Britain’s Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt responded Tuesday to MPs questions on Sri Lanka. See the transcript here.

Amongst the issues raised were the British government’s position on Sri Lanka’s closure of ICRC offices in the Tamil areas, Sinhala colonization, investigation of war crimes and British Defence Secretary’s ‘private’ meeting with President Mahinda Rajapaksa during his controversial visit to UK earlier this month.

See also:

- Gap between UK’s rhetoric and action

- Too close for British comfort

- Britain must take the lead
 

One of Scotland's largest companies, the Weir Group, was this week fined £3m for breaching UN sanctions on Iraq by doing business with Saddam Hussein's regime. £13.9m of illegal profits were also confiscated, the BBC reported.

Last year four British Parliamentary committees issued a joint report arguing that all arms licenses to Sri Lanka should be investigated, as UK-supplied weapons had been used against Tamil civilians.

See these reports by The Times, Daily Telegraph and Channel 4.

In mid 2007 it emerged in a British parliamentary debate that UK had licensed £7 million worth of weapons and military equipment for export to Sri Lanka so far that year alone – the same value of aid the UK had provided after the 2004 tsunami.

The UK exported over £1m of arms in late 2008 - just as Sri Lanka began mass bombardment of concentrated Tamil civilians, eventually killing over 40,000 people.

Indeed, between April 2008 and April 2009, the UK issued 34 arms export licenses to Sri Lanka.

At the same time, international community - including Britain - was calling for a ceasefire.

In Feb 2009, UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Parliament that the humanitarian crisis was getting "get worse day by day" (see transcript here).

In April 2009, Sri Lanka dismissed as a 'joke' Britain's call for a humanitarian ceasefire.

Also that month, Mr. Miliband and his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, visited Sri Lanka but Sri Lanka rejected their plea to allow humanitarian access by the UN to the Tamil civilians trapped in the warzone.

Mr. Miliband had got into a 'heated argument' with Sri Lanka's Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, The Times reported. (See also The Guardian's report)

Britain revoked nine arms exports licenses in late 2009 - after the war ended.

In January 2010, the UK government told the Parliamentary committees on Arms Export Controls it had been "concerned about the Sri Lankan situation for quite a long period of time".
 

Despite its Sinhala nationalist rhetoric and ethos, international pressure continue to bite, compelling President Mahinda Rajapakse’s regime to implement the pro-market economic reforms that it has bitterly opposed.

Concluding its visit, a delegation from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) observed this week:

“The authorities’ structural reform agenda under the program … appears to be broadly on track.”

(See p33-35 of President Rajapaksa's ideological manifesto, 'Mahinda Chintana'  to see the policies the IMF seeks to roll back.)

Amongst policies insisted on by the IMF are cutting of subsidies and state interference in the functioning of markets.

Previous Sri Lankan governments have largely adhered to IMF and World Bank blueprints for economic transformation (see criticism in p33 and 34 of 'Mahinda Chintana').

In its assessment this week, the IMF assessment team noted, and shrugged off, one key consequence of structural reforms: soaring food prices.

The Fund instead warned that Sri Lanka’s economic growth is premised on promised tax reforms and other pledges – “if implemented” – and many others yet to come.

A good example of Sri Lanka's resistance to open market competition is Colombo's footdragging on signing the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with India. (See discussion here).

CEPA will allow Sri Lankan companies to compete in the Indian market, but is being resisted because it will allow Indian firms to compete in Sri Lanka with the country's largely Sinhala-owned businesses.

Sri Lanka's national anthem will only be in Sinhala from now on and the Tamil version will no longer be played at any official or state functions, the Cabinet decided on Wednesday, according to the Sunday Times.

President Mahinda Rajapakse told the cabinet meeting that there could not be ‘two’ national anthems, and that this was a ‘shortcoming’ that must be rectified.

(See this on state ethnic policy also.)

The logic? "We must all think of Sri Lanka as one country."

The President cited an instance where then Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike had walked out of a function in the island’s north where the national anthem was played in Tamil.

Mrs Bandaranaike’s rule is best known for tearing up the British-supplied liberal constitution and replacing it in 1972 with today’s Sinhala nationalist one, including changing the country’s name from Ceylon to today's Sinhala one, Sri Lanka.

See the 2007 study by the US-based East-West Centre on how "Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist ideology is now fully embedded and institutionalised as state policy."

