Sri Lanka’s UN quandary

28 March 2012They say that everything is fair in love and war. So should be the case with Colombo.

That is what Sri Lanka wants the United Nations to believe in, as it rejected a resolution of the world body that called upon it to ensure accountability for alleged violations of international humanitarian laws committed during the last stages of war with the Tamil Tigers. Shrugging it off as an internal issue, Sri Lanka wants the world to help rebuild the island-nation state, and not to revisit the civil strife. Yet, it goes with saying that human rights violations did occur in the country, and the dispossessed minority Tamil community wereforced to live on the edge of marginalisation.

The resolution tabled by the United States and adopted at the UNHCR had come as a bolt from the blue for Colombo. That inadvertently has turned into a robust domestic issue with fears of sanctions being slapped on the rise. Whatever may be the case, Sri Lanka just can’t do away with its responsibility of assuring the world that the minority community hasn’t been discriminated during the strife period. Allegations of rape, torture and excessive use of force are truly in need of being investigated — and that is important from the perspective of rehabilitating its image as a civilised political entity. Colombo for that matter hasn’t denied that it won’t look into such charges and had been exercising caution while ensuring reconciliation with the Tamils.

The political process in which the Tamils have been taken onboard is most welcome. Reforms through a sustained engagement process and constitutional guarantees can go a long way in dispelling international concerns that forecast ethnic chaos on the island. Sri Lanka should not take the UN concerns as a pretext for internationalising its domestic issues, and rather see to it as a step in the direction of embracing the minority earnestly. The crackdown episode that brought the curtain down on the LTTE era, and likewise the war spanning over 25 years, has some fundamental questions and concerns to be addressed. Sri Lanka shouldn’t shy away from it. It’s time to put the ghost of the Tigers to rest.