Academics and non-governmental organizations have condemned the University of Sydney academic's call for delegates at a human rights conference to go soft on Sri Lanka despite claims of the country's alleged war-time atrocities.

A group of lecturers from the university has written a letter to Danielle Celermajer saying her stand on the conference this week in Bangkok "threatens to bring the University of Sydney's commitment to, and connection with human rights, into disrepute."

"We therefore consider it important to write to dissociate ourselves from the event and the way in which it has been conceived and managed," said the academics, who include Associate Professor Jake Lynch and Brami Jegan, conveners of a Sri Lankan human rights project at the university.

Professor Celermajer earlier told 100 delegates they should be "mindful of the heightened sensitivity and fragility" at the conference after Sri Lankan authorities threatened to withdraw its police and military participants. Fairfax was not immediately able to contact Professor Celermajer.

Organizers of the Enhancing Human Rights and Security in Asia-Pacific conference relented and asked two Sri Lankan organizations – Right to Life and Right Now – to withdraw their delegates.

The decision prompted some delegates to reconsider their plans to attend, including from the Asia Human Rights Commission.

The Sri Lankan Government has refused to comply with repeated United Nations resolutions to allow an international investigation into allegations of serious abuses by both sides in the country's quarter-century civil war, where in the final six months of the conflict up to 40,000 civilians were killed and another 6000 forcibly disappeared, according to Human Rights Watch.

Professor Lynch and the other academics told Professor Celermajer the conference is at "serious risk of providing the appearance of human rights cover to a brutal regime that continues to perpetrate gross violations and is going to great lengths to silence critical voices both within Sri Lanka and in the international community." (WA Today)