“It is the responsibility of the global Tamil community living beyond Sri Lanka's murderous reach to do everything it can to contribute to, and support, international efforts to bring President Rajapakse and the rest of the leadership to justice.

“This is both our right and our obligation. Most importantly, this campaign is not only about the past, but the future: it is only in this way that we can ensure the chilling horrors being unearthed by global rights activists are not visited again and again on the Tamils.”

See our new editorial, ‘Justice is Security’, here.

See also discussion of parameters for international investigations into Sri Lanka's violence here.

Which was the high point of Indian External Affairs minister S. M. Krishna’s visit to Sri Lanka in late November?

The Sri Lankan Sunday Times thought: “Reviving the Indo-Lanka Joint Commission - dormant since 2005- appears to be at the centre of [Mr.] Krishna’s visit.”

The state-run Chinese newspaper, Global Times, was sure “the high point was [the] inauguration of an Indian consulate in the southern coastal city of Hambantota” - site of the massive newly opened Chinese funded and built port.

The Times of India hedged, saying there were twin planks to Krishna’s visit and “a new consulate in Jaffna was the centrepiece of the first of these; … [the] new consulate … in Hambantota, was the centerpiece of the second.”

India's External Affairs minister S. M. Krishna (r) and Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao at the opening on Nov. 27 of the India Consulate in Jaffna. Photo Sunday Times.

“This is one consulate that I have pursued since the war ended,”  she told The Hindu at the opening of India’s consulate in Jaffna.

“All [Indian] officials, including [Sri Lanka desk] Joint Secretary [Thiru Moorthy] worked very hard to realise this. I am very happy.”

See Mr. Krishna's speech at the Jaffna opening event here.

New investigations by Channel 4 and Human Rights Watch link the Sri Lanka Army's (SLA) 53 Division to war crimes recorded by a soldier on his mobile phone.

"This horrific new evidence demonstrates graphically that the Sri Lankan army engaged in summary executions of prisoners during the final days of fighting in May 2009," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

"The government's failure to investigate these serious war crimes in the face of overwhelming evidence shows the need for an independent, international investigation."

Meanwhile, Amnesty International Asia-Pacific Programme Director Sam Zarifi said:

“Since the Sri Lankan government is unwilling to initiate an impartial investigation of its own forces or ensure accountability, this responsibility must now be assumed by the United Nations.”

See Channel 4's television reports here:

 See Channel 4's online reports here, here and here.

"Each time new evidence emerges of a wartime atrocity, the government's kneejerk reaction is to claim that it's all part of some bizarre plot against it," said HRW's Brad Adams. "How many more photos and videos need to emerge before the government recognizes that it can't hide the truth forever?"

Also see a May 2010 Human Rights Watch report implicating the 53 Division's Air Mobile Brigade in the execution of a captured LTTE Political Wing member here.

In response to accusations of war crimes, this is what President Mahinda Rajapaksa said at a 'victory parade' earlier this year:

“Our troops carried a gun in one hand and a copy of the human rights' charter in the other. … Our guns were not fired at a single civilian.”

See our editorial of 14 May 2010, 'Accounting for Vanni will define Sri Lanka’s future', here.

“The President came to UK and returned back to Sri Lanka, happy as a lark. Now what happened to these … Tamil Tiger Terrorist Lawyers?”

“Your nudity is apparent, spineless shameless Britishers!”

Not unexpectedly, President Mahinda Rajapakse’s disinvitation from speaking at the Oxford Union last week amid mass protests and new evidence of war crimes, has fuelled the Sri Lankan establishment’s hostility towards both the Tamil Diaspora and the UK.

However, the invective-laden opinion published Monday on Sri Lankan government websites is striking.

Accompanied on one by a disclaimer, the article was simultaneously published on the websites of the Ministry of Defence and the Media Centre for National Security.

Amid the furor that enveloped President Mahinda Rajapakse’s visit to Britain last week, a Foreign Office statement on Sri Lanka’s war crimes went largely unremarked, if not unnoticed. The position it sets out suggests that, while no longer legitimizing Sri Lanka’s ongoing sham commission, Britain is still not putting its weight behind a proper investigation into war crimes.

An AFP report of Dec 4 quoted a Foreign Office spokeswoman as saying: Britain believes Colombo “must develop a credible and independent process to look into reports of possible violations of international humanitarian law by both sides during the conflict in Sri Lanka.” This, she added, had been “made clear” to the Sri Lankan government “most recently in October”.

