Senator Hugh Segal Canada’s envoy to the Commonwealth lashed out at the Commonwealth Secretariat and Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma for not holding-up Sri Lanka to democratic values. Segal made the remarks today in Ottawa during the teleconference with media on the same day Canadian Prime Minister formally announced he would not attend the Commonwealth meetings in Colombo next month.
Segal singled out Commonwealth Secretariat, Marlborough House in London and the Secretary General for putting Sri Lanka’s interests ahead of the new charter, which Queen Elizabeth signed last March. The charter holds 54 members of the Commonwealth to democratic values. He says the secretariat failed the first real test of the charter, which was “Sri Lanka’s substantial backsliding” on human rights and rule of law. The politicized dismissal of chief justice was a “crucial tipping point” for Prime Minister Harper’s decision to skip the Colombo meeting, he added.
Canada was unable to convince other Commonwealth countries to follow in its footsteps, including prime ministers of close Western nations Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Canada is home to the largest Sri Lankan Tamil community outside Asia, however the government has repeatedly denied it was singling out Sri Lanka to appease domestic pressures. Soon after coming power in 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government banned the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
