The exclusion of some NGOs from a human rights conference at the behest of the Sri Lankan government was criticised by the Sri Lanka Campaign, who say the conference, in its current form, will do damage to human rights on the island.
The conference, entitled 'Enhancing Human Rights and Security in the Asia Pacific', organised jointly by the University of Sydney, the Kathmandu School of Law and the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the University of Colombo, was due to include human rights organisations from Sri Lanka, along with representatives from the Sri Lankan military. Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Defence however objected, saying that no official representatives from the Sri Lankan government would attend if the two NGOs were in attendance.
The group’s chair Edward Mortimer wrote in an open letter addressed to participants of the conference, that the organisers of the conference are acceding to Sri Lanka’s wish to dictate who can and who cannot attend the conference, potentially “making themselves complicit in the Sri Lankan government’s systematic attempts to suppress dissent”.
Mortimer urged all participants to write to the organisers protesting against the decision to exclude the human rights organisations and to withdraw if they aren’t re-invited.
The letter highlighted Sri Lanka Campaign’s report, which makes the legal argument that crimes against humanity are perpetrated against the Tamil population by the Sri Lankan security forces.
“We can only speculate that the reason the Sri Lankan army wishes to attend this conference and have critical voices excluded is to present a counter narrative which will ignore these inconvenient facts,” the letter further said.