However, as has been repeatedly pointed out by Tamil actors and international human rights groups, there is no prospect of Sri Lanka investigating its own war crimes.

Why this is so is also well recognised. As the US Ambassador crisply put it in a now much written about Wikileaked cable, such regimes have never investigated their own troops or officials, and in Sri Lanka, responsibility for many of the war crimes rests with the country’s senior civilian and military leadership, including President Mahinda Rajapaksa, his brothers and opposition candidate General Sarath Fonseka.

Moreover, Sri Lanka’s track record on ‘investigations’ speaks for itself. Amnesty International summed it up in the title of its 2010 report on the matter: “Twenty years of make believe: Sri Lanka’s commissions of inquiry”.

And in three decades marked by massacres, ‘disappearances’, extra-judicial killings, torture and rape by Sri Lankan forces and their paramilitaries, not one perpetrator has been punished. Sri Lanka assures cast-iron impunity for its Sinhala-dominated military.

Against all this, Britain’s call - again - for the Sri Lankan state to “develop a credible and independent process” against itself is at best, extraordinarily generous, and at worst, disingenuous. Whilst having no impact whatsoever on Sri Lanka’s conduct, this position simultaneously undermines the efforts of those mobilising support for a proper – i.e. international-led - investigation into Sri Lanka’s war crimes.

Rights campaigners have expressed their frustration at Britain’s largely laissez-faire policy on Sri Lanka. Last week, The Times newspaper joined them, saying:

“Britain, as with much of the wider world, has a role to play [in changing Sri Lanka’s conduct]. [But] At present, this country seeks to speak from both sides of its mouth.”

As The Times also pointed out, “until a more coherent denunciation of [Sri Lanka’s] behaviour can be mustered” by the international community, there is simply no incentive for Colombo to change its behaviour.

Meanwhile, in the third of four key speeches this year on Britain’s future foreign policy, Foreign Secretary William Hague focused on human rights, insisting these were “essential to and indivisible from our foreign policy objectives.”

He contrasted his new government to its predecessor, saying that at handover of power, “Britain was not in a position to be as effective as it could and should have been in dealing with a world marred by tyranny, oppression and injustice.”

He also pointed out how “the previous government fell into a chasm of their own making between rhetoric and action in large areas of foreign policy.”

Mr. Hague is quite right, in that the Brown and Blair governments’ policies towards Sri Lanka, turning on support for, and appeasement of, the Sinhala-dominated government, contributed directly to the massacres and humanitarian catastrophe that has engulfed the Tamils.

The question, however, is whether Britain will now act clearly and decisively and join with other right-minded members of the international community to ensure Sri Lanka’s conduct is brought inline with international norms. At present, the “gap between rhetoric and action”, whilst narrower, still remains.

And, if the new UK government is serious about addressing “a world marred by tyranny, oppression and injustice,” there is no better place to start - for Britain especially - than Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka’s defiance of international criticism over the past two years has been interpreted by some as proof of the lack of international leverage over Colombo’s conduct.

Nothing could be further from the truth. President Mahinda Rajapakse’s disastrous visit to Britain last week clearly reveals that even as his government haughtily rejects criticism, it also craves acceptance. For all its bluster, the regime desperately seeks international respectability.

Crucially, however, Sri Lanka is unwilling to observe international norms to this end. The Rajapakse administration has rejected international demands for credible investigations into war crimes during the armed conflict, and brushed off calls for a meaningful solution to the Tamil question. Instead, it has fired angry missives at international critics, rejected visas to diplomats, aid workers and journalists, and sponsored noisy demonstrations against the UN, Britain and international ‘interference’ generally.

Nonetheless, it was to Britain President Rajapakse eagerly flew last week to generate international support for his ‘development vision’. And the importance attached to his address to the – half empty – United Nations assembly earlier this year was palpable.

Despite years of tirades against Norway and Oslo’s peace initiative, Rajapakse’s office made much of his brief meeting at the UN with Erik Solheim, the much vilified former Peace Envoy. Unable to secure a meeting with German leader Angela Merkel, President Rajapakse had a photographer standing by when he accosted her at a diplomatic reception.

Indeed, Sri Lanka’s political and official elite eagerly grasp any opportunity for international diplomatic ‘contact’. Last week, for example, President Rajapakse sought any meeting possible with British figures. Unable to secure official engagements, Colombo nevertheless widely circulated images of the President’s ‘private’ meeting with the British Defence Secretary and even other relatively unknown politicians. The hand of any foreigner is grasped – provided they don’t question Sri Lanka’s conduct, that is.

Neither the Sinhala political elite, nor the Sinhala population, have the stomach for international isolation – especially from the West. Despite noisily rejecting international demands, Sri Lanka also desperately wants to come in from the cold – and is throwing money at Western public relations firms to this end.

Therefore, far from lacking influence in Colombo, the international community actually has considerable leverage over Sri Lanka’s conduct. Colombo’s repression can be checked by - and clearly only by - its fear of international isolation and exclusion.

The international community must make clear that acceptance into international society comes with conditions, and that these include not only accounting properly for war crimes committed during Colombo’s military campaign, but demonstrating, not merely promising, that the Tamils can live in peace and dignity in their homeland.

“Sri Lanka has employed a British PR firm to improve its reputation, [but] the one act that could surely do this – permitting a credible, international inquiry into war crimes – is something [President Mahinda] Rajapakse consistently, vehemently and unacceptably refuses to do.”

In an editorial last Thursday, The Times newspaper argued: “Sri Lanka cannot improve its damaged reputation until it accepts that it deserves it.”

However it is missing the point to see China as the ‘problem’ here; it is Sri Lanka’s conduct that should worry India. If Sri Lanka was not to entertain powers hostile to India, then neither China, Pakistan nor any other state can pose a threat via the island.

From the outset

Intrusion into any power’s ‘sphere of influence’ is impossible unless regional states cooperate. Major powers may have unwelcome ambitions in each other’s spheres, but they need willing partners if these are to advance.

In this sense, Sri Lanka's post-independence history shows Colombo has consistently allied - overtly or covertly - with states India has problematic relations with.

Initially - soon after independence - Sri Lanka followed India's lead in foreign policy matters, for example even demanding that the British vacate their naval base at Trincomalee and their air base at Katunayake in 1957.

However, since the late sixties Colombo has consistently reached out to or welcomed extra-regional powers recognised as worrying, or hostile, to India. These have included Pakistan, the US (during the Cold War) and China.

Few state rivalries have been as enduring as India and Pakistan’s - they have fought three wars (1948, 1965 and 1971) and had another serious clash in 1999 (Kargil).

During decades of armed Indo-Pak rivalry, rather than being neutral, Sri Lanka provided direct assistance to Pakistan. During the 1971 war, for example, Pakistani warplanes refuelled in Sri Lanka as they rushed troops (three divisions), arms and supplies to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

Since then, despite India’s repeated counter-offers, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have long had close military and other relations – underlined again last week with President Asif Ali Zardari’s visit during which more ties were put in place.

Going West

In 1979, in what was internationally understood as a challenge to India, which had been ‘leaning’ towards Russia rather than Western powers, Sri Lanka blatantly moved to ally with the West in the Cold War ‘struggle’. (See US former Ambassador Jeffrey Lunstead’s comments on p12 here)

However, notably India was insisting on a ‘Non-Aligned’ stance amid the Cold War – the overarching framework of international politics then.

President J. R. Jayawardene strengthened economic, political and military ties with Ronald Reagan’s administration in Washington. These, including the plans for a Voice of America (VoA) station on the island – and the possibility of electronic eavesdropping on India - alarmed Delhi.

These concerns spurred India to first back the Tamil armed struggle against Colombo and, ultimately, to intervene militarily – first in a show of force dropping supplies to the besieged Jaffna population from fighter-escorted supply planes, and then through the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF).

The dramatic changes to international affairs resulting from the end of the Cold War may have dulled US-India tensions, but – until very recently - they have never been put aside. In 2002, for example, the US listed India, China and Russia as potential ‘great power competitors (see p12 here).

Enter the dragon

China and India have had tense relations from the outset. But Sri Lanka’s governments began developing a relationship with China from as early as the fifties.

Sri Lanka has had 119 agreements over the years with China alone.

A striking example  is the Rubber- Rice Agreement of 1952, which has been renewed from time to time. The agreement was said to be “too attractive” for Sri Lanka to pass up as it not only provided a market for Colombo’s surplus rubber, but gave access to low priced food-grains.

