A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Wednesday, March 20, 2019
The High Commissioner’s report and the UNHRC resolution: The two are not one
By Jehan Perera-March 18, 2019, 11:33 pm
The
presentation of the Report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
on ‘Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri
Lanka’ will take place at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on 20
March 2019. Some of the recommendations contained in this report are
contentious ones. They will not be viewed favourably by the majority of
people in Sri Lanka. One of these calls for the setting up of a hybrid
court to look into war crimes allegations. Such hybrid courts, which
include international judges, are set up where the justice system (and
the country itself) has largely collapsed, which is not the case in Sri
Lanka. Another recommendation calls on the international community to
apply the principle of universal jurisdiction on Sri Lankans accused of
crimes such as torture, enforced disappearance and war crimes.
The High Commissioner’s recommendations are not decisions of the
international community but are recommendations that could become
unnecessary if Sri Lanka takes sufficient corrective action. The more
important matter to be taken up by the UN Human Rights Council will be
the draft resolution on Sri Lanka on the same theme of ‘Promoting
reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka’. This is
the one that Sri Lanka has agreed to sign as co-sponsor, and is
scheduled to be taken up on the following day of 21 March 2019. Unlike
the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights which contains
observations and recommendations, the resolution on Sri Lanka will
contain the decisions and pledges made by the Sri Lankan government at
the prodding of the international community for implementation. But
these are the same commitments that Sri Lanka made three and half years
ago when it co-signed UNHRC resolution 30/1 of October 2015.
Both extremes of Sri Lanka’s ethnically divided society have sought to
prevent the government getting a further two year extension to implement
UNHRC Resolution 30/1 of October 2015. Opposition Leader Mahinda
Rajapaksa announced his stance in parliament that Sri Lanka should
withdraw as a co-sponsor of the resolution. He said "It is reported
through the media that a hybrid court will be formed for violations
related to human rights in Sri Lanka and a UN human rights office should
be established here as well. The stance of the president and the prime
minister is contradictory and I believe that we should withdraw from
this motion". Until the last moment it appeared that President
Maithripala Sirisena himself was in opposition to what the government
was doing. He planned to send a special three member delegation to the
UNHRC to represent him. While no separate presidential delegation will
be going now, there is still a question mark as to what the position of
the president’s representatives will be in Geneva on March 20 and 21.
EXTREMES MEET
Those who oppose the co-sponsoring of the UNHRC resolution by the Sri
Lankan government need to also consider what might have happened if the
government had not agreed to it. The pre-2015 government led by
opposition leader and former president Rajapaksa took the position that
Sri Lanka did not need to heed the international community on matters of
its own internal affairs. But the resulting outcomes were fraught with
difficulty and loss to the country. Due to the Rajapaksa government’s
refusal to cooperate with the international community Sri Lanka lost the
GSP Plus tariff concession of the European Union and thereby lost
markets in garment and fisheries exports at the cost of income and
livelihoods within the country. In addition, there was a looming
prospect of tougher sanctions including travel bans being imposed on Sri
Lankan government and military personnel and barriers in their path to
participate in UN peacekeeping forces.
At the other extreme, Tamil nationalist parties and the Tamil Diaspora
have also called upon the international community not to provide Sri
Lanka with an extension of the time frame to implement its commitments
under Resolution 30/1 of October 2015. University students and even
mainstream Tamil politicians in Jaffna have protested against the
extension of the UNHRC resolution. The Transnational Government of Tamil
Eelam (TGTE), reiterated its call for a referral to the International
Criminal Court. "Sri Lanka’s complete and utter failure to make even the
most minimal efforts to deliver justice to victims and their families
cannot be tolerated. The international community must end its
complacency with the impunity Sri Lanka extends to the perpetrators of
some of the gravest crimes committed this century…The Human Rights
Council must pass a resolution establishing an international
investigative mechanism including a referral of the situation of Sri
Lanka to the International Criminal Court."
The important thing to note is that the latest resolution that Sri Lanka
has agreed to co-sign will contain no more than what Sri Lanka agreed
to implement in October 2015. Therefore, it is inaccurate to claim, as
some members of the opposition claim, that the government has got the
country deeper into an international trap. The latest resolution gives
Sri Lanka more time to implement the pledges and commitments it made in
October 2015. The resolution of March 2019 will be on the same lines of
Resolution 34/1 of March 2017 that gave Sri Lanka two more years to
implement its pledges and commitments. As the government has been slow
in implementing the pledges and commitments it made in October 2015, the
UNHRC will be giving the government yet another two more years to
fulfill them. It is also important to note that there is a difference
between the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which
is an administrative document of that office, and the UNHRC resolution
which is a political document obtained through the concurrence of the
member countries of the UN Human Rights Council.
CREDIBLE PROCESSES
In view of the controversy surrounding the Geneva process, Sri Lankans
need to be informed about the main issues that continue to be matters of
concern for the international community and human rights organisations.
The latest update of these concerns are to be found in the report of
the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. It has stated that slow
progress in establishing meaningful transitional justice measures has
engendered mistrust among victims and other stakeholders. The slow
progress covers nearly all the main areas that Sri Lanka had committed
itself to delivering on, including finding missing persons, returning
land, release of detainees held without trial, replacing the Prevention
of Terrorism Act, and bringing those accused of war-related crimes and
other serious crimes to justice. It is the last of these issues that is
the most politically contentious and given rise to most misgivings among
the population.
At the same time, the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights also stated that there had been progress in some significant
areas. It noted that "Since 2015, the general situation has improved
with regard to civil and political rights: there have been advances with
respect to freedom of expression and assembly, incipient efforts made
to consult representatives of civil society, a robust right to
information framework has been established, and independent commissions,
such as the Human Rights Commission, have been strengthened, and
relations between security forces and civilians have improved. As noted
above, commendable progress has also been witnessed in the State’s
cooperation with United Nations human rights mechanisms." It also
commended Sri Lankan state institutions for holding to their mandates
during the two month long political crisis at the end of last year. The
report stated that "The High Commissioner joins the Secretary-General in
welcoming the resolution of the political crisis in Sri Lanka through
peaceful, constitutional means, and applauds the resilience of the
country’s democratic institutions."
Sri Lanka will soon be facing the international community in Geneva. We
can draw inspiration from a poem that Nelson Mandela recited to his
fellow prisoners to encourage them to overcome their present and look to
a better future. "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my
soul." (English poet William Ernest Henley 1849–1903). The UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights’ call to Investigate and prosecute in
accordance with universal jurisdiction principles is in the absence of
credible domestic processes. During the political crisis at the end of
last year, the UN High Commissioner’s report itself pointed out that Sri
Lankan institutions were able to conduct themselves in a peaceful and
constitutional manner. If Sri Lankan institutions act with integrity and
do their duty in a sustained manner there will be no need for either
universal jurisdiction or hybrid courts to become operational or for
further international interventions to facilitate national
reconciliation.