A Sri Lankan Truth And Reconciliation Commission?

By S. I. Keethaponcalan -January 6, 2014 |

Dr S.I. Keethaponcalan

One of the completely unexpected outcomes of the recently concluded Colombo Commonwealth Summit was the ignition of a dialogue on the setting up of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Sri Lanka. The source of this idea is the visit of South African President Jacob Zuma to Sri Lanka to attend the Commonwealth Summit in November 2013. Some suggest President Zuma mooted the idea. This is possible, because South Africa has been trying to get involved in the conflict resolution and/or reconciliation process in Sri Lanka for a while. Others believe that it was President Rajapaksa who wanted to “learn” more about the South African experience of the TRC. Either way, it seems that both presidents have discussed the idea of a TRC in Sri Lanka and currently, the Sri Lankan media suggests what could easily be termed the Sri Lankan Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SLTRC), may be instituted in the near future.

Not Ready

Given the prevailing socio-political realities of the country, one could argue that a South African style TRC could be problematic and most probably will fail, if reconciliation is the true objective of the proposed mechanism. Sri Lanka has been grappling with the idea of reconciliation for almost half a decade since the end of the war in May 2009, with no noticeable result. In fact Sri Lanka has already become a failed case of reconciliation.

Unfortunately, it seems, ethnic communities are further polarized now than before. The primary reason for the failure so far, is that the country is not ready for reconciliation.

Reconciliation essentially is a post-conflict concern. Once basic issues of a conflict are resolved, the parties can focus on repairing the broken relationship, which is crucial to securing the peace achieved through conflict resolution. This is exactly what happened in South Africa, which was a true post-conflict society where the fundamental issues were resolved through peaceful means and the peace agreement produced a win-win situation for both major communities.

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