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For the last four years, the month of September has been that time of the year when the Lankan Government has been forced to undertake its diplomatic hajj; to make its annual pilgrimage to the Mecca of the United Nation’s Human Rights headquarters at the Palais des Nations in Geneva and superficially grieve past sins done and seek atonement through penance before the one almighty gathering of nations.

From 2012 to 2014, each ungodly visitation has been to pray for time in order to ward off the day of reckoning. Ingenious methods, including reneging on pledges to the United Nations, have been resorted to stay the hand of the Human Rights body from claiming its measure of justice on behalf of the victims.

HIGH TABLE HONOUR: President Sirisena at Ban Ki-moon's lunch. President Obama is two chairs away to Sirisena's left and is partially covered

Last year, having run out of diplomatic devices, the Rajapaksa government impudently rejected the UN resolution to implement the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission — a domestic body appointed by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa himself — hoping against hope that having a friend in high places, namely, China with veto powers over sanctions in the UN Security Council, would not bring about the sanctioned doom ordained to fall upon such insolent, intransigent and incorrigible third world nations.

But it was clear that time was running out. Even China having obtained a seat on the Human Rights Council in 2013, found herself in the position of the delinquent made class monitor and realised that, while she could remain as Lankan protector and exploit to the utmost Lanka’s dependence on her, she had to strike a balance to maintain her own credibility in the UN’s human rights body.

But since January this year, the US dollar has replaced the Chinese Yuan as the currency that talks in Lanka. America has realised its publicly avowed aim to see regime change in Lanka. Rajapaksa is gone and the new man in town looks west, not east.

With the changing of the guard in January, with a democratic climate dawning and an acceptance of realty absorbing the minds of its new leaders, the world found a Lanka ready to cooperate. Instead of the stones that had been hurled against the island nation which would have been more than the pebbles thrown at the jamarat, the stoning walls at Mina, it were flower petals that were sprinkled on Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera as he announced Lanka’s intention to regain her lost innocence through a international baptism of fire; and come of age as a fit member of the league of civilised nations.

Far from being the scumbag of Asia, suddenly Lanka was the world’s darling. And sugar daddy America was close at hand to ensure that when the Human Rights Chief’s blow fell, it fell even more softly on Lanka than it had been planned.

On September 16th unveiling the UN mandated report on Lanka which had identified ‘patterns of grave violations in Sri Lanka between 2002 and 2011, strongly indicating that war crimes and crimes against humanity were most likely committed by both sides to the conflict,’ the Human Rights Commissioner Zeid had recommended a ‘hybrid’ court made up of both international judges and local judges. He had also said the report’s findings were of the most serious nature but it was clear that the advent of Maithripala Sirisena as Lanka’s President in January had mitigated the severity of the original report.

As President Sirisena was to declare at a press conference on September 18th, the report was a watered-down version than its earlier findings. He said, “We have explored new vistas in respect of our relations with other countries and shaped our foreign policy accordingly after the January 08 victory. If not for this government, Sri Lanka would have been viewed in a different light and would have ended up in an utter mess. After the January 8 revolution, the international community changed their stance on Sri Lanka,”

Zeid’s recommendation, however, to set up a hybrid court with international judges also playing a role in the war tribunal was set to kick a storm of protests that it would infringe Lanka’s sovereignty. In a bid to quell the gathering tempest of Sinhala nationalistic forces at this proposed outrage, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe pre-empted it by himself joining the protest and pledged to set up a domestic mechanism to probe war crimes.

Not surprisingly help was at hand to enable ravished Lanka to keep her sovereign hymen inviolate. This week when the United States tabled its final resolution, Zeid’s insistence of a hybrid court had vanished into hibernation. In its place, watering down the entire effect of Zeid’s already down report even further, the US called for a domestic court while stressing the importance of having an international element compromising ‘Commonwealth Judges, Lawyers and Prosecutors’.

Thus what is envisaged is that there will be a domestic court and, if Lanka so wishes, she can invite judges, lawyers and prosecutors to participate in it. Lanka may have been molested in these last four years but she has survived the ordeal with her sovereign virtue intact. Not even the diehards could object to the new face saving turn of events. Suddenly the wind had been taken from the puff of their protests.

To crown it all, Lanka even became the co sponsor of the resolution, the willing supporter of her own indictment. Britain’s comment was that “this was the first time Sri Lanka was co-sponsoring a resolution on its human rights situation, which was a historic development.” And when it was placed before the UN’s Human Rights Council, the resolution A HRC 30 L.29 on promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka, was adopted without a vote. It was clear that the United States had done a hatchet job on the Commissioner’s recommendations and saved Lanka’s day. What the resolution stated was that the

a) the Council encourages the Government of Sri Lanka to investigate all alleged attacks by individuals and groups on journalists, human rights defenders, members of religious minority groups and other members of civil society; and

