Retired Australian diplomat Bruce Haigh has stated the Australian has been turning a blind eye to genocide, as he criticised the Australian government’s engagement with Sri Lanka.

Haigh, who was also member of the Refugee Review Tribunal, criticised Australia’s acceptance of “fiction” on the island, and went on to state that Australia’s asylum seeker policy, which deports Tamils to face torture in Sri Lanka, may make them complicit in the crime of genocide.

Extracts have been reproduced below. See the full piece in the Canberra Times here.

"Former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr and his successor Julie Bishop view the world as they want it to be rather than as it is. Bishop, like her predecessor, has engaged in transparent and clumsy denial in order to placate what she likes to term Australia's friends."

"The Australian government has adopted the fiction that the minority Tamils were the aggressors in the civil war, that the majority Sinhalese won the war, peace has been restored and the surly defeated Tamils must now accept the status quo and get on with life, accepting their position as a minority within mainstream Sinhala society."

Sri Lanka last week announced a census to ascertain the number of war casualties; an attempt to counter increasingly insistent international demands for a credible accountability process at the next UN Human Rights Council session in March 2014. But Sri Lanka’s intention is not to establish an accurate count of civilian casualties. The clue rests in census officials’ assertions that only those cases where relatives can produce a death certificate will be counted as officially dead.

After Indira's, a bold decision

The Indian government's sudden decision to accept that what happened at the final conflict was a genocide for the first time has caused astonishment and bewilderment. 

The Central government minister P. Chidambaram announced this position of the Indian government about the final conflict, at the event which took place in Chennai on Saturday evening. This announcement - this position of India's central government - is a very, very important milestone in the Eelam Tamil struggle. 

Going one step further Chidambaram announced that the Indian government would not rest until those responsible for the genocide on the island are brought to justice, reported the Tamil version of the newspaper, 'The Hindu'.

There is no doubt that if this is the true position of the Indian government on the final conflict, then this is to be praised and welcomed.

If a lasting peace is desired on the island, then it is vital that the international community accept that what is taking place here is a genocide, and those responsible for the war crimes committed during the final conflict are identified and brought to justice. 

Only when the fact that a genocide is being committed against Tamils is accepted, can the international community provide a true, just and fair solution to them. Similarly, it is only when those involved in the war crimes and genocide are brought before the law that afflicted Tamils will find solace, and confidence in the majority community can be found.

Speaking at Youth Maaveerar Naal  hosted by Imperial College London on Monday, students representing Kings College London spoke in remembrance of those that had lost their lives fighting against the genocide of the Eelam Tamil nation.

The full speech is reproduced below:

The committee expressed concern regarding strong evidence that suggested police and army forces were responsible for several cases of threats and intimidation against human rights workers, in the lead up and after the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

Extracts from the letter, which also included descriptions of individual cases of intimidation, are reproduced below.

“The competent authorities in the higher echelons of the Security Sector claim that the Government restored peace and security to the citizens of this country, but it is not so practically. The security excesses, CID threats and intimidation continue to be the order of civil routine almost daily.”

“Civil Organisations and their workers face threats and intimidation by various types from the intelligence side varying from warning to telephone threats, extortion and intimidation. Even the people affected in various forms expressing their grievances, objections or protests in the internationally accepted democratic way and peaceful resistance are not tolerated in this Country.”

"At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka at the weekend, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that while his government ''deplores the use of torture, we accept that sometimes, in difficult circumstances, difficult things happen''.