War crimes concerns over Sri Lanka envoy nominee

Updated January 25, 2011 11:31:21

There is pressure on Australia to reject Sri Lanka's nominee for its top diplomatic post in Australia because the candidate could be implicated in war crimes.

Neither Sri Lanka's high commission in Canberra nor the Australian government will discuss the issue. But Sri Lankan news reports say the nominee is the former head of Sri Lanka's navy, Thisara Samarasinghe. The concerns come as Sri Lanka's government has cut off direct talks with a United Nations panel on accountability for war crimes on both sides.

Presenter: Linda Mottram, Canberra correspondent
Speakers: Sam Pari, spokeswoman, Australian Tamil Congress; John Dowd QC, president, International Commission of Jurists (Australia); Bruce Haig, former Australian diplomat

MOTTRAM: Media reports in Sri Lanka of Admiral Samarasinghe's nomination to be the next high commissioner in Canberra have alarmed Australian Tamil activists, like Sam Pari.

PARI: If Australia accepts this diplomatic post of an alleged war criminal, the Australian Tamil community would feel very much betrayed by our own government.

MOTTRAM: Sam Pari says the allegations relate to Sri Lankan navy activities during the final offensive to end the long and bloody war with the Tamil Tigers in 2009.

PARI: During the final stages of the war the Sri Lankan navy was accused of shelling from offshore positions onto civilian locations. Furthermore, when the ICRC was trying to evacuate injured civilians the Sri Lankan navy has been accused of actively blocking the ICRC ships from docking onto the shores.

MOTTRAM: She says Australia has blocked appointments of concern before and should do so this time. And there's wider support for that view. The president of the Australian chapter of the International Commission of Jurists is John Dowd QC, long a passionate advocate of legal and humanitarian rights and a former Australian state attorney general. He agrees that until responsibility for known war crimes is established, a general principle should apply.

DOWD: I think anyone that has inevitably been involved in that process in Sri Lanka where there have been war crimes committed, indeed on both sides, is going to be a problem for the Australian government and until it's clear that there's no involvement in war crimes, yes, someone like that should be excluded.

MOTTRAM: A former Australian diplomat, Bruce Haig, who was Australia's deputy high commissioner in Colombo in 1994, agrees, if Admiral Samarasinghe has been nominated to the top Sri Lankan post in Canberra, he should not be accepted by Australia.

HAIG: I think all the military in Sri Lankan are under a cloud until such time as there is an investigation that can look into what occurred at the end of the civil war. I think it must be assumed that anybody of senior rank was party to the massacres that occurred, party in one sense or another. Although as a former diplomat I do think it's wrong to appoint military people to these positions.

MOTTRAM: Among the issues is the obstacle of the diplomatic immunity. Should a diplomat be called to give evidence - in this case, in war crimes hearings - not only does that immunity create complications, it creates embarrassment. Then there's the claim by the Australian Tamil Congress that Admiral Samarasinghe's appointment is part of a trend towards militarising Sri Lanka's government.

Meanwhile, John Dowd sees a wider problem at the Australian end.

DOWD: The main problem with this is that the Australian government is not speaking out on human rights issues while it is still chasing this security council vote. Australia's been muted in the last few years ever since it came up and it's about time Australia spoke out against the war crimes that occurred in Sri Lanka because most of the rest of the world is.

MOTTRAM: And that effort is already fraught with difficulties. The latest complication was confirmed by the United States last week with Sri Lanka cutting off talks with a United Nations expert panel, denying it access to the country to advance efforts to promote accountability for war crimes during the 2009 offensive. The US state department also confirmed in a briefing that the Obama administration had chosen not to approach Sri Lanka's president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, for a meeting on the issue during President Rajapaksa's private visit to the US last week.

Back in Australia, the Sri Lankan high commission declined to comment to the ABC on the nomination for the high commissioner's post. Australia's foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, also declined to comment, though in a statement, Mr Rudd's spokeswoman says Australia has consistently called on Sri Lanka to ensure and guarantee long term peace and stability in a united Sri Lanka, welcoming both Sri Lanka's Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission and the UN secretary general's Advisory Panel on Sri Lanka.