Obhrai lays wreath at Elephant Pass. Photograph Colombo Gazette The Canadian delegate to CHOGM, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Deepak Obhrai was in Jaffna on Tuesday, undertaking a fact finding mission. Meeting with Tamils in the North-East, including the Chief Minister of the Northern Province, C.W. Wigneswaran, Obhrai visited the premises of the Tamil Jaffna based newspaper, Uthayan, reports Colombo Gazette . He laid a wreath at Elephant Pass in memory of those who were killed during the armed conflict. The Sri Lankan newspaper, Island , wrote, ' a senior government official 'alleged the flowers had been for those who died fighting for the LTTE .'
A few days from now David Cameron will arrive in Colombo to shake hands with a man who presided over the killing of at least 40,000 Tamil civilians and whose government continues to perpetrate shocking cases of rape, torture and mutilation – when the doors open on the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Sri Lanka. As he sits down to watch the opening ceremony, the Prime Minister will not be able ignore the absence of two of his most prominent counterparts – the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. Both are boycotting the event.
Sri Lanka’s External Affairs Minister GL Peiris has told media that the Indian Prime Minister’s no-show at the Commonwealth summit was not a set-back for the event. " It will not affect the success of CHOGM. The Indian Prime Minister was invited. Sri Lankans would have been happier if he came," he said.
Conservative MPs who received all expenses paid trips to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) have been banned from traveling amidst growing concerns over the regime’s lobbying activities in the UK. Investigations by The Daily Telegraph found that many of the MPs that actively uphold Sri Lanka’s rhetoric on reconciliation and human rights progress, had already been on all-expenses paid trips to Sri Lanka.
The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Baroness Warsi, during parliamentary debates on Friday, outlined her discontent at the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group’s negation of Sri Lanka from its activities. Baroness Warsi asked the government whether it intended to call on the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group to formally place Sri Lanka on its agenda.
In its editorial Monday, the Financial Times newspaper urged British Premier David Cameron not to attend the Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka later this week. See here (registration required) the full text of the FT's editorial titled 'Cameron should not go to Sri Lanka'. Pointing to Sri Lanka ’s “appalling human rights record”, including both wartime atrocities - “which would be bad enough” – and abuses since, the editorial said: “[Mr. Cameron’s] decision to attend is hard to justify . It seems driven largely by the fact that a boycott would have embarrassed the Commonwealth. This, however, ignores the public relations gift that the presence of a British prime minister – and other leaders – bestows upon a bloodstained regime .
“ Britain should have joined Canada in taking a principled stand ” and boycotted the Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka this week,” The Independent newspaper said in its editorial Monday. Titled “ The Commonwealth should not be conferring legitimacy on a regime with blood on its hands ,” the editorial (see full text here ) urged Mr. Cameron to take up Sri Lanka at the CHOGM summit.
British Premier David Cameron should have boycotted the Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka , the New Statesman magazine said in its editorial Monday, titled 'Sri Lanka is a rogue state' . As with similar editorials Monday by the FT and The Independent , the magazine not only pointed to the huge loss of civilian life when Sri Lankan troops “mercilessly shelled” hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians in the final months of the war, but also that “since the end of the war, the Tamils have been harshly oppressed and there have been widespread human rights abuses and media censorship.” “Mr Cameron...
Photographs DailyMirror.lk The Channel 4 News team was met by Sri Lankan protesters demonstrating outside the airport and their hotels, including one notable one by the 'Movement to Promote National Harmony', as they arrived in Sri Lanka ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), today.
In a statement released on Monday, the Tamil Youth Organisation UK called on the British Prime Minister to boycott the CHOGM this week. See here . Extract published below: "Four years on and still the Sri Lankan state has not been held accountable for these war crimes, crimes against humanity and most importantly crimes of genocide. Instead, they are being given time and space to commit more atrocities in the name of ‘reconciliation’, through which the Tamil nation is continuing to face structural genocide."