April 18, 2007	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 29, 1428

COLOMBO, April 17: The Sri Lankan government has turned down a request by Amnesty International (AI) representatives to travel to Sri Lanka to assess the human rights situation here, informed sources said.

Officials confirmed that the Sri Lankan High Commission in London, on the instructions of the Mahinda Rajapakse government had rejected applications for visas of two AI officials who had planned to visit the country. The refusal of visas come in the wake of a controversial human rights campaign by AI titled ‘play by the rules’ coinciding with the cricket World cup being played in the Caribbean. Government sources say the decision to turn down the visa applications of the Amnesty officials was taken after ‘carefully perusing’ several points on what Sri Lanka saw the prejudices of Amnesty International.

“It is possible that the request by the Amnesty officials can be considered later, but right now there is a lot of unpleasantness here regarding Amnesty’s badly timed human rights campaign”, one government source said pointing out that there was ‘no need’ for the human rights body to be sending their representatives to Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka, in the midst of steadily increasing abductions and murder, have scoffed at Amnesty’s latest human rights campaign, claiming that the human rights body was attempting to diminish the morale of the Sri Lankan cricket team, an accusation that AI has strongly denied.