DOWD: As a member of the Commonwealth, it has a very high obligation to ensure that it speaks very loudly about the present crisis. It's not speaking loudly enough, it did in the UN and it's got to speak up now to make sure the Australian public understand the seriousness of what's happening today.

SNOWDON: Why isn't it speaking up?

DOWD: There is a tendency for Commonwealth countries and internationally for governments to go quietly when dealing with other governments. We have done this over the last decade of so. We've gone far too quietly and taken the Sri Lankan line, that time is over. The war is over. The LTTE has been defeated in combat. Now there is 300,000 humanitarian crisis that needs to be dealt with.

SNOWDON: Isn't this better left to the United Nations?

DOWD: The United Nations through the Security Council is impotent because of Chinese and Russian vetoes. The Human Rights Council is no longer of any use in dealing with totalitarian regimes. The agencies can help, but the Sri Lankan Government has to be forced to let them in.

SNOWDON: So the UN is useless?

DOWD: The UN in its primary issues of the Security Council and the Human Rights Council are useless and against any humanitarian work. What is necessary, is for ordinary nations and ordinary people to force their governments to pressure the Sri Lankan Government to do something.

SNOWDON: At the moment, there might be a problem in Australia in that the image of Sri Lanka and the problems there pretty much equate with the Tamil Tigers as a terrorist organisation. It's changing the whole mind set and that's a pretty big problem, isn't it?

DOWD: That's right. The Sri Lankan Government by suppressing news within and outside about Sri Lanka and only putting the government line has meant that the adverse publicity against LTTE has built up a prejudice. People have to get behind that prejudice. Most of these people are simply civilians with a massive humanitarian need and we've got to forget what the LTTE did and get on with helping them now, including the prisoners-of-war that many of whom I suspect are being tortured.

SNOWDON: There is an estimated 10,000 prisoners-of-war that we don't know where they are. We've heard nothing of them since the cessation of the conflict, a breach if nothing else of the Geneva Convention?

DOWD: That's right. These are protected by the laws we created, the treaties we created after World War Two. They apply to Sri Lanka and to us and we must demand that the be complied with. If Sri Lanka wants to be treated seriously internationally and in the former British Commonwealth. It needs to comply with the laws and treaties.

SNOWDON: So what is it in concrete terms that the Australian Government can and should do?

DOWD: It needs to speak out very loudly now about getting international NGOs, the Red Cross and the UN into Sri Lanka. So it's got to be an international move and we've got to encourage other members of the Commonwealth to treat the Sri Lankan Government like lepers if they do not allow in the international aid agencies to stop a humanitarian crisis. [courtesy: Radio Australia]