{"id":114693,"date":"2013-11-13T03:45:34","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T22:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=114693"},"modified":"2013-11-17T12:37:55","modified_gmt":"2013-11-17T07:07:55","slug":"friends-and-enemies-within-and-without-the-commonwealth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/friends-and-enemies-within-and-without-the-commonwealth\/","title":{"rendered":"Friends And Enemies Within And Without The Commonwealth"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Malinda Seneviratne<\/span><\/a> and\u00a0Chamara Sumanapala –<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

\"Malinda<\/a>

Malinda Seneviratne<\/p><\/div>\n

Recently some media reports from Kenya claimed that the African nation was planning to canvass support for a boycott of the Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM 2013<\/span><\/a>) in Colombo. The Nairobi government denied this and the story faded away.<\/p>\n

The story is interesting. It had nothing to do with the venue and the kinds of objections raised by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 It was about chiding the Commonwealth for its silence with respect to Kenya\u2019s battle against the International Criminal Court (ICC). At a recent African Union meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Kenyans garnered substantial support in its battle with the ICC. African countries charge that the ICC is biased as all cases currently probed involve African countries. Since one third of the member states of the Commonwealth of Nations are from Africa, any call for boycott would not go unheeded in the continent. That was the logic of the boycott call reported.<\/p>\n

Boycott or not, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta<\/span><\/a> has a valid argument. He is correct in his assessment that the Commonwealth has done absolutely nothing to protect African leaders from being prosecuted by the ICC. The ICC might be having a valid case against the Kenyan leaders including the President and the Vice President, but if this is the case, the ICC could have and should have much better cases against some other nations for crimes committed against Commonwealth members. The USA continues to launch drone attacks in Pakistani territory ignoring the Pakistani government\u2019s protests. India is repeatedly accusing Pakistan of harboring terrorists and encouraging secessionist groups inside India. Meanwhile, during the 1980s India trained and armed secessionist rebel movements in Sri Lanka. In 1987, India violated Sri Lankan airspace to drop \u2018humanitarian aid.\u2019 It is hard to recall if any of these acts solicited even a murmur of protest from the Commonwealth. Under such circumstances, Uhuru Kenyatta cannot expect treatment any better.<\/p>\n

All this raises some interesting and important questions.\u00a0 Let\u2019s start at home.<\/p>\n

Recently, former Liberian President Charles Taylor<\/span><\/a> was sent to prison by the Special Tribunal for Sierra Leone. He was declared guilty for aiding a terrorist movement which committed grievous crimes. The presiding judge Richard Lussick, emphasized that the world was \u201centering a new era of accountability\u201d with this verdict. True.\u00a0 Now we can talk about states that subvert other states.\u00a0 This was a non-Commonwealth nation stepping on a Commonwealth nation.\u00a0 The Commonwealth didn\u2019t feel constrained to object as a collective.\u00a0 If Taylor had erred, so too did Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv, for Sri Lanka was India\u2019s Sierra Leone. Still is, some might claim.\u00a0 The lady and her son are long dead, both assassinated with the latter by the very outfit bottle-fed by his mother and fattened by him, but what is relevant here is that it was a home vs. home affair, within the Commonwealth.\u00a0 Others in the household did nothing, not even whimper a protest.\u00a0 Perhaps it is because the Commonwealth is a product of worse kinds of transgressions that these border-crossings if you will do not warrant comment forget about loud objection.\u00a0 Or is it that the Commonwealth is only there for former rogue-nations to scoop up some feel-goodness now and then, with leaders such as David Cameron occasionally being possessed by the demon spirits of forefathers to say things like \u2018I am going to talk tough to Sri Lanka (read \u2018talk down\u2019)\u2019?<\/p>\n

If Taylor was \u2018outsider\u2019 invading a fraternal member of the Commonwealth, the bloody US adventures using drones on territories of the Commonwealth (Pakistan) are a thousand times worse.\u00a0 Britain didn\u2019t support Taylor, but are thick in complicity with crimes against humanity perpetrated by the USA.\u00a0 Will the Commonwealth drop its coyness and for once say \u2018Elizabeth\u2019s country is helping murder citizens of the Commonwealth\u2019?\u00a0 Will David Cameron<\/span><\/a> be required to answer \u2018tough questions\u2019 about Britain\u2019s friendship with the USA?<\/p>\n

*Malinda Seneviratne is the Chief Editor of \u2018The Nation\u2019\u00a0and his articles can be found at\u00a0www.malindawords.blogspot.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":105560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"\nFriends And Enemies Within And Without The Commonwealth - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/friends-and-enemies-within-and-without-the-commonwealth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Friends And Enemies Within And Without The Commonwealth - 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