Sri Lanka Campaign's Good Day

by Sri Lanka Campaign, London, June 6, 2012

Dear friends,

Today has been a good day. This morning the President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa was supposed to give a keynote speech to the Commonwealth Economic Forum. As we reported last night, that was cancelled [1]. Then he had lunch with the Queen, but such was the pressure around the visit that he had to be smuggled into the venue in a police Range Rover [2].

Meanwhile, far from being the public relations whitewash that the Government of Sri Lanka had hoped for, almost all the press around the event was negative. Our Campaign was mentioned in the Evening Standard [3], on the Guardian homepage [4], and in a piece on Channel 4 news [5].

And in Sri Lanka, the tireless campaign of Sandya Eknaligoda, lawyers, and human rights workers, forced the President's legal advisor (and former Attorney General) to testify under oath that the information he gave the United Nations Committee Against Torture on the disappearance of Prageeth Eknaligoda was entirely wrong. [6]

It was a good day, and we can only claim credit for a very small part of it. You can claim credit for a much greater part of it for the pressure you brought to bear and the enthusiasm with which you told your friends about the campaign. We hope to have many more good days - leading finally to the day when there is enough respect for human rights and the rule of law in Sri Lanka for us to be sure of a lasting peace.

But our days, good or otherwise, are numbered.

The Sri Lanka Campaign is very cheap to run, [7] but it is not free. So please consider donating via our website to keep us going.

We are currently entirely funded by volunteers like you. Thanks to your generosity we have the funds to keep on going for a few more months at least. But after that our future will only be secure if we can secure more regular donations.

So if you too thought today was a good day, please consider making a donation and buying us a few more days.

Many thanks,

The Sri Lanka Campaign

P.S. Please feel free to forward this to your friends.

1 - http://www.cbcglobal.org/events/details/commonwealth-economic-forum

2 - https://twitter.com/millerC4/status/210343676713504768

3 - http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/london/killing-fields-protest-queens-diamond-jubilee-lunch-hit-by-3000-strong-march-in-central-london-7820277.html 4 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/06/sri-lankan-president-london-protest?newsfeed=true

5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxSMinwH_cA

6 - http://blog.srilankacampaign.org/2012/06/former-attorney-general-testifies-in.html 7 - http://www.srilankacampaign.org/whatwedo.htm--

The Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice http://srilankacampaign.org

You can donate to the campaign here