The National Peace Council (NPC)

ENSURE CLOSURE OF UN PANEL REPORT SOONER RATHER THAN LATER

As anticipated the government’s May Day rally took place in Colombo on a big scale.  Government-subsidised buses ensured that vast numbers of people from all parts of the country could make the journey. Some of them took a little bit of time off to tour the city, at least in the vicinity of the rally. I saw a handful wander in to the tennis association premises dressed in party blue to watch tennis being played.  In addition many government employees deemed it important to make their presence and loyalty felt.  The media coverage of the event, especially on state television, would have taken the message that vast numbers of people stood behind their government in its tussle with external powers.

The track record of the LTTE to utilize any period of ceasefire to regroup and fight again gave the government reason to continue with the war without respite. This accounted for the government’s attitude of victory at any cost, whether financial, material or human life.  It is likely that the denial of civilian casualties was initially motivated by the government’s determination to fight the war to a finish without international intervention.  The UN Expert Panel report, and indeed several reports by international human rights organizations that preceded it, may be said to be an outcome of the government’s denial, then and after the war, of large scale civilian casualties in the war. 

INTERNATIONAL COMPLICITY

There is an argument that the international community was complicit in what happened in the last phase of the war.  This past weekend I was in Hatton taking part in a leadership development seminar organized by the National Peace Council for the plantation Tamil community, which has the highest poverty levels of any ethnic community in the country. In the discussion on assessing the current political situation some of the local level leaders who were attending the seminar pointed out the difference between Libya, where the UN had intervened to safeguard the civilians, with the Sri Lankan case where they had not.  It appears that the international community also tacitly took the position that the LTTE had to be eliminated.

One major shortcoming in the government’s post-war response to its critics has been to continue to deny the civilian death toll.  As the wars in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq have demonstrated large numbers of civilians die in modern wars fought by governments and insurgent forces.  In this context the government’s denial of large scale civilian casualties will not find many believers in the international community, although the government’s strong hold over the popular imagination within Sri Lanka may cause many within the country to accept the government’s position of zero or minimal civilian casualties.  However, internationally, the government’s continued denial of civilian casualties has provided an opportunity to keep the issue alive.

Now that the Expert Panel report is made public, the best way for the government to deal with it is to respond to it rationally and legally.  The report cuts both ways, as it holds not only the government as responsible, but also the LTTE and its organizational structure, which can be extended to mean the Diaspora branches of the LTTE.  Those in the Diaspora who are now promoting the report may soon find themselves at its receiving end as the report opens up the possibility of legal action against some of them for being complicit in the LTTE’s own war crimes and other human rights violations.  However, according to the media, the Russian ambassador to Sri Lanka Vladimir Mikhaylov has said that the Expert Panel report is not a UN Report and it was neither prepared by the UN nor even at its request and it was a personal initiative of the UN Secretary General.

LOCAL OPINION

At the meeting with local level leaders of the plantation Tamil community in Hatton, we discussed the issue of what accountability should mean in the light of the UN panel report.  Some of the participants put forward the view that perpetrators of human rights violations should be punished.  But there was another view that it was more important to look to the future and not to the past, so that there could be reconciliation and that there could be a solution, and not punishment which would be resisted and would lead to continued polarization.  These two views also represent the opinion that I encounter in meetings with members of the international community. 

Minister of National Languages and Social Integration, Vasudeva Nanayakkara, spent a short time in discussion with the group of local level leaders at the seminar in Hatton.  He had come to Hatton to address a problem of inter-community conflict that had arisen between Tamils and Muslims during the World Cup cricket finals in which communal emotions and the politics of local government elections had spilled over into violence.  When the Minister met the seminar group, they had many hard questions to ask him.  But these were on the issues of governance that they encountered, such as the implementation of the language laws and the 18^th Amendment, which centralized power still further.  Although they had discussed the issue of the UN expert panel report with me earlier in the day, they were more interested in discussing issues relevant to their lives with the Minister.  This is likely to be the case in other parts of the country as well, including the former war zones of the north and east.

It is reported that the government has decided to extend the term of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission by a further six months to make its own findings on issues raised by the UN panel report and to recommend a course of action to the government.  The time for the government to respond positively to the recommendations made in the UN panel report is now when the government continues to enjoy mass popular support and has international support from its allies.  There is a need to account for the lives of those many who lost them, to compensate their families, and to ensure that such a war and conflict will never recur again because all sections of the population believe that justice is done to them by the government of the day. Some years down the line the government may not be as popular as it is today with the people and the country’s international allies may not be so supportive, and it may be too late to do what can be done today.