As Aussie cricket fans, myself included, plan to gather today in pubs and in front of television screens to cheer for green and gold, I can’t help but cringe at the team we are cheering against.
Every time the Sri Lankans hit a six we ‘boo’ in unison, but is there more that we should be ‘boo’-ing about? Even still should we be playing cricket with a country accused of war crimes?Some may argue that one should not mix sports with politics. However, that is only a convenient bypass considering only a few years ago we boycotted a cricket tour of Zimbabwe, and our former foreign minister Alexander Downer even called for Zimbabwe to be banned from the International Cricket Council.
So I ask: If Zimbabwe, why not Sri Lanka?
In fact, for Sri Lanka, sports and politics seems to be very much intertwined - retired cricket captains, Sanath Jayasuriya and Arjuna Ranatunga have entered politics; Ajantha Mendis is in the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.
Ranked 133 out of 149 (which is lower than Burma) in the 2010 Global Peace Index, Sri Lanka’s human rights record is nothing to admire.
Claiming last year to have won a 25 year civil war, the country’s government has been riddled with allegations of complicity in war crimes, with Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the International Crisis Group repeatedly calling for an independent investigation. There has been video footage, photographic evidence and even recordings of admissions by a Sri Lankan army commander and a frontline soldier of torture of the Tamil surrenderees and even their execution by the Sri Lankan armed forces. Ample evidence also exists of civilian locations being bombed and hospitals being shelled.
Like Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, Sri Lanka’s Rajapakse government continues to reject international concerns - when the UN Secretary-General appointed a Panel of Experts to conduct an ‘inquiry into accountability’, they were denied entry visas. The government even took to the streets, an act usually practiced by dissenters of the government. A protest led by Sri Lanka's own cabinet minister, Wimal Weerawansa (he even burned an effigy of Ban Ki Moon in the streets) brought the UN head office in Sri Lanka under siege, blocking UN workers from leaving and ultimately forcing the UN to close its office and withdraw its top envoy to Sri Lanka for fear of staff security.
Similar to Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, opposition parties in Sri Lanka too are voiceless. The current leader of the Opposition and former Army Commander, Sarath Fonseka (who himself has been accused of war crimes) was arrested just hours after he announced he was prepared to give evidence at an international tribunal investigating the war, and since then has been publicly threatened with execution if maintained his stance that top government officials may have been involved in war crimes. He has since been sentenced to 30 months in prison.
The latest UNHCR report on Sri Lanka still claims that certain groups continue to be at grave risk including journalists, human rights activists and former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam combatants, with allegations continuing to surface of their abuse in detention. Freedom of speech is an anomaly with even western publications being silenced - The Economist was impounded only days after it published an op-ed piece critical of the Rajapakse government.
Similar to Mugabe, the Rajapakse regime too holds its grip on autocratic power. In September this year, the Sri Lankan government approved a change to the constitution which saw the scrapping of the two-term presidential limit and allowing of the president to appoint judges, police, election commissioners, and central bank officials. Known as the 18th Amendment, this dangerous change now strengthens President Rajapakse’s increasingly tight grip on power and further politicises the island’s police and the judiciary.
Already, three of the president’s brothers have been appointed by him into senior parliamentary and ministerial posts, including that of defence secretary. His son is part of the Parliament and other members of the extended family hold senior government positions, following elections that were wrought with corruption. The family also controls about 75 per cent of the country’s finances.
The Asian Human Rights Commission has described this latest constitutional amendment as a change from a “phantom democracy into a complete dictatorship”. Former senior official with the United Nations in Sri Lanka, Gordon Weiss has stated that democracy in Sri Lanka has been dying for some time. The United States has openly condemned the amendment voicing its concern “that this constitutional amendment weakens checks and balances and thus undermines the principles of constitutional democracy”.
So if Zimbabwe, why not Sri Lanka?
In Australia, there is still a vigorous debate on the asylum seeker issue. Recently, there has been a significant increase in those arriving from Sri Lanka and many of whom are found to be legitimate refugees fleeing in fear of persecution. This suggests that the root cause of the problem is in Sri Lanka and not Australia’s policy. So, really, the blame for our detention centres being filled to maximum capacity and for the increase in asylum seeker claims is the Sri Lankan State itself. So, should we be playing cricket with a country which is responsible for so many people fleeing on boats towards us? Would we play cricket with the Burmese Junta or the Taliban in Afghanistan?
Therefore, refusing to play against Sri Lanka will not only be an act of moral conviction, as it had been in the case of Zimbabwe, but in a nation where cricket is revered by its people, the defiant Sri Lankan government could also be pressured to uphold human rights by its own population if country after country refuses to play cricket with its team. After all, it was an international boycott (not just of cricket) that brought the South African apartheid regime to its knees.
So, as the Rajapakse government creeps steadily towards autocracy and the Tamil community, journalists and human rights activists on the island continue to be persecuted, I can’t help but think: If Zimbabwe, why not Sri Lanka?
In any case, I sure hope Australia wins today.
Dr Sam Pari was a panellist at the International Peace Research Association Conference 2010. She is the spokesperson of the Australian Tamil Congress.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/40790.html