Here’s Bob Carr’s REAL take on Sri Lanka:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-27/carr-rules-out-sri-lanka-chogm-boycott/4654954

The bit on Sri Lanka starts 6 minutes 30 seconds into this interview.

Clearly, every effort needs to be made to stop Sri Lankans engaging people smugglers and heading for Australia. And clearly if we did what Bruce Haigh seems to want us to do, it would lead directly to a massive escalation of this.

The CHOGM meeting will be an excellent opportunity to address the push factors right in the heart of that country. It should definitely NOT be boycotted.

Ludwig, there are no people smugglers, the Sri Lankans sail themselves and the only time they act in any way covertly is when they get out of Sri Lanka and that has nothing at all to do with us.

How is your brain actually wired Ludwig? Do you see humans or the lies told by the pollies?

The Lankan government has self-inflicted a loss in status in the eyes of international community (exception Bob Carr) by the way the civil war was brought to an end. In a recent British Parliament session the Deputy PM Nick Clegg (in answering question from Lib-Dem colleague Simon Hughes) referred to Lankan government suppression of press freedom, politically motivated trials, assaults on lawyers, despicable human rights violations. They say that it is possible to wake a sleeping person but not a person who is pretending to be sleeping. Bob Carr has his eyes closed. Is he sleeping? Mahinda Rajapaksa claimed that his soldiers carried a book on human rights in one hand and a book on Buddhism in the other. Not even his five-star sycophants believed him but Bob does! As soon as the war ended, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa claimed in the Defence Ministry Website that not a single civilian was killed during the last weeks of the war. Bob believes him! The Lankan High Commissioner in Australia Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe claims that 300 000 Tamils were "rescued" by Lankan soldiers. This is a well rehearsed Goebellian line. Thisara does not mention that thousands of civilians were killed. Bob believes Thisara. Surely Australians will not fall for Bob Carr claim that Sri Lanka is a five-star democracy.

''Mali and Sri Lanka regressed from flawed democracies to hybrid regimes’’ - Democracy index 2012: Democracy at a standstill, A report (2013) from The Economist Intelligence Unit

Sri Lanka’s Authoritarian Turn: The Need for International Action, International Crisis Group, 20 February 2013

UN was ordered out before the final bombing and shelling of the last eight months up to May 2009. In the last four years the ''rescued'' people have been denied help from willing aid agents and put under the boots of the army.
Mass atrocities of 65 yrs continue unabated:

Can Bob Carr make Sri Lankan Prez release the reports he's withholding from the public:
A List of Commissions of Inquiry and Committees Appointed by the Government of Sri Lanka (2006 – 2012), 12 March 2012, http://www.scribd.com/doc/85007346/A-List-of-Commissions-of-Inquiry-and-Committees-Appointed-by-the-Government-of-Sri-Lanka-2006-%E2%80%93-2012

What is the duty of fellow members of intergovernmental organisations (UN and the Commonwealth)?

Will Australians accept this:

''Conflict-affected areas remain highly militarised, which has made progress towards achieving durable solutions more difficult. The military has become an important economic player and a key competitor of local people including returnees in the areas of agriculture, fishing, trade, and tourism. It has also been involved in areas that would normally come under civilian administration. It continues to occupy private land, thereby impeding IDPs’ return. The government has failed to make durable solutions a priority, and humanitarian organisations have faced funding shortages and restrictions on programming and access'' – Sri Lanka: A hidden displacement crisis, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 31 October 2012

‘’The government has a free hand to dispense with minorities as it wishes and to feed the President’s vanity. Thus the modern Rs. 2,900m facilities at Jaffna Hospital by Japan’s JICA for the people of Jaffna – not the President – and completed in October, is idling for Rajapaksa to open it on Pongal day as Douglas’ invitee in a vainglorious circus. He ultimately decided not to come and the costly facility continues unused. The doctors struggle without facilities and are under pressure for the allegedly high death rates. The people may lose the services of 10 specialists who returned from the UK to serve and are subject to army harassment, assaults and anonymous threats.’’ - Naked Power, Suppressed Dissent, A New Innings, 19 January 2013, http://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/naked-power-suppressed-dissent-a-new-innings/

Hello Marilyn, It’s been a while. How lovely it is to make your acquaintance again.

Whatever the case in Sri Lanka, we in Australia have got to SHUT DOWN the onshore asylum seeking option, and work on the issues there diplomatically.

As I’ve said to you many times before, if you got your way, the rate of onshore asylum seeking would greatly escalate. That would cause a greater conflict within Australian society and a greater demand that our politicians close it down. A much stronger resolve would be exercised to close it down and a much larger number of people would get caught in the middle.

It is much better that the boats get turned around or people get sent back now so that the pull factor is eliminated.

Some sort of half-hearted effort, which would result in a relatively small number of boats continuing to come here makes no sense. We need to close it down decisively.

Hopefully CHOGM, with all the Commonwealth countries sending their reps, will be able to work out how the international community can best help Sri Lanka, especially those who might be inclined to jump on rickety boats and head for Australia.

Why is there no investigation into Bob Carr getting a $500,000 pa consultancy with Macquarie Bank within months of him resigning as Premier of NSW.Bob was in a position to line up prime contracts for Macquarie Bank.Surely this should be viewed as a conflict o interest.

Bob Carr is also a friend of Henry Kissenger,globalist and member of the elite Bilderberg Group soon to meet in London and determine our demise.

