The fact that the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) that began public sittings this week was forced down our throats by the United States is no secret.
The US wanted a wider participatory role for the International Community and the Sri Lankan Government was able to fend that off. But it clearly showed that, like in the much worse case of the Indians forcing the dead-duck Provincial Council system down our throats in 1987 on the pretext of devolution of power, the Americans were able to force this Commission on us on the basis of reconciliation.
While some might well argue that the US ought to have had its own commission in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, what it did was to let events take their natural course in the immediate post-Vietnam war years. Today, US-Vietnam relations are vibrant as ever and it's business as usual without having had the need for any commissions.
The name of the LLRC - "lessons learnt" denotes that there is a presumption that there are lessons to be learnt from what was the single-worst post-Independence crisis this country faced - the separatist insurgency in the North and East. Some dubbed it an 'ethnic problem' while others insisted that it was an armed insurrection in ethnic garb.
There might, therefore, be a tendency to shift the weight of evidence that is to be given before this Commission on the 'ethnic problem', something that has been hyped-up over the years, especially in foreign capitals.
While there is no gainsaying that there was indeed an ethnic element to this crisis, it was not an exclusively ethnic issue. To go down the road that this was merely an ethnic problem would be fatal. Its origins can be traced to the deprivation of educational opportunities and jobs for the youth, something that was no different to the rural Sinhala youth in the South which we saw boil over in the 1971 insurgency. The discrimination of the minorities within the minorities on grounds of the hierarchical social system - or the caste system of the South, but even more heavy-handed in the North and East -- was another factor.
The lack of opportunities for the youth, both the Sinhala youth and the Tamil youth in terms of employment and politics due to the stringent social structure was almost identical. Their chances of getting a nomination on a party ticket to contest an election leave alone contesting and winning a seat to Parliament under the old Westminster system were as good as a snowball in hell.
In their opinion, there was no way to break the shackles of this obstructionist socio-economic-political order other than to tear it down from its foundations by force of arms. The political mainstream was out of bounds for them and more so in the North and East. What the Sinhala youth did first in the South was what was emulated by their Tamil brethren in the North and East. In many ways, it was the proportional representation (PR) system that paved the way for representatives of such downtrodden and neglected segments of society to enter Parliament and be part and parcel of the mainstream of politics of their country.
There was the geo-political factor too. India exploited the social unrest in the North and East to destabilise a country whose economy had 'taken off' after 1977 and impose its hegemony in this part of the sub-continent.
Then there was the police report dated November 16, 1970 by the Superintendent of Police, Northern Province, R. Sundaralingam (later with Interpol) under the heading 'Smuggling and Politics of the North' where he informed the authorities of the growing nexus between the Sri Lankan smugglers at Velvettithurai, the influx of Tamil Nadu political literature and the connections with the Federal Party extremists like Appapillai Amirthalingam. This report was never 'actioned' and nobody in either the Defence or the Political Establishment in Colombo nipped the separatist movement in the bud despite the writing on the wall.
Will the LLRC go into all these aspects as well? It must. Then only will there be lessons learnt. By being mandated to go into the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) of 2002 there is a justifiable perception that this exercise has some other agenda, something that smacks of political expediency.
One would not expect the Commissioners appointed to go down that road, for a certainty. And it was heartening to have noted that at least the first witness who came to give evidence before the Commission this week narrated a balanced account of the CFA. He showed its many flaws, but also pointed out that it was the then Government that co-authored the CFA through its dogged implementation, that engineered the split of the LTTE war machinery with the breakaway of the Karuna faction and the Eastern Command. The LLRC has been fashioned somewhat on the model of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SATRC) which sat following the collapse of apartheid in that country. The SATRC ventured away from the Nuremburg Trials in post-war Germany. Its brief was to implement restorative justice rather than retributive justice as was the case in Nuremburg. It had wide powers to even grant amnesty to those who accepted apartheid crimes.
The Sri Lankan LLRC does not have such wide powers and does not need them. The Sri Lankan situation is nowhere close to the South African situation where a minority ruled over the majority on the basis of colour.
The SATRC is generally, though not universally, accepted as a successful model -- a mechanism for reconciliation with countries like Peru and even Canada adopting it. In South Africa, the whites were not very receptive to its deliberations and some blacks rejected its powers to grant amnesty. Its Chairman, Desmond Tutu was to concede in his report that "All of us South Africans must know that reconciliation is a long haul and depends not on a Commission but on all of us making our contribution. It is a national project after all is said and done".
Similarly in Sri Lanka, while the Commission continues its deliberations, the Government and indeed, the people themselves must through tangible measures and intangible efforts, continue to break down the barriers that have come up over these past painful years, if indeed the country is to forge ahead as a united nation sans internal strife and external pressure. |
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