Let me try to go down this list and expand on it.
When I was in Colombo, I spoke with three different diplomatic missions, but not the Canadian mission. They said they'd found the government unresponsive and they were grappling with ways to try to engage the President's office largely in terms of international criticism and international pressure. The feeling was that there was little, if any, leverage left to move the government. There was talk of using IMF loans, EU trade and tariff agreements, and those kinds of things to try to convince the government to change its tactics, of course, on a whole range of human rights and civil liberty issues.
Frankly, I think that kind of pressure has to be continued. I know that some of the embassies--well, the embassies with which I spoke--had played a prominent role in speaking out when these issues arose. I also appreciate that other embassies and other diplomatic missions might be operating more subtly or quietly.
Of all the options and all the hopes for trying to convince the President's office—and you get to see these very much as personalities at this point—I think that trying to convince the Rajapakse family to begin to adhere to some kind of norm and some kind of civility is important.
Frankly, we've seen these attacks on the media coincide fairly closely with the increase in the government's military activities in the north and taking on the LTTE. Once the government decided it was going to push for an all-out military victory and try to end this war once and for all, it was very clearly decided that they would no longer brook any kind of criticism on the home front from opposition papers or anyone else. There's a pretty clear correlation between a move towards that war and a move towards a much higher level of press suppression.
Those are my recommendations.
We are looking for governments such as Canada and certainly my own county, the United States, to engage and to do it in a way that makes it quite clear to the people in power that this isn't tolerable. There are options and there are other levers to be used. Frankly, I still see President Rajapakse as being very hardline and surrounded by people who are supporting these kinds of militant responses, but I still see an opportunity to engage with him and parts of the other government to try to change their policies.
I think I've gone on a bit too long. I'm sorry.