In early 2009, as many as 40,000 civilians
were killed in the final days of Sri Lanka’s civil war, having been herded into
an area about the size of Central Park and subjected to relentless shelling. No
one has been held accountable for these crimes, and even now the government in
Colombo remains intent on burying the past. Only an international commission of
inquiry stands any chance of rectifying this omission. So when the United
Nations Human Rights Council meets Monday in Geneva, it should seek an
investigation. It would be a decisive step toward justice and reconciliation in
Sri Lanka.
The 26-year civil war in Sri Lanka, in which ethnic Tamil
rebels rose against a government dominated by the ethnic-majority Sinhalese,
was regularly punctuated with massacres and rights abuses by government forces,
as well as by suicide bombings and other attacks on civilian targets by the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Since the government’s crushing defeat of the
rebels, the predominantly Tamil northern province has been under de facto
military occupation, with widespread reports of serious rights violations against
the civilian population.
As the fifth anniversary of the war’s end approaches this
spring, Sri Lankan officials say they need more time for reconciliation
initiatives to take root. They argue that an international investigation will
only further polarize Sri Lanka. They have reacted angrily to a new report by
Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, that
advocates an international investigation and heavily criticizes the government.
As the International Crisis Group has documented in a series
of reports, the government’s postwar policies have entrenched an increasingly
authoritarian regime in Colombo, deepened the rift between Tamils and
Sinhalese, and drawn dangerous new lines of ethnic and religious conflict. To
date, the government has rejected calls by the Human Rights Council to conduct
an independent investigation into war crimes allegations against both sides
that have been documented by the United Nations secretary general’s panel of
experts and by nongovernmental organizations like ours, and to adopt reforms
that could foster postwar reconciliation.
The United States, which has a record of leadership within
the Human Rights Council, would be the best sponsor for a resolution seeking an
inquiry. The other members of the council should give it their strong support.
They should also reject the Sri Lankan government’s endless delaying tactics
and its global public-relations counterattack, which includes a half-hour
infomercial that has been shown on American television.
Momentum for such an investigation is building. Six United
States senators, led by Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, called for an
international commission of inquiry in a letter sent this month to Secretary of
State John Kerry. Three days later a resolution was introduced in the Senate
calling for an independent investigation (not necessarily by a commission).
Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, other senior European Union
politicians and Indian officials also have taken clear exception to Sri Lanka’s
failure to pursue accountability for atrocities. Meanwhile, in response to
victims’ pleas for justice, a newly elected northern provincial council in Sri
Lanka has joined the calls for an international investigation.
But the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa has
rejected all such recommendations, even when they came from Sri Lanka’s own
reconciliation commission. He has also gravely weakened the independence of the
judiciary and the police with the impeachment last year of Sri Lanka’s chief justice,
placing the possibility of using Sri Lanka’s courts to achieve accountability
further out of reach.
An inquiry mandated by an intergovernmental body like the
Human Rights Council would produce a more complete record of the scale of
civilian suffering, and would challenge the Sri Lankan government’s denials
that government forces were responsible for any significant loss of civilian
life.
A commission is also likely to uncover evidence of abuses by
the defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in a form that would be hard for
Tamils and Tamil organizations to deny. That would deflate a romanticization of
the Tigers among Tamils that keeps alive Sinhalese fears that the Tamil
insurgency might resume, and also gives the government an excuse for continued
militarization and repression.
By showing survivors of wartime abuses that the
international community hasn’t abandoned them, a commission mandated by the
council could also undercut growing calls by Tamil diaspora organizations for
more radical measures, and encourage victims of rights abuses from all of Sri
Lanka’s ethnic and religious communities (the country’s main faiths are
Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Christian) to continue seeking an end to
institutionalized impunity.
Such an inquiry won’t solve all of Sri Lanka’s problems; the
island’s crisis of accountability and democratic governance runs too deep and
is too complex to be resolved quickly. Nonetheless, increased authoritarianism,
Sinhalese ethnic triumphalism and simmering Tamil resentment are clearly not
the ingredients for a secure future. Both justice and reconciliation are needed
for the Sri Lankan body politic to one day be healed.
The Human Rights Council has an opportunity, and should
seize it. A number of the council’s current member states — for instance Chile,
Costa Rica, Botswana, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Morocco and Macedonia — have
led on other human rights issues and should press the council on this one. Sri
Lanka’s government is playing a waiting game, hoping the international community
will lose interest, while also proffering the crude argument that
reconciliation is attainable without justice.
But the costs of doing something now would be very small
compared with the years of strife that would be the likely result of letting
impunity win in Sri Lanka.
Louise Arbour, New York Times
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