Sri Lanka denies refusing visas to rights delegation
November 08, 2013 - Sri Lanka on Friday denied refusing visas to a delegation from
an international human rights group ahead of a Commonwealth summit in Colombo, saying
its permission had not been sought for the overseas visitors. Sri Lanka hosts the
biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting next week and human rights groups
have urged a boycott by leaders to put pressure on the government, which faces allegations
of extra-judicial killings, harassment of minorities and the detention of politicians
and journalists. On Thursday, the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute
(IBAHRI) accused Sri Lanka of denying entry to its delegation, including the United
Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers. Sri Lanka's
external affairs ministry said the country's Bar Association, which invited the delegation,
had not followed the necessary procedure of securing the ministry's agreement for
a conference involving international participants. The IBAHRI claim was a "gross
misrepresentation of facts and an attempt to sully the image of Sri Lanka," the ministry
said in its statement. Upul Jayasuriya, head of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka,
said it had followed procedure and obtained the visas from the immigration department
before the ministry revoked them. "This is a violation and restriction of the constitutional
rights granted for the freedom of expression and association," Jayasuriya told Reuters. Western
nations, including the United States, Canada and Britain, along with neighbouring
India, have criticized Sri Lanka's human rights record and have demanded that President
Mahinda Rajapaksa's government investigate war crimes in the final phase of a three-decade
war that ended in 2009. Since the end of the war, Sri Lanka has rejected claims of
human rights allegations, including murdering thousands of ethnic minority Tamil civilians
in the rebel area. Sri Lanka has also rejected a demand by the West for an international
probe of war crimes. Instead Rajapaksa appointed a domestic panel to look into the
accusations.