It is craven for Australian Premier Tony Abbott to attend CHOGM without raising Sri Lanka's rights abuses, Emily Howie, Director of advocacy and research at the Human Rights Law Centre, said Wednesday.

In a statement, the Human Rights Law Centre, said:

"Australia must publicly acknowledge and condemn the human rights and rule of law crisis in Sri Lanka particularly given the escalation of international condemnation of Sri Lanka’s human rights record ahead of the Commonwealth [summit this week]."

“We are a sovereign nation. You think someone can just make a demand from Sri Lanka! We are not a colony.”

The Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) met at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall  in Sri Lanka, Wednesday.

Tamil students across UK universities began getting ready for the ‘Breaking the Silence’ genocide campaign this week, as the British Prime Minister is set to attend the Commonwealth leaders' meet in Sri Lanka.

The campaign, which has now become an annual event that takes place each November in a number of UK universities was set up to 'break the silence' on genocide of Tamils in the North-East after the events of 2009.

Student societies across India and the UK released a statement Tuesday, continuing calls for a boycott of the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

28 Tamil organisations, in a joint statement, deplored the British Premier’s decision to attend CHOGM and consolidated their calls for heads of states to boycott the summit in Sri Lanka.

The Mauritian Prime Minister, Navin Ramgoolan, will not be attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka this week.

Ramgoolan is reported to have made the announcement at the Mauritian parliament on Tuesday, when responding to a question by the opposition leader, Paul Bérenger, who has previously called for a boycott of the summit.

"This is a decision taken by a sovereign Mauritius in the face of the absence of progress in Sri Lanka on the respect of human rights," Ramgoolan told parliament.

He went on to add that Mauritius, which is set to host the next CHOGM, believes that

"human rights are more important than everything else".

British Premier David Cameron and other Commonwealth leaders going to the summit in Sri Lanka this week “have a duty to hold their hosts to account” for crimes against humanity there during and since the war’s end, The Times newspaper said in its editorial Tuesday. 

Students from Loyola College in Tamil Nadu remained steadfast in their call for a complete boycott of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo by the international community, and continued to call for Sri Lanka to be suspended from the Commonwealth.

In an interview from Chennai, Joe Britto from Loyola College said to the Tamil Guardian,

"We, the students of Tamil Nadu, we strictly condemn that - that conference shouldn't be happening in Sri Lanka, and we will protest on the streets, and we will raise our voice against the Sri Lankan Commonwealth conference."