The Madness That Took Over CHOGM

By Shyamon Jayasinghe -November 26, 2013

Shyamon Jayasinghe

It was no mean an achievement for Sri Lanka to have prevailed as the venue of choice for CHOGM 2013 despite calls to change the venue. The government did well to prepare and beautify the capital city and build the expressway from the International Airport. From all accounts Lankans all over the world can at last feel proud of their capital city.

For years Colombo had grown to be more and more a dump. President Premedas was the first head of state to realize the need to beautify our capital. He started with pavements and roundabouts and acquired some cynical comments from his opponents. Cynicism has now given way to optimism. The main player is evidently Gotabaya Rajapaksa who appears to have an eye for beauty, whatever other reservations one may hold with regard to him.

However, what could have been unmitigated glory transformed into ignominy during the CHOGM sessions that followed. A madness swept over CHOGM. The events were largely predictable but President Rajapaksa and his team headed by Foreign Minister GL Peiris was caught napping and they were simply overwhelmed by the tide of hostility. Tony Abbott tried to douse the flames but everyone knew he did what he did to salvage himself from the daily nightmare of boat arrivals. Abbott sees dreadful dreams of boat people crashing into Australia.

To begin with, there was unfinished business that was foreshadowing the event. This related to allegations of human rights violations during the closing stages of the war that were before the United Nations. Our government plainly did nothing to assuage the international community that it would conduct its own independent investigations into the accusations of war crimes. It had its own LLRC appointed and this Lankan body of eminent persons, too, saw the need for a full scale enquiry besides  presenting other ameliorating proposals  all of which were ignored by the government. Government arrogantly leaned on a false theory of sovereignty. Since the Second World War the notion of sovereignty has been regarded as not being absolute. Interdependence of governments, countries, economies and people has taken the lid off sovereignty. Global consciousness of the need for global-level protection of the fundamental rights of the human beings has come strongly to the fore ever since the horrible days of the holocaust. UN conventions were formulated and adopted to which Sri Lanka also was signatory; an International Tribunal at Hague was set up and so on. The rights of any human being living anywhere cannot be bartered away to individual ruling regimes of plastic Pol Pots or others in the country that he inhabits. As has been amply evident even in Sri Lanka the domestic system has sometimes not been able to give relief to an individual put under extreme circumstances. General Sarath Fonseka is just one instance. He had charges framed-up against him and this valiant soldier was incarcerated in jail for three years until some external pressure secured his release.                                            Read More