| Former Australian Prime Minister Fraser backs call to bar Sri Lanka |
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FORMER prime minister Malcolm Fraser has added his weight to a push for Commonwealth action against Sri Lanka, calling on summit members to postpone its proposed hosting rights for the 2013 CHOGM until it has answered allegations of war crimes. But the former prime minister stopped short of supporting Sri Lanka's suspension from the Council of the Commonwealth, warning that such a penalty would only remove Sri Lanka from the organisation's sphere of influence. "I would not like to see suspension at this point but I think a lot of pressure should be brought to bear for an adequate investigation under the international criminal court," Mr Fraser told The Australian yesterday. A broad alliance of high-profile Australians, including lawyers, activists, former diplomats and academics, yesterday released a petition calling for Australia to support Sri Lanka's suspension from the Commonwealth until it agreed to an international war ...crimes investigation, and for Sri Lanka to be barred from hosting the 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Among the signatories are author Thomas Keneally, barrister and human rights advocate Julian Burnside QC and former NSW attorney-general John Dowd QC. The group has appealed to Julia Gillard to follow the lead of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has vowed not to attend a 2013 Sri Lanka CHOGM if there has been no progress on human rights and an independent war crimes investigation. The petition came out of a roundtable convened by Greens senator Lee Rhiannon last month to explore ways to pressure the Australian government to take action on the issue. Ms Rhiannon warned yesterday the federal government would "set a horrific precedent if it rolls out the red carpet for Sri Lankan officials at CHOGM while allegations of war crimes remain unanswered". Mr Fraser said he supported the Canadian Prime Minister's position that it was "quite inappropriate to have the council meeting in Sri Lanka, and this meeting ought to revisit that issue". He criticised the government for failing to speak out on allegations that the Sri Lankan military committed crimes against its own people during the last months of the civil war against the Tamil rebels because it feared such criticism could alienate the Rajapaksa government, whose help it needed to stem the flow of asylum-seekers to Australia. "We should not place a desire to stop boats and get the co-operation of the Sri Lankan government above the need to seek justice in Sri Lanka between the warring parties," he said. He described as "outrageous" then foreign minister Stephen Smith's visit to Colombo in November 2009, six months after the war's end in May 2009, with an $11 million grant in return for Sri Lanka's undertaking to help prevent boatloads of undocumented refugees from seeking asylum in Australia. "By giving financial support to the Sri Lankan government we were virtually saying, 'What you have done is all right so long as you stop boats'," Mr Fraser said. "You can't have principles which are important and then throw them over when it's expedient. There's been too much of that in Australia over the past 10 to 15 years." An investigation by a UN-appointed panel earlier this year found as many as 40,000 mostly Tamil civilians were killed in the final months of the war in 2009 as government forces moved against the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The panel found evidence both sides committed war crimes, but the Sri Lankan government strongly denies the allegations.
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