Who would have expected a neophyte Australian foreign minister to get policy right on Sri Lanka while India's prime minister scores yet another foreign policy own goal in his backyard? Julie Bishop rejected calls for Australia to boycott the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo on Nov. 15, insisting that Sri Lanka's human rights are better advanced by engagement than isolation. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott duly attended.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stayed away, joining Canada's Stephen Harper. The futile gesture is less a snub to Colombo than a setback to regional cooperation and India's national security.

Having won a decisive victory on the battlefield against the vicious Tamil Tigers, Mahinda Rajapaksa has done his very best to lose the ensuing peace with intimidation and incarceration of opponents, dissidents and journalists, serial harassment of ethnic and religious minorities, and extrajudicial killings and disappearances.