Canada will boycott next month’s Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka. Stephen Harper has also threatened to cut the purse strings to the 64-year-old Commonwealth organization due to on-going human rights violations. These include the impeachment of a chief justice, allegations of extra judicial killings and disappearances and the arrest of political opponents and journalists.
“In the past two years we have not only seen no improvement in these areas, in almost all of these areas we’ve seen a considerable rolling back, a considerable worsening of the situation,” Stephen Harper said.
The move comes as no surprise as the prime minister has been threatening the boycott since the last Commonwealth leaders’ meeting in Australia in 2011.Stephen pact with the E
Canada is the second largest financial contributor to the Commonwealth, giving $20 million per year to various Commonwealth projects, including $50 million to the secretariat that runs the organization.
Australia and New Zealand have indicated their presence. “You do not make new friends by rubbishing your old friends or abandoning your old friends,” said Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
Harper should listen to New Zealand Prime Minster John Key who said: “While noting every country makes its own calls on such matters, if we decided you were going to have to meet New Zealand standards to attend a meeting, there’d be lots of countries we wouldn’t go to.” Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, is another Commonwealth leader considering boycotting the Sri Lanka summit, but so far he hasn’t made up his mind. Barring that, Harper is the only leader to boycott the Colombo conference, scheduled for November 15-17 in Colombo. There won’t even be a cabinet-level representative. Parliamentary secretary Deepak Obhrai will represent Canada at the summit.
This isn’t the first time that Harper has gone alone on the international front. Four years ago, he snubbed China by refusing to participate in a United Nations disarmament conference because North Korea was the chair. In 2012, Canada closed its embassy in Tehran, accusing Iran for sponsoring terrorism.
Sri Lankan government has blamed Canada for playing politics because Canada is home to the world’s largest diaspora Tamil community. Residing mostly in the Greater Toronto Area, they are politically important constituency for federal parties. Conservatives have close ties with the Tamils. Shan Thayaparan was Ontario’s Progressive Conservative candidate for Markham-Unionville and federally, Tamil broadcaster Ragavan Paranchothy, sought the Conservative nomination in Scarborough-Southwest.
Ironically, in 2010, the Conservative government detained 490 Tamils who attempted to enter Canada. They were detained in B.C. jails for months. Unless the Tamils have short memory, they are unlikely to forget this.
Sri Lankan High Commissioner Chitranganee Wagiswara said Sri Lanka needed support after facing “separatist terrorism for nearly three decades,” and ongoing post-conflict challenges.
“Notably certain separatist elements within the diaspora, including in Canada, still continue to relentlessly disseminate anti-Sri Lanka propaganda and lobby political leaders and other decision makers,” said Wagiswara. “Hostile criticism and unfair targeting of Sri Lanka by Canada only serves to further strengthen the evil forces working against Sri Lanka and does not contribute in any manner to the ongoing rebuilding and reconciliation process in the multicultural society of the country.”
Wagiswara added that his country wanted all members of the Commonwealth to “uphold principles of objectivity, understanding, mutual respect and the equality of sovereign states.”
Be as it may, Harper is forgetting Canadian voters across the country who cherish the Commonwealth because of Canada’s historic ties with the Commonwealth and Britain. He also has to be reminded that there are quite a few incidents of human rights abuses at home. Harper has aggressively tried to increase trade with China, a leading abuser of human rights, but won’t go to Sri Lanka, making the country a laughing stock of the international community.
Malaysia, another Commonwealth country, is equally guilty of human rights violations yet Harper recently spent several days in Malaysia, being the first sitting Canadian prime minister to visit Malaysia in the last 17 years. Malaysia has an appalling human rights record, which includes arrests of journalists and opposition leaders, deaths in custody and torture, to name just a few.
I hope Harper can assure us that he is using the same lens for all the above countries that he visits as he did for Sri Lanka. With such a seesaw foreign policy, we have lost the credibility to lecture Sri Lanka over its policies. We should not forget that the Commonwealth is like any other family, which discusses internal problems among themselves, and comes up with their own solutions. Boycotting family meetings mean that one cannot be present when family feuds are discussed at the dinner table.
