The charitable arm of the Commonwealth, the Commonwealth Foundation, has been involved in a row at the leaders’ summit in Colombo, after staff complained of being intimidated by Sri Lankan officials angered by British minister Hugo Swire who raised human rights concerns on the island, The Guardian reports.
Staff say they were shouted at and trailed by police after a meeting at which Mr. Swire raised the issue of human rights.
Extracts from the newpaper’s report (full text here) follow:
Sources at the Commonwealth Foundation, which promotes non-profit organisations in former British colonies, said the Sri Lankan government had attempted to "take over and control" events it had planned.
At the last Commonwealth meeting in Australia it was NGOs that ran the foundation's agenda. But in Colombo, President Mahinda Rajapaksa's brother-in-law, Lalith Chandradasa, a prominent businessman, ensured that the programme of events was limited to discussion of the post-2015 global development agenda. There was no mention of human rights.
This news blackout on what many NGOs considered a key concern was broken when at a meeting last Wednesday Hugo Swire, the Foreign Office minister, made a speech in which he pressed Sri Lanka to investigate people's disappearances, guarantee freedom of expression and "stamp out intimidation of journalists and human rights defenders".
The result, said staff speaking anonymously, was a "campaign of intimidation and propaganda in local newspapers". Headlines claimed that "Britain flayed Sri Lanka" and that the meeting had been "subverted".
"Staff were shouted at, trailed by police. We were blocked from doing our job. After losing control it was the last straw," said a Colombo-based source.