Ah, consistency, pt 2.
Today: no Foreign Office ministers will visit Ukraine during Euro 2012 in protest at the "selective justice" meted out to former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. (Although, strangely, most accounts of her trial for abuse of office miss out the fact that her former coalition partner Viktor Yushchenko testified against her.)
Yesterday: Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa was welcomed into the UK for a handshake with a grinning Liz. Rajapaska's leading political opponent General Sarath Fonseka is currently imprisoned, having been found guilty first of corruption and then of daring to suggest that senior government officials were responsible for war crimes at the end of the country's civil war, something now so well documented as to be undeniable. The UN Secretary General's advisory panel found that tens of thousands of civilians died in the last 5 months of the war, with most killed as a result of Sri Lankan military shelling.
(Oh, and it does seem ever so slightly hypocritical we're not officially going to Euro 2012 when very shortly dozens of state representatives from far more repressive and authoritarian regimes than Ukraine will be coming to London for the Olympics. Ahmadinejad might not be travelling, but you can bet that the Saudis will, despite it being highly unlikely that the country will field a single female athlete.)
Labels: Euro 2012, human rights, hypocrisy, inconsistency, politics, Sri Lanka, Ukraine
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