Should Sri Lanka start to listen ? EU flexes its GSP Plus muscle.

GSP Plus explicitly obliges Sri Lanka and other beneficiary countries to comply with 27 international agreements on human rights issues. The country last year refused to let an EU team investigate alleged abuses so the EU used independent consultants to examine whether Sri Lanka had violated the UN Convention Against Torture, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. They described a culture of “complete or virtually complete impunity in Sri Lanka”, citing police torture, abductions of journalists and uninvestigated disappearances. They also criticised the detention of almost 300,000 ethnic Tamils in internment camps.