![]() Mr Rajapaksa has meanwhile dug in for the long haul-having used his popularity as a war victor to scrap presidential-term limits. Yet the war was also marked by reprisals against journalists, human-rights activists and opposition politicians, and intimidation continues today. ![]() It took ruthlessness to defeat the Tamil Tigers, and Sri Lanka is better off as a result. The most heinous allegation against Mahinda Rajapaksa’s family-based government-a battlefield slaughter of some 40,000 Tamil civilians-is complicated by the exigencies of the appalling civil war it helped end. Quite how nominally will be evident in Colombo this weekend-at a gathering of Commonwealth leaders hosted by a nasty and abusive regime.īe in no doubt of that. However this is a low bar to set for the success of an organisation nominally committed to promoting democracy, human rights and the rule of law. That so many former British colonies and dominions should be content to co-exist in a club which has the queen as its head is remarkable. THE biggest achievement of the Commonwealth, its admirers say, is the fact of its unlikely existence.
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