Impending Breakdown In Relations Can Bring Tragic Consequences

By Jehan Perera-Sunday, February 09, 2014

Northern Provincial Council Chief Minister C V Wigneswaran

The issue of war crimes committed in the closing stages of Sri Lanka’s war has been discussed internationally for the past five years. Even before the end of war there were concerns expressed internationally about civilian casualties. This is what prompted visits to Sri Lanka by many international leaders, including the Foreign Ministers of India, the United Kingdom and France. There are two reasons why the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka attracted so much international attention, which is not going away. The first reason is that the end stage of the war in 2009 occurred shortly after the election of President Barack Obama in the United States.

One of President Obama’s key election pledges was that he would restore the moral standing of the United States in world affairs. During the previous decade the moral standing of the United States, and its commitment to global human rights, had been undermined by some of the actions of his predecessor, President George Bush.

The active role of the United States in taking up the cause of international human rights in Sri Lanka is due to this background. Today, the United States is playing the lead role in calling for a credible investigation into the allegations of human rights violations and war crimes. It is leading the group of countries that seek to pass a resolution in the UN Human Rights Council that will compel the Sri Lankan government to investigate the past.

The decisive turning point for the Sri Lankan government was its failure to follow through on the resolution of the UN Human Rights Council in 2009. This was a resolution where the government turned the tables on the Western countries and appealed to the majority of third world countries to give it a chance to prove itself. In particular, the government promised to move forward without delay in healing the wounds of war in the country, specifically resettling the displaced persons and in finding a political solution to the ethnic conflict. The implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution which established devolved provincial governments stood at the centre of this promise.

The failure of the government to convince the international community that it had indeed made progress on the UNHRC resolution of 2009 is the second reason, and has led to the matter not getting off the agenda of the UN system. In both 2012 and 2013 the UNHRC resolutions grew stronger and more adverse to the government. Once a matter gets on the agenda of a meeting, it will come up again and again until it is dealt with to the satisfaction of the group that is meeting. The same holds true for the UNHRC. As a result the Sri Lankan government is left with no choice but to deal with the issue of an independent and credible investigation, as it will not go away on its own.

Unfortunately, the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission which is what the government sought to put forward as its alternative to such an investigation, was not mandated to investigate war crimes. It was not provided with the machinery for such an investigation. Therefore it did not do its own investigations, but recommended that several incidents should be investigated. The government has conducted a few investigations, but these have been done by the military, which is itself accused of being the perpetrator of the human rights violations. In the absence of any credible and independent initiative on the part of the government to investigate the allegations of war crimes, the demand for an international investigation grows.

Internally too, the country is once again getting greatly polarized. Highly respected community leaders like the two Catholic Bishops of the North, Thomas Savundranayagam and Rayappu Joseph have supported the call for an international role in investigating what happened in the past. The resolution of the Northern Provincial Council calling for an international inquiry into war crimes follows almost five years of governmental refusal to deal with the issue. By passing the resolution calling for an international investigation into war crimes the Northern Provincial Council has taken a public stand that is bound to evoke a negative response from the Sri Lankan government. The willingness of the Northern Provincial Council to incur the displeasure of the government would have arisen from its deep frustration.

Even though its Chief Minister C V Wigneswaran showed himself to be accommodative to the concerns of the government, especially the President, in coming to Colombo and taking oaths before the President, there has been little the Provincial Council has got in return. They have neither been vested with power nor with economic resources to address even the day-to-day problems of the people. Now after the passage of the resolution by the Northern Provincial Council, it is likely to get even less from the government. A bad situation is likely to get worse. An international inquiry that is opposed by the Sri Lankan government will only push it further into relying on the good offices of countries which have not shown much interest in promoting the rights of the ethnic minorities in Sri Lanka.

On the other hand, the Western countries at the forefront of the demand for accountability in Sri Lanka are also countries that are in favour of ethnic minority rights. Therefore, instead of pushing the government into the hands of those countries that are not in favour of ethnic minority rights, it is better if the government remains in dialogue with those in the international community that are in favour of such rights. It would be more constructive if the goal of the TNA and others concerned with ethnic minority rights should be to keep the Sri Lankan government in constant dialogue with that section of the international community that is in support of ethnic minority rights. This would include the Western countries and India, Japan and South Africa.

If the Sri Lankan government is compelled to rely on countries that are not in favour of ethnic minority rights to protect itself from an international investigation, there will be no hope at all of obtaining any progress with regard to ethnic minority rights in Sri Lanka in the foreseeable future. There will also be no hope of Sri Lanka becoming the Wonder of Asia, as the government has promised, because no country that is internally polarized, and in conflict with the most powerful countries of the world, can reach its full potential. A country that is internally divided will also be more vulnerable to international interventions. This is what happened in 1987 when the Sri Lankan government became internationally isolated and was compelled to sign the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord.