NEW DELHI, Nov 6: India has yet to decide if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will visit Colombo this month to attend the Commonwealth heads’ summit, and in its effort to please both sides of the ethnic divide in Sri Lanka, it has reportedly stalled the visa of an award winning British film director who was to screen in New Delhi on Thursday his expose of human rights violations of Jaffna Tamils.

“The Indian government’s dithering over grant of visa to British film director Callum Macrae is a needlessly repressive measure not befitting a large and established democracy like India,” protesters comprising teachers and journalists wrote to the government.

Mr Macrae was scheduled to attend the premiere of his documentary ‘No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka’ in New Delhi on November 7 and had applied for his visa almost eight months ago.

“While the visa has not been outright denied as yet it has been inexcusably kept ‘pending’ without any explanation in a clear signal that the Indian government wants to appease the Sri Lankan regime of Mahinda Rajapakse, whose involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity have been exposed by Mr Macrae.” It is ironic that the Sri Lankan government itself has announced in public its willingness to grant Mr Macrae a visa to attend the upcoming CHOGM in Colombo, the note said.

“The harassment of Mr Macrae falls into a pattern that has emerged in the last several years of a paranoid External Affairs Ministry blocking various artists, intellectuals and activists from travelling to India for innocuous purposes,” the protesters wrote.

“By blocking the free flow of ideas, information and artistic works across national borders the government is impinging upon the democratic rights of Indian citizens also.”

Indian politicians are sharply divided over the issue of Dr Singh’s visit to Colombo.

“There’s a larger picture India cannot ignore,” the Times of India wrote this week. “India’s writ does not run internationally. Chinese footprints are growing in the region, including in Sri Lanka. For national security and regional cooperation, India must reach out to neighbours in bilateral and multilateral ways.”