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission” established by President Rajapaska in the aftermath of the Tamils’ defeat failed to quell the mounting chorus of domestic and international concern at what took place in the final days of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The response of the Sri Lankan Government to these protests, and to the repeated calls for an independent UN-led investigation into the allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, has been to launch a crack-down on its opponents.
The news media has been censored and critics of the Government have been detained for days or weeks without charge. There are even reports of dissidents being tortured and of others simply “disappearing”.
As a member of the Commonwealth, Sri Lanka is pledged to uphold the provisions of the 1991 Harare Declaration which stipulates that:
“We believe in the liberty of the individual under the law, in equal rights for all citizens regardless of gender, race, colour, creed or political belief, and in the individual’s inalienable right to participate by means of free and democratic political processes in framing the society in which he or she lives.”
It is extremely difficult to reconcile the actions of the Sri Lankan Government with the above excerpt from the Harare Declaration – let alone with the further strengthening of the Commonwealth’s commitment to democracy and human rights which took place at the Millbrook Estate just outside Queenstown in 1995.
So why is John Key so determined to ignore the provisions of a Commonwealth-based declaration reaffirmed less than 20 years ago on his own soil?
The answer lies (as has so often been the case since the National Party assumed office in 2008) in New Zealand diplomacy’s increasing subservience to the foreign policy objectives of the United States.
London, Canberra and Wellington are all in agreement with Washington that nothing should be done that might encourage Colombo to give up its membership of the Commonwealth. India’s pivotal role in preserving the credibility of the Commonwealth is important to Washington’s plans for preserving Anglo-Saxon influence in South Asia while limiting Beijing’s opportunities for diplomatic expansion.
The last thing the USA, the UK and Australia want is for their vital strategic interests in the Indian Ocean to be threatened by an indignant Sri Lanka following Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth. Especially when, almost certainly, her next move would be to voice her displeasure at neo-imperialist interference in the affairs of South Asia from a podium in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
But, since John Key, unlike Stephen Harper and Manmohan Singh, has never met an imperialist he didn’t like, New Zealand’s prime minister will not be joining Canada’s and India’s on the sidelines of CHOGM 2013. Instead, he has declared his intention to pursue that great diplomatic chimera first described by Ronald Reagan in reference to the USA’s 1980s relationship with Apartheid South Africa: “Constructive Engagement”.
With, one suspects, about as much genuine hope of success.
” why is John Key so determined to ignore the provisions of a Commonwealth-based declaration reaffirmed less than 20 years ago on his own soil?”
There’s a short uncomplicated answer:
It’s because he actually likes little dictatorships (not unlike one of our P.I neighbours) so that his political and ideological agenda can be implemented ‘efficiently and effectively’.
They should preferably be elected regimes so that the veneer of dimokrissy can be applied.
Even better if they can be elected under a’firssspassapoase’ system where heaps of money can be thrown at a ‘team’ in order to win, and if a bit of gerrymandering, electoral anomalies or any other mechanism is needed – so be it!
“Winners and Losers”, majority rulze – minorities suffer, bash the bennie – reward the corporate, Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!
Chris,
War is hell. The losers are annihilated and international agreements aren’t worth the paper they are written on. What’s your point? You disapprove? So do I.
A journalist’s job is to inform the general public of the facts pertaining to topical issues. I would suggest Mr. Trotter was fore filling this role to those people who may be less well informed than yourself.
” why is John Key so determined to ignore the provisions of a Commonwealth-based declaration reaffirmed less than 20 years ago on his own soil?”
I’d suggest that the Commonwealth has largely bent over backwards trying to ignore these provisions. Given the fact they have been given the name of a city in an country that just a few years before the declaration was signed had state sponsored killing of around 20,000 people they were a joke from the start.
Ahh my wife will love you for it.
As they say, those who can’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Key can’t remember the support I am sure he would have given to apartheid South Africa.
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