British Tamils seek boycott of defiant Sri Lanka

British Prime Minister David Cameron will Monday be handed a memorandum on behalf of UK’s Tamil community urging his government to support an international probe into war crimes in Sri Lanka, and to pressure the Colombo government to resettle in their homes tens of thousands of Tamils still languishing in refugee camps, and allow international access to thousands held in its prisoner-of-war camps. The UK is also being urged to boycott Sri Lanka till Colombo complies with international law. The handover follows a march and ‘midnight vigil’ outside 10 Downing Street staged Friday night by thousands of supporters of the campaign who marked the anniversary of the 1983 ‘Black July’ anti-Tamil pogrom.

Vigil outside 10 Downing Street

The vigil also inaugurated a “Walk for Justice” by a British Tamil youth, from the site of British Parliament, through France and Switzerland to the UN offices in Geneva to raise awareness and support for these goals.

Thousands of Tamils and non-Tamils gathered Friday night carrying candles, placards, banners and hoisting flags appealing to the UK establishment and the UN to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sri Lanka. They walked in procession from opposite Westminster to Downing Street.

The rally and vigil marked the anniversary of the ‘Black July’ state-sponsored massacres of 1983, in which three thousand Tamils were slaughtered and the homes and businesses torched.

“The [event] also served as springboard to gather support for international action on Sri Lanka’s defiance of international norms,” said an official of the British Tamil Forum, which organized the event.

“To this end, we are calling for an international boycott of the Colombo government until it respects international laws,” she said.

“The Sri Lankan government has shown clear opposition to any prospect of independent monitors investigating war crimes in Sri Lanka,” the BTF said. “The walk for justice to the UN coincides with the recent appointment of a UN advisory panel by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.”

An international day of boycott is taking place on Saturday 31st July 2010 across US, UK, Canada, Australia and Europe to take forward this campaign.

“[Friday night’s] event, like others, in intended to send a message of hope to our Tamil brothers and sisters that we will not rest until they are free from the oppressive State,” the BTF said.

“Westminster Council, the Mayor’s Office and the Metropolitan Police offered tremendous support to enable this momentous vigil to take place,” the statement added.

The midnight vigil also inaugurated a “Walk for Justice” from the heart of British Parliament, through France and Switzerland to the UN Human Rights Council offices in Geneva.

Mr. Sivanthan, a British Tamil youth, will be joined by supporters and well-wishers on a two-week walk to raise awareness and amalgamate support for the campaign, which has amongst its goals, “an independent international probe into war crimes committed in Sri Lanka, … access to prisoners of war, for all internally displaced persons to be resettled into their own homes, and a boycott of Sri Lanka until it respects international laws.”

“The two-week walk to the UN aims to unite Tamils across Europe and the wider community to join calls to highlight the need for UN to uphold international laws to ensure that justice is universal and to set precedents for other rogue states,” the BTF said.

A memorandum is also to be handed to the UN in Geneva on 6th August 2010.

NEXT quits Sri Lanka, exports to EU fall - report

The British clothing retailer, NEXT, has stopped sourcing its garments from Sri Lanka because of the uncertainty of the continuance of the GSP+ duty concession from the European Union, The Sunday Leader reported this week. The company has moved production to Bangladesh, an industry source told the paper. Meanwhile, exports to the EU fell 13% in the first quarter of 2010, a decline the Sri Lankan garment industry attributes to falling demand due to the economic conditions there. Garments are Sri Lanka’s largest foreign exchange earner.

The GSP+ facility helps Sri Lanka to export garments and several other products to the EU on a duty free basis. The advantage o exporters is 9%.

The EU last month again threatened to stop this concession by August 15 if Sri Lanka doesn’t give a written guarantee by July 1 to some 15 conditions governing human rights, the deadline of which is now past.

Sri Lanka rejected the conditions out of hand and dismissed the GSP+ concession as not worth surrendering the country’s sovereignty.

Nonetheless, the EU Ambassador in Sri Lanka, Bernard Savage, told the Sunday Leader on Thursday that the EU exercises a degree of flexibility in their timeframe given to Sri Lanka and would wait for a couple of days for a reply.

However, in the meantime, the Sri Lankan Central Bank has issued a statement warning the garments industry to prepare to make do without the GSP+ concession.

According to the Central Bank, garments exports to EU countries constituted about 50 per cent of Sri Lanka’s total apparel exports in 2009. Of these, about 60 per cent benefited from the GSP+ scheme, while the balance was exported to the EU without the GSP+ concession.

NEXT plc (LSE: NXT) is a British retailer, with its headquarters in Enderby, Leicestershire, England. It is one of the United Kingdom's largest clothing retailers, number three behind Marks & Spencer and Philip Green's retail empire of Bhs and Arcadia Group. The company, which has employed some of the biggest names in the fashion world including Alessandra Ambrosio, Noémie Lenoir, Yasmin Le Bon, Gabriel Aubry and Paul Sculfor, has over 400 stores throughout the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and 50 franchise branches in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

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