Sri Lanka’s National Plan of Action vis-à-vis Reconciliation
Image courtesy Centre for Human Rights
“Reconciliation requires changes of heart and spirit, as well as social and economic change. It requires symbolic as well as practical action” – Malcolm Fraser
With the Human Rights Commission meeting coming up in March 2013, the focus of the people of Sri Lanka is on the National Action Plan formulated by the Government to implement the LLRC recommendations.
The difficulty in reviewing the progress on the National Action Plan is the non-availability of information on any kind of assessment on the movement forward in implementing the recommendations of the LLRC. The comments on this paper are therefore based on random reporting in the media as well as conversations with individuals from the North and the East. While it is necessary to state that the observations below are based on unsubstantiated evidence, the comments made are in the best interests of the Nation. It is nonetheless necessary to point out that the authorities have been remiss in not feeding the public with information regarding the progress made in the implementation of the National Action Plan.
Even as the country moves into the dawn of 2013, in Sri Lanka too, a persistent perception prevails that there is an unhurried approach by the authorities to implement the findings of the commission. In the post conflict period, to the average Sri Lankan the most pertinent part of the commission’s mandate are the areas that concentrate on reconciliation and nation building. Many of the recommendations also make reconciliation the focal point for ethnic harmony and nation building. As a prelude to the healing process it was recommended that “a collective act of contrition by the political leaders and civil society of both Sinhala and Tamil communities” for their failure to forge a consensus for a political solution to the ethnic problem be made. The blame falls jointly on the Government, the opposition and the minorities who have failed to make the accommodation essential for compromise and movement forward. It seems that by the post war period the leaders from the majority and minority ethnic groups have jelled once again into the familiar track of non- accommodation and that very little effort is demonstrated to find new approaches to the causes of conflict and its resolution.
The Sri Lankan President’s Twitter archive and Propaganda 2.0: New challenges for online dissent
Groundviews -12 Feb, 2013
The President enters Twitter
Last month, the President of Sri Lanka began tweeting officially as @PresRajapaksa. The account is already authenticated by Twitter. Though @PresRajapaksa’s profile notes that “tweets from the President are signed MR.” there is, to date, not a single tweet penned by the President himself.
The launch of the account was instructive in how the regime is perceived online by voices not usually openly vocal about mainstream politics. Under the hashtag #PresidentTweets, dozens of voices on Twitter openly poked fun at the President’s entry to Twitter. The tweets, only a fraction of which are captured below, poked fun at the President’s closest political associates, his role in the impeachment of the Chief Justice, his violent, autocratic tendencies and the Rajapaksa family’s nepotism.