Yet another early plank of China and Sri Lanka’s relationship was the Maritime Agreements of July 1963 which provided ‘most favoured nation’ treatment for the contracting parties’ commercial vessels moving cargo and passengers between them, and third countries.

China and India had fought their one and only war just months earlier.

The autarkic SLFP government of Prime Minister Srimavo Bandaranaike not only installed today’s Sinhala-first constitution (1972), it also strengthened links China (see how Beijing remembers that era here).

So close were these that the West enthusiastically embraced Junius Jayawardene’s capitalist – and equally Sinhala nationalist - UNP government when it replaced hers and switched allegiances to the West in 1978.

Special relationship

However, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has, despite China being India’s primary great power rival, taken Colombo’s relations with Beijing to a new level. For example, Rajapaksa has visited China five times since becoming President - and three times before assuming Office.

Indeed, this relationship is the most written about today when it comes to Sri Lanka’s international affairs. (See a detailed discussion here.)

These look at China’s funding of massive infrastructure projects (the Hambantota port, for example), other financial and political support, the growing number of Chinese nationals in the country and so on.

Then there are the growing military links. Not only is China the primary supplier of arms (along with Pakistan) to Sri Lanka, the latter’s senior officers are now also going to China for training (formerly they went mainly to UK, US and India).

Two cartoons published in The Island Dec 1, 2010

In response to these ‘Chinese moves’ in Sri Lanka, some Indian analysts are calling on their government to ‘woo back’ Colombo with other incentives.

The Sinhala state is also eagerly promoting this logic – that its dalliance with China turns on Beijing offering Colombo more than Delhi.

Underlying tendency

However, this is to ignore Sri Lanka’s historic tendency to seek out and strengthen links with powers unfriendly, or hostile, to India at any given time.

Any power’s ‘sphere of influence’ rests not on outbidding external powers for regional states’ loyalties, but the latter accepting its pre-eminence and benignly pursuing their own interest in this context. Consider the US and Central American states, or Russia and those states Moscow deems in its ‘near abroad’.

Indeed, if perpetual rivalry is to be assumed, it is the conduct of the regional state that makes possible threats to a power, not that of the rival. For example, when Georgia began edging towards joining NATO, Russia took action against Georgia, not against the alliance.

What is important here is not whether China poses a threat to India or not, but, if this is the case – as many analysts feel – why Sri Lanka is – still - aggressively pursuing a strategic relationship with Beijing (and Pakistan) while keeping India at arm’s length.

On Wednesday we highlighted British Defence Secretary Liam Fox’s links with President Mahinda Rajapakse's government, and the minister's insistence on meeting the Sri Lankan leader this week despite the growing chorus of demands he be investigated for war crimes.

It seems the much-publicised, yet supposedly 'private', meeting has also made the British government uncomfortable: The Times newspaper reported Thursday that Dr. Fox has been warned by Foreign Office officials.

The paper quoted the officials as saying Foreign Secretary William Hague might ‘have to take action' if the relationship became ‘too close’ – though what either meant were not spelled out.

"William might have to step in if this continues," a source told The Times' Deputy Political Editor Sam Coates.

Meanwhile, the President Rajapakse's official website published photographs of the 'private' meeting with Dr. Fox, including the one above, at the luxury hotel the Sri Lanka leader set up base during his week-long visit to London, The Dorchester.

The government also distributed photos of President Rajapakse's meeting with British MPs and MEPs at The Dorchester, including this one:

The group included Lord Naseby of the Conservative Party, who is also the Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Sri Lanka (APPG-SL), Lord Sheikh (Conservative), Lord  Dholakia (Liberal Democrat), Lord Grocott (Labour), Lord Wallace of Saltair (Liberal Democrat), Nirj Deva (MEP), Geoffrey Van Orden (MEP), James Wharton (Conservative MP), Nigel Evans (Conservative MP) and David Amess (Conservative MP).

Along with President Rajapakse, Sri Lanka's Minister of External Affairs Prof. G. L. Peiris, Minister of Higher Education S.B.Dissanayake, Provincial Council member Nauzer Fauzi, and Sri Lankan High Commissioner in UK Justice Nihal Jayasinghe.

President Rajapakse is on a 'private' visit to UK, but his office clearly sees this meeting, like Dr. Fox's, as official, not private.