Editorial

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has taken great pains to explain why a UN Special Rapporteur with the imposing title ‘For the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence’ is in Sri Lanka these days. Appointed by the UNHRC (United Nations Human Rights Council), everyone is keen to say he is not on the UN staff and is an independent expert on a fact-finding mission.

The rub is that in September 2018, he will make his recommendations to the UNHRC, where a resolution hangs like a sword of Damocles over this country, calling for an investigation into allegations of violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), particularly during the final military campaign to defeat the LTTE in 2009.

According to the UNHRC website, the Special Rapporteur’s brief is to “examine the progress made in redressing the legacies of massive past violations and abuses, including those that resulted from a conflict that spanned more than 25 years”. While there is no Sri Lankan over eight years who does not know of the violence and trauma of that conflict, the UNHRC which is supposed to oversee an independent investigation has already prejudged that “massive” violations and abuses have occurred.

The Ministry, however, has a different take on the envoy’s visit. It has gone the extra distance to explain that his visit is merely to advise the Government and make recommendations, which he will submit to the UNHRC, and that it is up to the Government whether to take those recommendations on board.

One may find it difficult to argue with the Ministry’s position if only it doesn’t cut into what the visiting diplomat himself says. “My visit aims to review the progress made thus far,” and refers to the implementation of transitional justice. Transitional justice is judicial and non-judicial measures that are implemented to redress human rights abuses – and include criminal prosecutions.

The Ministry is, therefore, straining to allay growing public concern that this Government will capitulate before continuing international pressure from some quarters only, to investigate and punish those who committed violations of IHL; not a good thing with local elections round the corner.

That the UN Special Rapporteur is in Sri Lanka for more than a whistle-stop visit, unlike his colleagues, is good. He has been scheduled to meet Government Ministers and others as well as visit several cities. He should also discard his official garb of a Special Rapporteur and like an ordinary tourist, walk about in a pair of shorts in Wellawatte or Wattala, drop in at a mercantile firm, and get a flavour of real life in Sri Lanka after the conflict. He should have a chat – as a tourist, with some of the Lankan Diaspora throwing their Canadian dollars at five star pubs and buying real estate in and around Colombo.

On his visit to the North, he should break off his official programme and speak to the ‘doing Diaspora’ and ask for their views on the ‘talking Diaspora’ about rebuilding the war ravaged areas.

The Special Rapporteur must be mindful that his official meetings only feed into the fringe elements on both sides, in the North and in the South. They only help whip up communal fervour, with one side claiming international actors will save “us” and the other that they will damn “us”. In that process, the Special Rapporteur, whether he likes it or not, will contribute towards the opposite of his core mandate.

The concerns of people who are thinking of genuine ways of reconciliation, who are concerned about restarting their lives and healing the wounds of war, will not be served by an internationalised drama. Their pleas will be drowned out amidst nationalist groups screaming of conspiracy.

The people of the North are struggling to return to farming and fishing, to find jobs and educate their children, to eke out a living in an economy still in shambles. Production and employment are both at abysmal levels, with young people seeking to leave for better lives abroad. Micro-finance banks are playing Shylock. The psychological and physical scars need healing; large numbers live in substandard housing while many are buried under a mountain of debt.

Basic requirements such as water are often not met. Jaffna has been struggling with poor quality water even before the end of the war in 2009. It has only got worse. Hospitals and schools are under-resourced. The North is still a shadow of its pre-conflict years.

The Northern Provincial Council has been in operation since 2013 but a common lament of ordinary people is that neither those politicians nor the ones in the mainstream — those that will meet the Special Rapporteur in air-conditioned comfort to speak on behalf of constituents they hardly see — address their everyday struggles; the ones that keep them from meaningfully resuming their lives and forging a future for their children.

One would hope the Special Rapporteur, who is of Colombian origin will take a cue from the transition justice experience of his own country at the end of a protracted insurgency with its attendant practical difficulties rather than some academic approach from a New York University law school.

In Sri Lanka, the armed guerrillas repeatedly refused peace deals (unlike in Colombia) and had to be defeated on the battlefield. The special envoy will know there is no ‘one size fits all’ solutions to reconciliation. For instance, when his mandate is to “guarantee non-recurrence” will he be able to guarantee India will not stoke the fires of an armed insurgency in Sri Lanka again, or can he address the issue of caste discrimination which was partly at the root of the northern as well as southern insurgencies? These are imponderables well beyond the UN envoy’s remit, matters that even a new Constitution cannot resolve.

The Government has over invested its political capital on the UNHRC Resolution. Every time a Special Rapporteur comes along, it entails more burdens, obligations — and criticisms. It only adds to the Government’s inventory of problems, not solutions.