But its towns and villages are now littered with shelled-out buildings, interspersed with abandoned farmland. Some 30,000 people still live in refugee camps.
Cameron has taken some flak for not joining the boycott but he promised Nobel laureate Aung Sang Suu Kyi this month that he would witness Jaffna’s fate first hand.
He will thus become the first foreign leader to visit Jaffna since the former British colony gained independence in 1948.
Although there is no official word on his programme, civil society representatives in Jaffna said they had been told to expect Cameron on Friday afternoon — only hours after the summit opens.
He can then expect a frosty reception when he meets Rajapakse back in Colombo in the evening.
Cameron has said he would have some “tough conversations” with Rajapakse but the Sri Lankan leader says he has some questions of his own.
Speaking during a stopover in India, Cameron reiterated his calls for an international investigation into war crimes allegations, which has also been a demand of several UN bodies.
“There needs to be proper inquiries into what happened at the end of the war, there needs to be proper human rights, democracy for the Tamil minority in that country,” he said.
At the last summit in 2011 in Perth, Commonwealth leaders drew up a charter of common values which committed members to respecting human rights.
But Human Rights Watch said the 53-nation bloc “risks its credibility… if it doesn’t publicly press Sri Lanka on its rights record and the lack of accountability for wartime atrocities.”
Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma denied the organisation had cocked a deaf ear to the allegations against the hosts and insisted it had made progress by engaging with Rajapakse’s regime.
“It is not making a mockery. It is showing the Commonwealth in action,” he said.
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