b) further encourages the Government of Sri Lanka to develop a comprehensive plan and mechanism for preserving all existing records and documentation relating to human rights violations and abuses and violations of international humanitarian law.
Yet the champagne will have to wait. For now comes the acid test. America may have saved Lanka’s bacon by getting the watered down resolution passed without ado but any attempt by Lanka to fob off implementing what the Council encourages her to do will cook her goose. To ensure that Lanka keeps her side of the bargain to the letter and in the spirit in which it has been struck, the resolution also goes on to declare that

c) requests the Office of the High Commissioner to continue to assess progress on the implementation of its recommendations and other relevant processes related to reconciliation, accountability and human rights, and to present an oral update to the Human Rights Council at its thirty-second session,

d) and a comprehensive report followed by discussion on the implementation of the present resolution at its thirty-fourth session. It also encourages the Government of Sri Lanka to continue to cooperate with special procedure mandate holders, including by responding formally to outstanding requests.

This in effect ties Lanka to her word. Already the US has handed out US dollars 2.6 million to Lanka to set up the inquiry process and enhance the country’s judicial capacity to handle the work involved. This has been done to ensure that Lanka will not have the excuse to wring her hands in despair, turn out her empty threadbare pockets and say, “Look, no money, no cry.”

For all the euphoria that has erupted in the Government, President Sirisena today finds himself manacled to a political time bomb set to explode in March 2017. The voice of opposition though stilled today, will thunder when it comes to the nitty-gritty of implementing the UNCHR’s recommendations when those directly held accountable and charged with war crimes are placed in the dock and prosecuted.

Realising that the Government may have bitten off more that it could chew, President told the New York Times in an interview published on Friday, that he would keep an open mind on the war crimes tribunal and make sure it was in keeping with the constitution. He also stated that the court must be a domestic one and would be established only after consultations with religious leaders, politicians and military officials.

A war court comprising international judges may well require an amendment to the Constitution; and President Sirisena knows full well that, given the contentious subject matter over which the court’s jurisdiction would fall, he would be reviving old phantoms to rise from their sepulchres if he pressed for a two third majority vote in Parliament. His best course is to avoid dependence on Parliamentarians to give effect to the resolution and instead lobby the international community further to understand his abject plight; where his own survival is at stake, where all the good he has wrought these last few months for which the world showers its undiluted praise, would be placed in peril, overturned overnight, if he was forced to commit political hara-kiri by abiding by the UN’s wishes.

Thanks to America, he has won a major concession. The resolution has not insisted that the war tribunal should be an international one. It has accepted that the court need not be a’ hybrid’ one as that demanded by the Commissioner Zeid. It has accepted a domestic court. It has only expressed the wish that it should also contain international judges from the Commonwealth. In diplomatic code, however, the Council’s wish can well mean Lanka’s command. President Sirisena now faces the arduous task of convincing the US to go the extra mile for him and influence the HRC to grant him more indulgence. But even then the road ahead is still fraught with danger, still filled with land mines waiting to explode.

How the public will react if and when some of Lanka’s ‘Golden Heroes’ are found guilty of committing acts that tantamount to war crimes, acts which they will say were done to meet battlefield exigencies, were executed in the best interest of the motherland and to save the people from terrorism, is anybody’s guess.

The political fallout over tarring the military image at the behest of foreign powers then may well doom the prosecutor. It may also inhibit local judges, themselves beneficiaries of the peace that dawned from the successful ending of the 30-year-old terrorist war regardless of the means employed in ending it, from returning an objective verdict of guilt. The fear of being labelled as traitors and threatened with extrajudicial punishment by renegade brigands may give them cause for concern. The foreign judges can leave once their job is done. The local judges and their families will have no such convenient exit but will have to remain here in Lanka, their home, and face the martial music.

The only hope of cleansing the collective guilt of this nation is to dawn a prosperous economic climate and provide manifest illustrations of good governance at work. In this respect it behoves the United States to lead the international drive to lend Lanka an economic helping hand to rise above her present debt ridden plight, fund development projects, encourage more foreign investments which will create more employment opportunities and raise her people’s standard of living.

The objective of the entire exercise to establish accountability and transparency and strengthen the pillars of democracy is in itself noble and worth striving to achieve. But political reality dictates that it cannot be done in economically adverse conditions when cost of living is escalating and food prices soaring through the roof of the nation’s hamlets. One cannot preach religion or democracy to empty stomachs.

President Sirisena told the New York Times this week, “I took over a country isolated by the international community. The main challenge I faced was to win over the international community. I believe these efforts have borne fruit.”

As evidence of Sirisena’s achievements, Lanka’s US Ambassador Prasad Kariyawasam jumped in to tell the NYT journalist that the president had been offered a seat at the head table at lunch with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with US President Obama and Russian President Putin as guests. The menu included smoked trout and cucumber timbale, caramelised beef short ribs and spiced wild berry compote. Good. Awesome. But Maithripala Sirisena should do well to remember that if he fails to deliver the demanded goods, it will not be at the High Table in the UN’s Delegates Lounge he will be spending his time he is next in Big Apple but down in the UN kitchens washing the dishes.