“Australia should encourage C’wealth countries to attend CHOGM in Sri Lanka”: Julie Bishop

Australia should attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Sri Lanka and should encourage other Commonwealth countries to attend, Australia’s Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop said after a visit to the island late last month.

“The Sri Lankan Government is not perfect but it is making inroads into the challenges facing the country and should be encouraged to continue to do so,” Bishop told the Australian press after leading a delegation to Colombo primarily to discuss border security issues.

Bishop told the media that as a member of the Commonwealth, Australia “obviously wants to ensure Sri Lanka respects the rule of law and the independence of the Judiciary.”

“Yes, we heard grievances from some people in the north, in particular one Tamil Member of Parliament told us of his frustration at having his office raided by the police and concerns he had about that. But I point out that when we spoke to the Tamil parliamentary leader and asked him of instances of violations of human rights, of physical abuse, of intimidation, harassment against Tamil MPs, he didn’t cite any examples and he particularly didn’t cite this example,” the Deputy Opposition Leader said.

According to Bishop, the US delegation in Sri Lanka was focused on alleged war crimes. “That is part of Sri Lanka’s history that they will have to come to terms with and we will certainly look closely at any resolution that goes before the United Nations on that score,” she said.

She noted that all controversies in Sri Lanka are not necessarily an indication of the ongoing conflict between the Tamils and the Sinhalese and the Sri Lankan Government.

“There is also deep concern about recent matters regarding the Chief Justice of Sri Lanka who has been the subject of impeachment proceedings. We discussed this matter at length with a range of people. But we should not fall into the trap of assuming that every controversy in Sri Lanka is directly linked to the fact Tamil/Sinhalese conflict. In fact, the Chief Justice was appointed by the President. She is Sinhalese. So a whole set of different considerations apply and I believe that separate representations should be made to the Government in relation to that matter,” Bishop noted.

Australia is the current chair of the Commonwealth after CHOGM was held in Perth in 2011. The Australian Deputy Opposition leader also praised the role played by Sri Lanka’s military being deployed for what she called ‘civilian purposes’.

Bishop said that the military was building permanent houses of the same standard as AusAID in model villages and added that the navy had been deployed to build a golf course in Trincomalee, tipped to be a tourist area. So in a number of instances, the military have been deployed for civilian purposes and they were involved in building houses.

“We in fact visited what’s called a model village where the military were building permanent housing of the same standard that AusAID were building elsewhere in the northern and eastern provinces.” Bishop also praised the military’s role in beautifying the capital city. “The military that have been sent back down south are involved in the beautification process of Colombo and that is quite evident. The city of Colombo has improved dramatically in terms of the beautification, the heritage building restoration and the like,” she said.

Bishop noted that it was not the delegation’s intent to take sides in Sri Lanka between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. “It was not our job to involve ourselves in domestic policies or domestic politics or indeed some of the controversies but we certainly spoke to many people about these issues,” she said.

The delegation led by Bishop also included Opposition Immigration Spokesman Scott Morrison and Opposition Border Security Spokesman Michael Keenan and was primarily focused on border security and asylum seeker issues. The delegation met with Sri Lankan Government officials and visited the former conflict zones of the north and east, where they toured AusAID projects, and met navy, intelligence, customs and police chiefs.