On
26 July a government website presented the proposed Action Plan (AP) to
implement the LLRC’s recommendations. The plan needs to be reviewed seriously
though I am inclined to conclude that it is mostly bluff, but let me not cross
my bridges before I reach them. AP is presented in tabular form under five
headings: Humanitarian Law (4), Human Rights (28), Land & Resettlement (9),
Compensation (3), and Reconciliation (30), where the figures in parenthesis are
the number of items into which the proposed actions are partitioned. I find it
useful to review AP at three levels, viz (a) straightforward, (b) critical and
(c) incisive. The straightforward approach is to take the document on trust and
review the adequacy of what has been proposed and note what has been omitted or
glossed over. The critical reading will consider the adequacy of the
government’s implicit political approach; a sharper comment will be reserved for
the concluding section of this article.The Humanitarian Law section contains a proposal to conduct a detailed survey by the Census and Statistics Department; the Human Rights section proposes comprehensive human rights education programmes, centralized data collection on missing persons, and several proposals to screen and retrain young people and those with disabilities. The responsibilities are assigned to the relevant government departments (excluding the Defence Ministry and the Police) and I think a reasonable job will be done if resources are made available and filthy UPFA politicians kept out. There are also plans to lift restrictions on visits to places of worship and lift restraints on persons from overseas visiting their relatives in resettled areas. This will also be implemented, but why on earth 12 months and six
months,
respectively, are needed for full implementation is quite baffling.What has been said under the Land & Resettlement head is mostly bluff. Other than the assertive opening clause that any citizen of Sri Lanka has the right to acquire land in any part of the country, the remainder is wishy-washy. Return of lands taken by HSZs is brushed aside with a “Release where possible” comment, a National Land Commission to implement land policy guidelines under the 13th Amendment gets a mysterious “To be confirmed” which makes one wonder whether the government is contemplating repealing 13A or mucking around to turn it into 13A minus-minus. The 24 months set aside to complete Payment of Compensation is far too long but my hunch is that the payments will eventually be made as the names of ‘resettle-es’ get recorded on voter registers.
About half of the proposals in AP under the Reconciliation head are to be implemented by agencies other than the Defence Ministry, the Police and the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC), and we can be hopeful that some of this will get done if resources are provided. Apart from, and far more important than these specifics, is leadership to get things done, and that will not emerge till after the Northern Provincial Council elections and independent Tamil leaders are in place. This prospect however, the Rajapaksas are resisting tooth and nail.
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