The 23rd Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) will be held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, from 15 to 17 November 2013. Commonwealth leaders agreed on Sri Lanka as the 2013 host for the meeting when they met in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, in 2009. They reaffirmed this decision at the 2011 CHOGM in Perth, Australia. The Leaders' Retreat will also be held in Colombo.
This will be the first time in 40 years that Queen Elizabeth II will not be present at the CHOGM. Buckingham Palace announced that Charles, Prince of Wales, will be attending in the 87-year-old monarch's place, as she has curtailed her overseas visits due to age.
According to news reports, one item to be considered at the meeting is a proposal to make the position of Head of the Commonwealth hereditary to descendents of Queen Elizabeth II. The four deputy heads may be nominated by the biennial general body meeting of the Commonwealth, on a biennial, rotating, one-time basis, to make up a leadership quintet.
Boycott
The Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, stated that he would not attend the meeting as a protest of Sri Lanka's alleged failure to improve its human rights record, as he said he would at the previous CHOGM; Deepak Obhrai, the Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, will represent Canada. Harper further elaborated that Canada may cease its contributions to the funding of the Commonwealth should no action be taken by the organisation against Sri Lanka; he cited the impeachment of thecountry's chief justice and the execution and imprisonment of journalists and political opponents of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. At the time, Senator Hugh Segal, Canada's envoy to the Commonwealth, exclaimed that the Commonwealth Secretariat was acting "as a 'shill'" for Sri Lanka's government. In the United Kingdom, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee called on that country's prime minister, David Cameron, to not attend the meeting in light of Sri Lanka's human rights record. However, Cameron later affirmed that he will be in attendance. The Channel 4 documentary No Fire Zone which presented evidence of war crimes by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces under the command of Mahinda Rajapakse and his brother Gothabaya Rajapakse has resulted in increased calls for a boycott.
In October 2013, the legislature of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu passed an unanimous resolution demanding that the Indian government boycott the meeting and also sought the temporary suspension of Sri Lanka from the Commonwealth until Sri Lanka takes steps to grant what they call similar rights to Tamils as those enjoyed by Sinhalese.[9][10][11][12] The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced his decision to not participate in the event on account of the country's poor human rights record. India would be represented at the summit by a delegation lead by External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid.
In Malaysia, Lim Guan Eng, Chief Minister of the state of Penang, and the Secretary General of the Democratic Action Party called on the Malaysian government to boycott the summit as a protest a against the blatant human violations committed by the island republic against ethnic Tamils there.
The New Zealand Green Party also placed similar calls for a boycott and for the replacement of Mahinda Rajapaksa as the Commonwealth Chairperson-in-office for the next two years.
Similar views were floated by South African anti-Apartheid campaigner and Nobel laureate archbishop Desmond Tutu who mentioned the boycott of the CHOGM could be one the of the screws that the world has to apply to help the Tamil population.
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