GSP+ gives even better access for textiles and fish, two staple products, to Sri Lanka's largest export market. Textile exports alone to the EU were worth some U.S. $3.5 billion. If the EU decides to implement some trade sanctions against Sri Lanka — for example by suspending GSP+ — the country stands to lose some U.S.$100 million worth of exports. The amount involved is relatively small and will not cause too many sleepless nights in Colombo, but its psychological impact and knock on effect by causing other countries to review their ties with Colombo could be more serious.

In Brussels EU officials have told Asian Affairs that the trade privileges incorporated in GSP amount to an incentive or 'deal' for countries to sign up to United Nations conventions on human, social and labour rights. Until recently Sri Lanka was deemed to have qualified.

But persistent complaints and a year long EU inquiry in 2009, launched during Colombo's final offensive against Tamil Tiger rebels in the north of the country, revealed serious shortcomings in Sri Lanka's human rights record with evidence of torture, police violence and serious violations of child labour laws.

In the words of senior Brussels bureaucrats, the inquiry concluded that Sri Lanka has failed to implement the necessary requirements that would allow it to benefit from GSP trade privileges.

Sri Lanka's usual response to such rebukes is to either maintain a stony silence or else blame the Tamil Tigers for all the ills affecting the country, including the disintegrating political and legal infrastructure inherited from colonial times. But foreign disapproval of Sri Lanka's heavy handed policies also amounts to bad news and, as Colombo knows, bad news is rarely a single, isolated phenomenon.

The EU inquiry was preceded by a State Department report on Sri Lanka that contained 'credible and well established' allegations of government atrocities against ethnic Tamil civilians, including the shelling and bombing of no-fire zones in the first half of 2009. Among the listed abuses was the execution last January of nine bound and naked Tamil men. This report did provoke an angry response from the Sri Lankan government, which described the allegations as 'unsubstantiated and devoid of corroborative evidence.'

A statement issued by the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry commented, 'There is a track record of vested interests endeavouring to bring the government of Sri Lanka into disrepute, through fabricated allegations and concocted stories.'

But the State Department report has encouraged human rights organisations around the world to repeat calls for an independent inquiry into allegations of how the Tamil community has consistently been at the sharp end of abuse committed by government forces.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the report showed the need for an independent international investigation. Brad Adams, Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, said last October, 'The U.S. State Department report should dispel any doubts that serious abuses were committed during the conflict's final months…Given Sri Lanka's complete failure to investigate possible war crimes, the only hope for justice is an independent, international investigation.'

It was Human Rights Watch that earlier charged the Sri Lankan authorities with being 'responsible for unlawful killings, enforced disappearances and other serious human rights violations since the resumption of major hostilities with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.' An August 2007 report entitled 'Killings, Abductions and Displacement Soar as Impunity Reigns' was followed by Adams commenting, 'The Sri Lankan government has apparently given its security forces a green light to use 'dirty war' tactics.'

Human Rights Watch has also published a dossier entitled, 'Human Rights under Siege' where it lists 'accounts by victims and eyewitnesses to document the shocking increase in violations by government forces.' The report declares, 'Ethnic Tamils have borne the brunt of these violations' but goes on to say how 'members of the Muslim and majority Sinhalese population are not immune to government abuse.'

The Human Rights Watch report invokes comparisons with similar censures by other international human rights groups. They Include the Irish Forum For Peace in Sri Lanka, which observes how there have been more than 5,000 deaths and 300,000 civilians displaced following an EU decision in 2006 to brand Tamil Tiger militants as terrorists.
The Irish Forum goes on to say, 'Repression has been employed against trade unionists, journalists and publishers, local and international NGO workers, human rights activists and business people. Some journalists, human rights activists and aid workers have been killed, while others have been abducted or detained without charge. International human rights organisations (such as the International Commission of Jurists) have expressed concern about the current human rights situation in Sri Lanka.'

There is much worse to come. Asian Affairs has been told of a Europe-based NGO that has assembled a panel of internationally respected experts, including an Indian legal luminary, to hold hearings on disappearances, torture and killings allegedly carried out at the behest of Sri Lankan government agencies.

The panel is due to start functioning by the end of this year. Its work and open ended mandate should be of grave concern to all fair minded Sri Lankans, not just professional civil servants and politicians, who care about how their once much envied country is now  viewed by the rest of the world community.

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