Rights abuses in focus at SL donor Oslo meet

Colombo, June 25: Sri Lanka's main foreign donors meet in Oslo this week to seek ways to halt renewed civil war, and a key focus will be human rights abuses blamed on the state and its Tamil Tiger foes, diplomats say.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government is under mounting pressure to safeguard human rights and properly probe abuses blamed on state security forces after abductions and massacres attributed to both sides, as the death toll from two decades of war approaches 70,000.

Top diplomats from main donors Japan, Norway, the United States and European Union - known collectively as the Co-Chairs - meet in Oslo tomorrow at a time when Sri Lanka's relations with the international community are increasingly strained.

''Human rights and humanitarian affairs are definitely the issues of the day,'' one foreign diplomat said today on condition of anonymity.

''It's fair to say that some of the Co-Chairs are still very much concerned about the situation in those fields today and will be focusing on that in the time to come.'' According to observers one reason donors say they will not comment publicly after the meeting is that they cannot agree among themselves on how far to openly pressure the government.

Japan, Sri Lanka's biggest individual donor in terms of aid and loans, is taking a softer line on the government than the likes of Britain and the United States, which have suspended some aid citing concerns on human rights.

Norway's Minister of International Development Erik Solheim, will host US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, Japanese special peace envoy Yasushi Akashi and top officials from the European Union presidency and European Commission tomorrow.

''The Co-Chairs will explore ways and means in which the group, as a whole or as individual countries, can continue helping the parties to cease violence and return to the negotiating table,'' Solheim said in a weekend statement.

At Risk Over Rights

Diplomats and analysts say Sri Lanka is increasingly at risk of isolation over human rights abuses.

The government was forced into an embarrassing U-turn earlier this month after authorities forcibly evicted nearly 400 Tamils from the capital citing security concerns - prompting international outrage and a Supreme Court ruling blocking such evictions.

Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the President's brother, has openly accused Western countries of bullying the goverment on human rights, saying they are misinformed and Sri Lanka does not depend on them.

He also justified evicting Tamils from Colombo, saying all measures were fair to defeat terror and that the separatist Tigers, fighting for an independent state in the north and east, had infiltrated United Nations agencies.

While the Tigers are blamed for multiple attacks that have killed hundreds in recent months, they are widely listed as a banned terrorist group, and diplomats say the goverment needs to prove it has the moral high ground.

International experts say a presidential probe into a series of abuses - including the massacre of 17 local staff of aid group Action Contre La Faim in August which Nordic monitors have blamed on security forces - fails to meet international standards and is headed for failure.

And with nearly a dozen media worker murders since 2005, international press freedom groups have described Sri Lanka as one of the world's most dangerous places for journalists, accusing the state of failing to probe the killings and intimidating reporters.

The government has rejected calls for a United Nations human rights monitoring mission, instead vowing to destroy the Tigers militarily.

Analysts see no clear winner on the horizon and fear the war could rumble on for years.

Reuters

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