Rethinking Forgiveness Amidst Probes On War Crimes
Athulasiri Samarakoon
“…the concept of the ‘crimes against humanity’ remains on the horizon of the entire geopolitics of forgiveness”. – Jacques Derrida
Sri Lanka’s incapacity as a nation state (or which has so far failed to become so) to give protection to many of its citizens, mostly during the war and its aftermath, has resulted in the current crisis of the country facing international probes. The world has come to know about the realities facing the average person in Sri Lanka after the end of the war in May 2009. And, today, the international community has begun to force open the eyes of the ruling regime to such realities. On the other hand, regime has failed to provide ‘laws for those who lost the protection of the national government’ and has increasingly placed such matters in the hands of the military or the police. This remains largely a cause for endless agitations in the North where the civilian administration is yet to be restored in its entirety. The military and the police have received unprecedented authority to act directly on the people. Mostly, as we have seen, the alleged perpetrators of violence during the ethnic war and the JVP insurrection were put to death by military in the name of national security without fair trials or any other mechanism even to have records of the death count. At the end of the long fought war too this practice has not ended, but gotten more rigorous. We often witness the truth of this situation from the killings of many of the alleged members of the underworld and others like media persons who protested against this government’s arbitrariness and anti-people policies through their activism as members of the civil society.
Rule of Law not in place
Extrajudicial killings, abductions, arbitrary arrests, torture, delay in legal procedures and many other impunities by the military and police in Sri Lanka have constituted a set of new undemocratic practices and anti-people norms which in turn have best served the interests of a few who have wanted to extend their power at any cost. All in all, democracy in Sri Lanka is being slowly led to the guillotine. Ritualistic elections have only served as eyewash to the world to justify our practice of democracy. As domestic politics kept growing like a cactus with severe authoritarian tendencies, the international pressure on the government too has grown in similar scales. The UNHRC advocated probe that the parliamentarians of ruling alliance did not want to take place is the best example for such external pressures.Read More