Let me say this in support of the Americans. In my time there no one was more intensely outspoken than Her Excellency the American ambassador on many of the issue about which we care. There were decisions taken by the Americans to cut back some of their military aid because they were unhappy with the lack of Sri Lankan performance on some of these human rights issues.
My sense is that the Americans are seized with the issue. They are not intimidated by the Chinese—quite the contrary. They are if not our strongest ally, certainly one of our strongest allies wanting to deal with the issue of impunity and address the question of human rights.
In fact, after a few days there, there was a large newspaper article in one of the few independent newspapers left that had a photograph of the American ambassador, a photograph of Ms. Pillay, from the Human Rights Council, a photograph of your present witness, and a photograph of the head of the opposition party in the Colombo Parliament, all making the same points around impunity and around authoritarianism.
So I give the Americans full credit for engaging fully and being far more straightforward, if I may say so, than the Australians or the New Zealanders, who've been in that part of the world for a very long time and understand it perhaps with some measure of profundity.