Govt. and not UN is entrusted with task of national reconciliation

By Jehan Perera-February 15, 2016

The visit of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein went more smoothly than expected for the government. The weeks before the visit of the High Commissioner had seen President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe making apparently contradictory statements on the issue of international participation in the post-war reconciliation mechanisms, especially in relation to the judiciary and accountability. This led to concern about the possibility of the government backtracking on the commitments it had made as a co-signatory to the UNHRC resolution in Geneva in October 2015. There was also concern that the visiting UN dignitary would be critical of the government’s approach to the post-war reconciliation process while in the country.

High Commissioner Zeid’s critical comments during his stay in Sri Lanka on the politicization and failures of the Sri Lankan judiciary prompted angry rebuttals in Sri Lanka and also led to the inference that he was making the case for international participation in the accountability process. A fixed and narrow position on this issue by the international community will place the government in a difficult position. The core of the political opposition to the transitional justice process within the country is the concern that the international community is eroding the country’s sovereignty with its insistence on the participation of foreign and Commonwealth judges, prosecutors and investigators as specified in the UNHRC resolution. It is this issue that the political opposition is likely to capitalize in order to weaken the government.

The sense of nationalism within the Sri Lankan polity cannot be underestimated. The identity of the Sinhala people has been shaped by the historical memory of the struggles of the past two millennia in which the predominance of the Buddhist religion and the political independence of the island’s kingdoms were eroded and lost due to the depredations of different waves of foreign invaders, from India in the early millennia to the Western colonial powers in the last 500 years. On the other hand, this nationalism is not limited to the Sinhala people. It also finds its expression in the memory of the Tamil people that three independent kingdoms existed at the turn of the 16th century when the first of the Western colonial powers visited the island’s shores. There is a need to find an appropriate balance between these two strong ethnic-based nationalisms. Read more...