Commonwealth aims and guest of honor (Mahinda) – Mark Colvin

Turning a blind eye to human rights abuses is not a new problem for the Commonwealth. While you’re watching the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony tonight, take a moment to look at the VIP box.The first guest of honour in New Delhi is Britain’s Prince Edward, there representing his mother, the Queen, in her capacity of Head of the Commonwealth. Nothing unusual about that.

But alongside him in the guest of honour spot will be Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president of Sri Lanka.The Games are these days the most visible expression of the Commonwealth itself – an organisation which aims to promote democracy, human rights, good governance, the rule of law, individual liberty, egalitarianism, free trade, multilateralism and world peace.

Democracy? President Rajapaksa was re-elected in January in an election in which he used state funds to campaign and ensured that the state-run news media effectively silenced opposition candidates. Human rights? Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have both condemned the Sri Lankan government repeatedly for breaches, which continue despite the government’s complete victory over the Tamil Tigers.

The Tigers, as the originators of suicide bombing in the modern era, were bound to trigger harsh counter-measures; but the Tigers are now a completely beaten and spent force, yet the authoritarian structure mobilised against them remains. Sri Lanka continues to be a major source of refugees seeking to come to Australia by any means they can. The minority Tamils seem certain to be cut out of any say in government indefinitely, especially now that Rajapaksa has passed a constitutional amendment allowing him to run for the presidency as often as he likes.

It’s still eminently possible, however, that Sri Lanka will get the right to host the Commonwealth Games in 2018. But that’s the Commonwealth way, it would seem.

This relic of the British Empire is still, in theory, a major force in international relations. Once known as the British Commonwealth, now as the Commonwealth of Nations, it has its headquarters in historic Marlborough House, close to the London residence of HRH Prince Charles.

Despite the dropping of the ‘British’ prefix, the Prince’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, remains the head of the Commonwealth. Australia is one of the 16 members (out of 54) which still recognise her as head of state. In theory, it has a lot of international clout.

But in practice, in the words of a former director of the Royal Commonwealth Society, Danny Sriskandarajah: “The organisation has been woefully quiet [on human rights] in recent times. The Gambian president has threatened journalists and human rights activists without any criticism from the secretariat; no statement was made on the sentencing of a gay couple in Malawi earlier this year; and it took almost three years after the coup for Fiji to be finally suspended late last year.”

In fact, according to an article <http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/oct/08/commonwealth-human-rights-leaked-document> in the Guardian last week, the Commonwealth secretary-general has effectively abandoned the organisation’s original human rights commitment: ........... http://www.eelanatham.info/?p=732