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Sri Lanka slams EU report on country

Friday, 10 October 2008

Sri Lanka has slammed an EU report on the country saying it contains unsubstantiated allegations, deliberate distortions and blatant falsehoods.

The draft report, prepared by an EU delegation which visited Sri Lanka recently, was discussed at the Session of the South Asia Delegation of the European Parliament in Brussels on Tuesday.

The meeting co-chaired by Robert Evans, Chair of the South Asia Delegation and Baroness Sarah Ludford, Vice Chair of the Sub Committee on Human Rights, was attended by members of the South Asia Delegation, including those who visited Sri Lanka recently, diplomatic representatives from South Asian countries, Dr. Peter Schalk and Dr. John Neelsen, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian, Padmini Sithamparanathan, and a large number of members of the British Tamil Forum.

Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the EU, Ravinatha Aryasinha said the report underlines the patent bias of its authors against Sri Lanka and seeks to merely highlight negatives, ignore positives, and disregard the context of a country fighting one of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the world - the LTTE.

Ambassador Aryasinha has said that contradictory messages communicated to different audiences by Robert Evans, Chairman of a visiting European Parliamentary delegation to Sri Lanka in July 2008, were “an attempt to sully the good name of Sri Lanka in the European eye, while at the same time scoring brownie points with a constituency due to vote in the upcoming European Parliamentary election”.

The Ambassador said that while at a Colombo press conference, Mr. Evans had claimed that “despite repeated assurances, endless complications resulted in the party being turned back from Ratmalana Airport”, at a pro-LTTE rally in Harrow, he took credit for having prevented the visit because “I (Evans) refused to give only a photo opportunity of shaking hands with Pillayan, the Chief Minister of the Eastern Province”.

Observing that “it would seems obvious that by avoiding the visit to the East, members of the delegation were deprived of experiencing first-hand, one of the proudest achievements of Sri Lanka in recent times”, Ambassador Aryasinha referring to the dramatic developments in the Eastern Province, said “the draft report makes no effort to contribute to the winds of change; instead it prefers to stand against the tide of history”.

He also noted that on “GSP+ issues”, in comparison to the strident statements made by MEP Evans in Colombo “that if he had the choice, Sri Lanka would not be given GSP+” and, at the pro-LTTE rally in Harrow where he stated that “Sri Lanka would lose its GSP+ concessions”, the observations made in the draft report are more measured.

Referring to the draft report’s questioning of the applicability of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in Sri Lanka, he said it was clear that they were “ill-informed”, in March 2008, upon President Mahinda Rajapaksa seeking its opinion, the Supreme Court expressed the view that adequate recognition was available in Sri Lanka to the civil and political rights contained in the ICCPR and that the rights recognized in the ICCPR are justiciable through the medium of legal and constitutional processes prevailing in Sri Lanka.

(Courtesy : Daily Mirror )

Last Updated ( Thursday, 23 July 2009 )