By Taylor Dibbert
Is the Obama administration too eager to embrace Sri Lanka’s new government?
Tom Malinowski, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), recently travelled to Sri Lanka. From the looks of it, he had productive, busy visit. Malinowski even managed to visit the place in Mullaitivu district, where Sri Lanka’s civil war ended andalleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law (PDF) (on a massive scale), including war crimes, took place in 2009.
Based on some of the quotes he provided to journalists during his trip, Malinowski is extremely upbeat about how things have been going. To be fair, the op-ed he placed in a leading Sri Lankan newspaper was still optimistic, though perhaps less exuberant than some of his public comments.
The Obama administration is undoubtedly delighted that the increasingly authoritarian Mahinda Rajapaksa was thrown out of office in early January. And, since U.S.-Sri Lanka relations had turned quite sour under Rajapaksa’s watch, Washington clearly wants things to be different this time.
Read the full story at The Diplomat