As the Commonwealth summit approaches, the shadow foreign secretary, Douglas Alexander, among others, has urged David Cameron to boycott the meeting next week in Colombo, while the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, has withdrawn. At issue are the war crimes alleged to have been committed under the host government in Sri Lanka, for which there is mounting evidence. Thousands of Tamil civilians were killed during the bloody civil war. President Mahinda Rajapaksa is also accused of attacks on the press and violence against government critics. With the UN too calling for an independent investigation, refused so far, it is certainly depressing that Commonwealth leaders show so little appetite for challenging his intransigence.
This collective moral apathy has led to suggestions that the Commonwealth risks irrelevance, a fear as old as the organisation itself. Critics of the Sri Lankan regime understandably accuse the Commonwealth of not being fit for purpose since democracy and human rights ostensibly constitute its "core values". Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma's rhetoric of "behind the scenes" engagement suggests appeasement. Others, equating economic indices and moral capability, have hinted that only Britain and other "developed" (read white-majority) countries have human rights concerns, the Asian and African Commonwealth being more interested in aid.
The unpalatable truth is that the Commonwealth wasn't set up to address how its national leaders exercised state power or to ensure compliance to agreed values. It was based on the foundational fiction that British Empire – no model of universal human rights – was established to teach colonies self-governance and equip them to take their place in the global order. The ideal was "friendly co-operation" of member nations with each other and with British business and expertise (not least, military). Full story...
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This collective moral apathy has led to suggestions that the Commonwealth risks irrelevance, a fear as old as the organisation itself. Critics of the Sri Lankan regime understandably accuse the Commonwealth of not being fit for purpose since democracy and human rights ostensibly constitute its "core values". Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma's rhetoric of "behind the scenes" engagement suggests appeasement. Others, equating economic indices and moral capability, have hinted that only Britain and other "developed" (read white-majority) countries have human rights concerns, the Asian and African Commonwealth being more interested in aid.
The unpalatable truth is that the Commonwealth wasn't set up to address how its national leaders exercised state power or to ensure compliance to agreed values. It was based on the foundational fiction that British Empire – no model of universal human rights – was established to teach colonies self-governance and equip them to take their place in the global order. The ideal was "friendly co-operation" of member nations with each other and with British business and expertise (not least, military). Full story...
Related posts:
- Fate of Tamil TV presenter: chilling new evidence from Sri Lanka (Graphic)
- No Fire Zone: the killing fields of Sri Lanka...(Graphic)
- Handed a snack, and then executed: the last hours of the 12-year-old son...
- Sri Lanka's killing fields 2. Unpunished war crimes. (Graphic)
- Sri Lanka's killing fields (Graphic)
- Thousands missing in Sri Lanka as people continue to disappear...
- Dark days in Sri Lanka...
- Sri Lanka case study: the 28-year-old man beaten to death in prison...
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