Compassion For A Few, Gallows For The Rest
By Gehan Gunatilleke –October 13, 2015
Gehan Gunatilleke
Impatience is a luxury victims of state violence can ill afford. The state is often the victor; and victors hold the pen. They write the story. They define it for posterity.
In 2015, Miriam Gebhardt did the unthinkable. Her book, When the Soldiers Came, claimed that American soldiers raped thousands of women during the Allied occupation of Germany following the Second World War. The claim was largely based on records meticulously kept by Bavarian priests. What is extraordinary about the claim is not its contents but its timing. Gebhardt’s book was published seven decades after these atrocities allegedly took place.
Despite the overwhelming odds, some stories can eventually be told. In that belief, victims celebrating the recent adoption of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution on Sri Lanka must prepare for a long and perilous journey. Their struggle is not against some lone perpetrator. It is against a state that has monopolised the telling of their story; a recurrent version defined by compassion for a privileged few and brutal finality for the unfortunate rest.
The forgiveness trap
After the war, the Sri Lankan state constructed a narrative that trapped victims within its walls. ‘We defeated terrorism; we must be grateful to our war heroes; we must forget the bloodshed and move on.’ What held this narrative together was the idea that the ‘Sri Lankan’ version of transitional justice was based on ‘maithri’—i.e. compassion.
It was the previous administration that first championed the idea. In 2011, former Attorney-General Mohan Peiris proposed that Sri Lanka’s religious teachings and cultural values produced a uniquely ‘Sri Lankan’ version of justice based on tolerance and compassion.[1] Sri Lankan victims were presented as subscribing to this model. A year earlier, former Foreign Affairs Minister, G.L. Peiris argued that the ‘Sri Lankan approach’ did not focus on punishment, but rather on what he defined as ‘restorative justice’.[2] In late 2013, former High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Chris Nonis, reiterated these sentiments in a celebrated interview with CNN.[3]
The purpose of this narrative is simple. By reducing victims to creatures of compassion, it seeks to minimise the accountability of the state. The political inconvenience of investigating military crimes ultimately shapes the contours of the narrative. It is therefore designed to dispel calls for accountability by casting them as Western impositions of retribution on a society predisposed towards compassion.
The Sri Lankan state then co-authored the UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka in September 2015. By doing so, it signalled a motivation to shift away from a reductive narrative. It is now committed to enacting new laws criminalising war crimes and crimes against humanity, and ensuring their retroactive application. It is equally committed to recognising command responsibility and establishing a credible justice mechanism with the participation of foreign judges, prosecutors, lawyers and investigators.
Yet the new government’s rhetoric of late has been strangely reminiscent of its predecessor’s. The Prime Minister recently announced the establishment of a ‘Compassionate Council’ as an adjunct to the proposed Commission for Truth, Justice, Reconciliation, and Non-Recurrence.[4] Champika Ranawaka earlier claimedthat investigating the past would ‘rub salt on old wounds’.[5] Such terminology betrays a continuing agenda to reduce Sri Lanka’s search for truth and justice to a narrative of forgiving and forgetting.Read More
