DMK chief M Karunanidhi has asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to boycott the Commonwealth Heads of the Government Meet (CHOGM) to be held at Colombo in November this year. In a statement released here on Friday, the nonagenarian leader pointed out that the Queen Elizabeth II, the head of the Commonwealth, is not attending the CHOGM summit at Colombo.
According to Karunanidhi, the Queen’s decision to skip the Colombo summit could be due to the genocide of Tamils in Sri lanka by the Mahinda Rajapaksa Government.
The 87-year-old British monarch is the head of the Commonwealth, a lucidly held organisation of 54 countries, all former colonies of Great Britain. A Buckingham Palace release on May 6 had said that the Queen would not be travelling to Colombo for the biennial CHOGM meet. “The reason is that we are reviewing the amount of long-haul travel that is taken by the Queen,” the Buckingham Palace spokesman told the BBC’s Royal Correspondent.
“It is an acknowledgement of her advancing age and not, her officials insist, in order to avoid the political question about whether or not Sri lanka should be the host in the first place,” said Peter Hunt, Royal Correspondent , quoting the Buckingham Palace spokesman.
Karunanidhi is trying to portray the Queen’s decision as a Royal snub to Mahinda Rajapaksa. But the Palace announced that the Queen has deputed Prince of Wales to stand in for her at the summit. The DMK leader said India’s participation in the CHOGM summit would be an endorsement of the “genocide of Tamils” by the Sri lankan Government.
Interestingly, Karunanidhi had maintained a studied silence during the last phase of the Eelam War in Sri lanka during May 2009. After he was voted out in the 2011 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, the DMK chief revived Tamil Eelam Supporters Organisation (TESO) in association with some lTTE elements.
“This is the first time in the history of the Commonwealth summit, the Queen who heads the organisation, is staying off the meeting,” said Karunanidhi.
The DMK chief pointed out that if the CHOGM summit is held at Colombo, Rajapaksa would be elevated as the chairman of the movement. “Once he is made the head of the CHOGM, it will not be possible to initiate action against him for the war crimes perpetrated on the Tamils,” said Karunanidhi.
But Kamalesh Sharma, the Commonwealth Secretary General, said that the decision of the Queen reflected “the wish of Her Majesty at this time in her reign to limit her long distance travel”.
“The Queen was represented by other members of the Royal Family on a number of long-haul visits to Commonwealth countries during the celebrations of Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee last year,” said Sharma in a statement.