When a regime is a vicious enemy of the people from whom it has filched the right of self-determination by brute force it can count on the unstinting support of the Australian secret political police (founded on postwar McCarthyism) and of Mr Bob Carr.

The captive people both of West Papua and of the Tamil lands on the island of Ceylon will find no sympathy in official Australia.

Speaking to Leigh Sales Mr Carr could not bring himself to utter the words "West Papua", repeatedly correcting her to his grovelling term "the two Papuan provinces", and he pays unswerving homage to the killers suppressing the people of the Tamil lands.

This determination to send Tamils back into the power of the murderers is reminiscent of those Swiss officials who sent boatloads of refugee Jews back across Lake Constance (Bodensee) to the German murderers during the war. How much we have forgotten in a little over half a century!

Trade Union Alliance (Sri Lanka) organised a token strike on 21 May to highlight the plight of the working class to the recent electricity tariff hike. The convenor Wasantha Samarasinghe claimed that 941 trade unions supported the strike. There is a rival pro-government trade union alliance which professes patriotism as in allegiance to the Lankan rulers. The Lankan daily Island reported on 21 May the convenor of the patriotic outfit SAD Jagathkumara, “The strike was organised by a separatist group supported by terrorist rump, NGOs and conspirators”. Ask the Lankan High Commissioner in Australia Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe and he will give the same explanation for the strike. One needs minimum common sense and intelligence to dismiss this. But Bob Carr (the only Australian) will agree with Thisara! Remember in the mid-thirties an Austrian ex-WW1 soldier blamed the non-Aryan minorities for all the ills of Germany? The Lankan rulers claim Aryan lineage.

Bob Carr's acclamation of Sri Lankan democracy may be a bit over the top but he is not entirely wrong.
1. There is wide spread discrimination in Sri Lanka and this needs addressing
2. The movement to seek a separate state is at least as old as Sri Lanka itself. In its history of over 2500 years there have been a number of attempts to split up the country. Many successful ones too
3. Each time the violence has been severe,lethal and against all human rights
4. Hands up any country which will obey human rights if there is a serious attempt to split the country? Can anyone say the English civil war was fought with each side obeying human rights? A modern example would be if Scotland or England decided to use violence. I cannot imagine either side saying we will not do x,y or z because of an international convention on Human rights!

The English Civil War was not a war to break up the country. It was a war to determine who was to rule all of it. The American Civil War was a bid by the slavers to break up the country, and getting 360,000 decent Americans killed to keep the seceding slave states on board was a colossal mistake which has poisoned American social and political life ever since.

A standard pretext by colonialists is to designate a colonial possession (or one which pretenders like the Argentinians want to make into one) as "part of the country" and to call upholding independence as "separatism". The war in Ceylon was and is a grab by a colonialist government for possession of a country that is not theirs. Bob Carr and the Australian secret political police have joined forces with the colonialists for venal trade reasons, as Gareth Evans & Co joined forces with Indonesia over East Timor.

Some of Veddha’s comments are incorrect. It is plain wrong to say that in the island’s 2500 years history there were several attempts to split up the country. The recent civil war was the first. The ancient name for the island was Taprobane. Arab traders called it Serendip. Taprobane/Serendip consisted of distinct Tamil Kingdom and Sinhalese Kingdoms. Skirmishes are on record but not “to split up the country”. In 1505 Portuguese arrived and by 1517 the island had become a colony. Dutch arrived in 1638 and by 1656 took charge of the island. The Portuguese and Dutch recognised the boundaries of the kingdoms during their rule. British arrived in 1796 and very soon the Dutch gave in without much resistance. For administrative purposes the British merged the (what were) kingdoms and named the island Ceylon. During the British regime Tamils migrated south particularly to Colombo, found jobs, bought properties (without state aid) and established businesses. From the time of independence in 1948, the Tamils were discriminated in employment and the like. State aided colonisation disadvantaged Tamils. In 1956 Sinhala was made the official language. Successive governments obdurately refused to listen to Tamil grievances resulting in the present predicament.
Veddha is somewhat lackadaisical regarding human rights. Referenda for Quebec independence have been held - human rights violations was never an issue. If Scotland demands independence, England will not use force to quell the aspiration. In Sri Lanka human rights are violated long after the end of the civil war. A culture of impunity is evolving which will be very difficult to dislodge.

Politicians like Bob Carr must be put before a lie detector whenever they make their views on media. His only intention is to stop the boats at whatever the human cost. Doesn’t he read reports from UN etc., nor he aware of the real problem the Tamils and today liberal Sinhalese face under the emerging Mugabe style dictator in Sri Lanka. I am very sick of these politicians. Labour doesn’t get my vote this time, definitely for their all sins, including getting Bob Carr as the foreign minister through back door.

Sen, Bob Carr would have to be one of the most tuned-in foreign ministers Australian has had. But of course he doesn’t know the intimate detail of the Sri Lankan situation.

<< His only intention is to stop the boats at whatever the human cost. >>

Come on. That is a very polarised statement. Carr, who has been an avid enthusiast of foreign affairs for decades, wants Sri Lanka to resolve its problems as much as anyone could, and wants Australia to play a meaningful part.

But facilitating onshore asylum in Australia has got to NOT be a part of it.

So Sen, what do you think Bob Carr or the Australian Government should be saying and doing about this?