WASHINGTON - Despite ongoing concern about the country's human rights
situation, the United States should seek a more positive relationship with
strife-torn Sri Lanka, primarily for geopolitical reasons, according to a new
report released here on Monday by the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The 18-page report, which was released on the eve of a two-day visit to the
island by Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Affairs
Robert Blake, calls for a "more multifaceted
US strategy" that would use the resumption of military aid, among other tools,
to gain influence in Colombo and halt its "strategic drift" toward China.
"The United States cannot afford to 'lose' Sri Lanka," the report, which was
authored by two committee staffers who traveled to the island last month,
concluded. "This does not mean changing the relationship overnight or ignoring
the real concerns about Sri Lanka's political and humanitarian record."
"It does mean, however, considering a new approach that increases US leverage
vis-a-vis Sri Lanka by expanding the number of tools at our disposal," it
concluded.
The report, which was endorsed by both the committee chairman, Senator John
Kerry, and the ranking Republican member, Senator Richard Lugar, came under
immediate attack by human rights and conflict resolution activists who have
long urged Washington to condition any aid to the government of President
Mahinda Rajapaksa on improvements in its human-rights performance.
"This report is an incredibly shoddy, ill-informed piece of work that grossly
overstates the strategic importance of Sri Lanka to the United States and
woefully understates the degree of abuses carried out by the government there,"
said Robert Templer, director of the Asia program at the Brussels-based
International Crisis Group.
"Maybe the people who wrote the report don't know anything about Sri Lanka or
maybe they're of the school that says that everything on the planet is
strategic," said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch.
"The huge human-rights and humanitarian problems that continue there are not
small; they're central to any principled diplomatic engagement with Sri Lanka
at this point. So [the notion] that we are in a competition with China, which I
think is driving this, is misplaced," he told Inter Press Service.
The report comes amid growing concern among many activists that President
Barack Obama's policy of diplomatic engagement with abusive or authoritarian
governments, such as China, Myanmar, Iran, Sudan and Syria, is being pursued at
the expense of human rights.
In that respect, the report's release, coming on the eve of Blake's first visit
as assistant secretary - he served as US ambassador in Colombo from 2006 until
earlier this year - appeared somewhat ominous, especially given Kerry's close
association with and support for the administration's engagement policies.
But the State Department on Monday declined to comment on the report, noting
that officials there had not yet had a chance to review it. A spokesperson, who
declined to be identified, said US policy remained unchanged.
While she praised the government's announcement last week that all internally
displaced persons (IDPs) will be permitted to leave camps where they have been
held since the military's defeat of the insurgency of the Liberation Tigers of
Tamil Eelam (LTTE) last May, she also repeated that human rights continue to be
a major concern here.
"We continue to stress to the government of Sri Lanka the importance of ending
human-rights abuses, including media intimidation; investigating and holding
accountable those responsible for past abuses, and pursuing meaningful dialogue
and cooperation with Tamil and other minority communities to ensure that there
is no return to violence," she said.
Under the administration of president George W Bush, Washington proved
generally supportive of the Sri Lankan government's efforts to suppress the
Tigers, who were added to the State Department's terrorism list first in 1997
and again in October 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks.
Although the insurgency had no known links to al-Qaeda, the Bush administration
largely accepted Colombo's depiction of the conflict as consistent with the
"global war on terror" and provided it with military, as well as economic and
humanitarian aid - even after a shaky ceasefire was signed in 2002.
While not formally ended by the Rajapaksa government until 2008, the ceasefire
broke down amid heavy fighting in 2006. As the conflict intensified amid
reports of serious rights abuses by both sides, the US Congress cut most
military aid at the end of 2007.
Washington and other Western capitals became increasingly critical of the
government as it pushed its final offensive against the Tigers, displacing tens
of thousands of Tamil civilians, closing off the war zone to journalists as
well as human rights and other independent monitors, and ignoring Western
appeals for a humanitarian ceasefire.
Between 7,000 and 20,000 non-combatants were reportedly killed in the fighting
between January and the Tigers' surrender in May, according to the United
Nations and human rights groups. When the government placed some 250,000 IDPs
in detention camps after the surrender, US and Western criticism - which
included an unsuccessful effort to stall a US$2.6 billion International
Monetary Fund loan in July - grew.
Ties between Washington and Colombo dipped to their lowest point in October
when congress released a detailed report on alleged war crimes committed in the
conflict's final months by both sides, and visiting Lieutenant General Sarath
Fonseka, Sri Lanka's top military officer, was asked by US officials to be
interviewed on the responsibility of Defense Secretary Gottabaya Rajapaksa for
government abuses. Gottabaya, the president's brother, is a dual US-Sri Lankan
citizen.
While the committee's report acknowledges the human rights and humanitarian
situation in Sri Lanka as serious - noting, for example, that "a culture of
fear and paranoia permeates society" and calling for Washington to tighten visa
restrictions and revoke US citizenship for anyone shown to have committed war
crimes - it warns that the "growing rift" between the two countries could have
adverse geopolitical consequences.
"Along with our legitimate humanitarian and political concerns, US policymakers
have tended to underestimate Sri Lanka's geostrategic importance for American
interests," write the two authors, Fatema Sumar and Nilmini Gunaratne Rubin.
Sri Lanka, the report asserts, sits "at the nexus of crucial maritime trading
routes in the Indian Ocean," while "communal tensions in Sri Lanka have the
potential to undermine stability in India", particularly in Tamil Nadu state.
While the report notes that Rajapaksa has cultivated ties with Myanmar, Iran
and Libya, it expresses greatest concern about China, Colombo's most important
source of military supplies in recent years.
It notes that Beijing is developing a deepwater port in the south at the
fishing village of Hambantota, suggesting that it may serve as part of a chain
of future Chinese naval bases along Asia's southern periphery.
"Even for those that dismiss China's 'string of pearls' strategy as overblown,"
the report adds, "there is concern about growing Chinese influence on the Sri
Lankan government."
Citing one Sri Lankan minister who spoke with the two authors, "President
Rajapaksa was forced to reach out to other countries because the West refused
to help finish the war against the LTTE. These calculations - if left unchecked
- threaten long-term US strategic interests in the Indian Ocean."
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