Canada still poised to boycott Sri Lanka's Commonwealth meet over human rights

Apr. 26 2013

The Harper government is still poised to boycott Sri Lanka’s hosting of the next Commonwealth leaders’ summit, after a meeting of the organization’s key foreign ministers in London produced no action.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper threatened in 2011 to boycott the leaders’ meeting in Colombo this year, and Foreign Minister John Baird said Friday that Sri Lanka’s record on human rights and treatment of the Tamil minority was worsened since – and there’s nothing to suggest a change in course.

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“I haven’t seen anything that would make me change my recommendation,” Mr. Baird said in an interview after the London meeting. “Canada is appalled that Sri Lanka is poised to host the summit.”

Officially, Sri Lanka wasn’t even on the agenda in London for Friday’s meeting of a sort of steering committee of Commonwealth foreign ministers. Many of the 54-member Commonwealth are uncomfortable with using the organization to press members on human rights issues, and some others dislike the potential for confrontation inside the body.

But Senator Hugh Segal, the prime minister’s representative to a Commonwealth committee, said Mr. Baird raised his objections at the meeting when the so-called “other business” was discussed. Mr. Baird, meanwhile, said protocol prevented him from revealing those discussions, but settled for a hint, noting that the Commonwealth communiqué dealt only with Fiji: “It was a long meeting, and Fiji was not a contentious issue,” he said.

Members of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, known as CMAG, showed no sign they want to change the venue of the meeting – bringing Mr. Harper into a show of protest against an organization in which Canada has always been a Charter member.

Mr. Baird said that when Mr. Harper voiced his warning of a boycott at the 2011 Commonwealth leaders’ meeting in Perth, Australia, Ottawa genuinely hoped that Sri Lanka would take action to improve its record on human rights and freedoms for the country’s Tamils.

Instead, he said, it has “failed” on all indicators, and the sacking of the country’s chief justice in January shows it’s moving further down the road of authoritarian rule. “Eighteen months later, we have not seen any significant progress,” Mr. Baird said.

Mr. Harper has yet to make a final decision on boycotting the summit, though officials indicate it’s still heading that way – what’s not clear is whether Canada might send a lower-level delegation, headed by Mr. Baird or someone with of lower rank, like an MP or diplomat.

Mr. Harper’s Conservatives once seemed to side with the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government, and listed the Tamil Tiger separatist rebels as a terrorist group. But since the civil war ended, it has pressed government to reconcile.

“Reconciliation – not with terrorist organizations, but with the Tamil people, for ordinary Tamil families,” he said, so they can return to their homes, make a living “and live in peace and security with their Sinhalese neighbours.”

“We were tough on the Tigers, and now that the civil war is over, we’re being tough on the government,” he said.