Targeting the Commonwealth Summit in Sri Lanka

| by Dayan Jayatilleka

(September 14, Paris, Sri Lanka Guardian) The moving, multimedia memorialisation in the USA of the shock and suffering caused by the terrorist attacks of 9/11, on the 10th anniversary of those horrific episodes, provide a perspective on Sri Lanka’s war. Three thousand people were killed on 9/11. The response was to invade two countries: one Afghanistan, understandably, and the other, Iraq, unnecessarily, causing enormous death and destruction. Sri Lanka lost a great many times that number and suffered for decades, not days. Our counter-offensive against an enemy which deployed more suicide bombers than all the Islamist militias, had a pirate navy (including a suicide arm) and a fledgling air-force, was far more legitimate, justifiable, proportionate and arguably, far more restrained by comparison (Afghanistan and Iraq suffered far greater destruction and loss of lives). We fought within our recognised borders to reunify our country, all the while holding regular elections. And yet, it is Sri Lanka that is hypocritically being called to account.

When that hypocrisy is from outside, it is more understandable, but when it is from among us, it is less so. The recent endorsement by local civil society personalities of the targeting by Human Rights Watch in its Open Letter of Sept 9, 2011, of Sri Lanka’s prospect of hosting the Commonwealth summit in 2013, and its accompaniment by a call to submit to the Darusman Report and an international inquiry on the last stages of the war, is ethically and intellectually incomprehensible.

Does positive change result in a country from greater or lesser exposure to and contact with the world outside? Or does it result from a boycott, abstention, de-linking and extreme conditionality?

A former activist, I really would understand and empathise if rights groups were to petition those attending the Commonwealth summit in Colombo, but I think it is plain wrong to petition the Commonwealth to reconsider the holding of the 2013 Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka, i.e., to consider depriving the country of hosting the event and chairing the Commonwealth. That is precisely what the Human Rights Watch has done in its Open Letter to the foreign Ministers of the Commonwealth, with the written endorsement of a few ‘civil society’ intellectuals and activists in Colombo. I am being charitable though. What the signatories are doing is urging conditionality and a boycott of Sri Lanka if the conditions are not met.

The HRW Open Letter says: "We are gravely concerned about the ongoing discussions on holding the 2013 CHOGM in Sri Lanka... The Panel of Experts appointed by the UN Secretary-General to advise him on the status of allegations of war crimes during the last weeks of the conflict in Sri Lanka has concluded that serious abuses were committed by the government and by the LTTE, and warrant an international investigation. Consideration of Sri Lanka as host of the next CHOGM appears grossly inappropriate in the above context. Awarding the next CHOGM to Sri Lanka would not only undermine the fundamental values on which the Commonwealth is based, but also has the potential to render the Commonwealth’s commitment to human rights and the promise of reforms meaningless."

While the critique of domestic conditions is debatable but legitimate, what is especially dismaying about is the linkage of the critique from the outset, with the issue of the closing stages of the war which liberated the country and its peoples from the LTTE. The call for conditions quickly follows and those proposed conditions include Sri Lanka’s (a) compliance with the Darusman report (dismantled by far more significant civil society initiatives, the MARGA Institute and its Chairman Godfrey Gunatilleke, and a bloc of blue-chip business federations and (b) submission to an international inquiry into allegations of war crimes.

"...We urge that the CMAG should call on the government of Sri Lanka to meet a specific set of benchmarks within an agreed upon timeline in order to prove itself worthy of hosting the Commonwealth’s emblematic meeting in 2013. These benchmarks could include: ...Supporting and cooperating with independent and credible domestic and international investigations into all allegations concerning violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in the country, especially related to the conduct of the conflict which ended in 2009; and Committing to collaborate with the Office of the UN Secretary General to initiate the implementation of the recommendations set out in the report of the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts."

The Sri Lankan signatories to this Open Letter are a veritable Gang of Three: Dr Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Executive Director Centre for Policy Alternatives, Sunila Abeysekera, INFORM Human Rights Documentation Centre, Sri Lanka, and Ruki Fernando, Law and Society Trust.

The argument of the petitioners would be that the crimes of the Rajapaksa regime are so abhorrent that civilised people like the Commonwealth leaders should not hold their summit on the island. I have several problems with that argument. In the first place, the evidence does not show that an administration benefits more from the holding of a major international meeting, than does the country itself. Take the 5th Non Aligned Summit conference of 1976. One might have considered it a source of legitimacy for the administration of Madam Sirimavo Bandaranaike, and it indeed was, but the same administration was tossed out electorally the very next year. On the other hand the fact that SRI LANKA hosted the 5th Non Aligned Summit has entered the history books, and lends prestige to the country.

That being the case, the following questions of ethics arise. Whatever one my think of the administration of a country, is it fair or morally correct to urge an international boycott of it, even if the holding of such an event benefits the country more, or as much, as it benefits the administration? Furthermore is it fair to target an elected administration in the international arena in a manner and to an extent that it hurts the prestige and interests of the country?

If I may anticipate the counterargument about the boycott campaign and apartheid in Southern Africa or the Commonwealth’s conduct in relation to Rhodesia, it is to be recalled that these were not electoral democracies but regimes in which the majority were deprived of the vote and a (white) minority ruled a society in which races were kept separate and unequal. There is no resemblance whatsoever to Sri Lanka and therefore the political stance of conditionality/boycott has absolutely no relevance.

As important as the ethical question is the political one. Does positive change result in a country from greater or lesser exposure to and contact with the world outside? Or does it result from a boycott, abstention, de-linking and extreme conditionality? Surely the evidence shows that it is precisely a policy of constructive engagement by all segments of the world community that causes opening up and greater modernisation which then proves irreversible? The greater the contact, the greater the constructive change. The holding of the Commonwealth Summit in Sri Lanka would mean a boost for tourism, business opportunities and job creation, while it would have a salutary effect also in terms of greater media access and many sidebar or alternative events for civil society. It would function as both bridge and window, further opening the minds of Sri Lankan youth, through TV and radio, to the views of the world outside. The evidence also shows that boycotts, abstentions and withdrawals only cause internal hardening and closure of space.