Mauritius joins India, refuses to send PM to Lanka for CHOGM

[JohnyD]

PORT LOUIS: The prime minister of Mauritius announced on Tuesday he would stay away from this week's Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka because of the host's poor human rights record.

Mauritius joins India by refusing to send a premier to Sri Lanka, which is accused of widespread human rights abuses and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians during its 2009 defeat of Tamil Tiger rebels. Canada is totally boycotting the summit.

"This is a decision taken by a sovereign Mauritius in the face of the absence of progress in Sri Lanka on the respect of human rights," Prime Minister Navin Chandra Ramgoolam told the Mauritian parliament.

He said that Mauritius, which will host the next Commonwealth summit in 2015, believed that "human rights are more important than everything else".

The prime minister also told mediapersons that the decision was taken because he had "closely followed the human rights situation" in Sri Lanka.

It will be the first time since the island's independence in 1968 that a Mauritian prime minister will be absent from a Commonwealth summit. The Indian Ocean island will instead be represented in Colombo by its foreign minister, Arvin Boolell.

Ethnic Tamils make up an estimated 10 per cent of Mauritius' population.

Menon Marday, a local Tamil community representative, welcomed the government's decision.

"We congratulate the prime minister, who has acted out of respect for human rights and against the oppression of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka, where the genocide continues," he told AFP.

Mauritius joins India, refuses to send PM to Lanka for CHOGM - The Times of India

 

[Neuro]

Till now Canada, India and Mauritius announced their boycott .

 

[JohnyD]

Sri Lanka detains Australia, New Zealand lawmakers over human rights abuses probe

COLOMBO: Sri Lankan immigration authorities on Sunday briefly detained an Australian and a New Zealand politician on a fact-finding mission into alleged human rights abuses, officials said.

The move came days before the country hosts a Commonwealth summit, amid pressure on visiting leaders to boycott the event over alleged war crimes.

Immigration officials held Australian senator Lee Rhiannon and New Zealand MP Jan Logie shortly before they were to hold a press conference about their mission, an opposition Sri Lankan lawmaker said.

"They were accused of breaching visa conditions, but they had 'special projects visas' to be in Sri Lanka on a fact-finding mission," Tamil lawmaker MA Sumanthiran told AFP.

An immigration official confirmed the pair were detained briefly at their hotel room for questioning, but declined to give details.

The Australian high commission (embassy) said the senator had been questioned about an alleged breach of her visa conditions but was later released.

"We understand that they are on their way back home according to their travel plans," a high commission official said.

Sumanthiran of the Tamil National Alliance said the pair had been questioned because the government was "paranoid" about foreigners looking into the country's dismal rights record.

"Publicly, the government says anyone can come here and see for themselves, but actually they don't want the world to know what is happening here," he said.

He said the two were eventually freed because they were scheduled anyway to leave the country on Sunday.

The pair had travelled to the island's former northern war zone to look into cases of human rights abuses, four years after government forces crushed Tamil rebels to end a decades-long separatist war.

The move came less than two weeks after Sri Lanka kicked out two Australian media rights activists who were meeting local rights activists.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has already said he will not attend the November 15-17 Comonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will also skip the summit over the alleged war crimes by Colombo, a government source said in New Delhi on Sunday.

Sri Lanka faced censure at the UN Human Rights Council over its failure to probe allegations that up to 40,000 civilians were killed by its troops in the final months of the battle with Tamil rebels in 2009, charges the country has denied.


Sri Lanka detains Australia, New Zealand lawmakers over human rights abuses probe - Times Of India

 

[notsuperstitious]

Tamils Stopped from Reaching Colombo

BBC News - Tamils stopped en route to Colombo before Commonwealth summit

While I opposed the PM's move to cancel visit, the SL government is really acting like a bunch of arrogant bastards!!!

 

[Guynextdoor2]

Tamils Stopped from Reaching Colombo

BBC News - Tamils stopped en route to Colombo before Commonwealth summit

While I opposed the PM's move to cancel visit, the SL government is really acting like a bunch of arrogant bastards!!!

I had little confidence in their not sc*ewing things up to start with.

 

[Azizam]

Protests in Colombo are banned altogether. Rule applies these idiot troublemakers and university nutcracks who also hold protesting as a hobby. What do you think this country is? Some comedy house where anyone can come and interrupt an international conference? All these so called sympathizers never raise a word against LTTE that killed a large proportion of their people, forced children and women to become suicide bombers and kept the Tamil population of their territory illetrate for 3 decades. I myself have noticed LTTE soliders can't read or write properly in checkpoints.

 

[Destro]

India is just a vassal state controlled by Washington DC.

 

[navtrek]

India is just a vassal state controlled by Washington DC.

Quit trolling buddy.... The above comment has no relevance.

 

[kaykay]

India is just a vassal state controlled by Washington DC.

And China is controlled by N Korea. LOLs