Japan under pressure over Sri Lanka aid
Sat May 26, 1:33 AM ET

TOKYO (AFP) - An international human rights group is lobbying Sri Lanka's top donor Japan to exert greater pressure on the island nation to address spiralling violence. But Tokyo said it has no plans for now to slash aid and follow the lead of Sri Lanka's former colonial ruler Britain and Germany, which have frozen debt relief due to rights concerns.
"It has dramatically worsened over the last year," Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch said of Sri Lanka's rights record, during a week-long mission to Tokyo for meeting with Japanese officials.
"I think in the month of March alone, 100,000 people were internally displaced."
Japan is the single largest donor to Sri Lanka, providing 63 percent of the international aid to the island in 2003.
Japan also organised a 2003 meeting that raised pledges of 4.5 billion dollars to rebuild Sri Lanka amid hopes then that the country could end three decades of ethnic bloodletting.
"Japan is obviously playing a very prominent role," Richardson said. "It's a lead donor, it's a coordinator of the donor consultation group."
"What we have asked Japan to do is take advantage of this position and its considerable leverage to firmly, strongly and regularly remind not just the government but other players involved of the obligations that they have to protect the civilians and human rights in general."
Japan said, however, it was not considering slashing aid.
"Japan is not planning to reconsider its aid to Sri Lanka," a foreign ministry official said.
He said that Tokyo's peace envoy to Sri Lanka, former UN assistant secretary-general Yasushi Akashi, would return to the island on a new mission by early June.
One-third of Japan's aid for Sri Lanka is used for building social infrastructure, particularly transportation facilities.
More than 4,800 people have been killed in fighting since Norwegian-brokered peace talks collapsed in October 2005. The conflict which erupted in 1972 has claimed more than 60,000 lives.
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has shrugged off Britain's move and pledged that his government would not depend on aid.