The war, war crimes, the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and international justice

(Part 1)

by Rajasingham Jayadevan

(January, 16, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) The unofficial war between the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) during Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) officially ended today (16/1) and formal declaration of war either by public pronouncement or by conduct is awaited from either parties.

Both warring parties are expected to come under sharp scrutiny by the international community when the war officially commences. The end of CFA has been solemnly welcome by an incident of serious war crime in the early hours today (16/1) in the Southern Sinhala heartland.

Though LTTE has subscribed to the Geneva Conventions on human rights, it is an illegitimate outfit and will sink to any depth to sustain its survival. But GOSL as a legitimate body and is accountable for its conduct.

UN High Commissioners for Human Rights Louise Arbour’s warning to both conflicting parties cannot be taken lightly. She warned ‘An intensification of hostilities will likely have a devastating effect on the human rights of many Sri Lankans from all communities’ and the High Commissioner noted that ‘international law obliges all parties to protect civilians without discrimination and includes prohibitions against the arbitrary deprivation of life, arbitrary detention, forced displacement, enforced disappearances, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and also forbids the recruitment and deployment of children as soldiers.’

Section 30 (1) of the constitution of Sri Lanka states: ‘There shall be a President of the Republic of Sri Lanka, who is the Head of the State, the Head of the Executive and of the Government, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.’ The constitution further empowers the President to go for wars and this put him in a prime position to justify the conduct of the forces under his command in the field.

Photo: President Mahinda Rajapakse -the ‘Commander in Chief of Armed Forces’

So far, all what President Mahinda Rajapakse has done as ‘Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces’ is to prepare for the impending war. The war machinery has been fully geared to do all what it suppose to do in a war. War history of Sri Lanka has proved nastiness of the government military operations when war crimes were committed behind the closed doors within the war theatre. The present stage of the war is the product of failures of the successive governments to sensibly deal with the low level agitations of the minority Tamils demanding just treatment to be accommodated as part of the Sri Lankan society.

The civilian elected President had made strong public statements about the war and even has created the ground situation to execute it. Abrogation of CFA resulted in the peace monitoring mission (SLMM) leaving the war theatre and the media too as usual is kept at arms length to dish out the government claims and to prevent reporting the truth from the field.

The President had not made any public statement to confirm how he intends to save the civilians population, when he conducts his war presiding as the ‘Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces’. The Sri Lankan army which has a proven record of inhuman acts against civilian population is given a blank cheque to persecute the impending war. The President has not declared the standards expected from the forces when they were executing an unofficial war against the LTTE until now and his record on this is very pathetic indeed. Many civilians in the north were killed for various reasons and by various means by the forces.

With the effective end of the CFA, will the President make a public statement or an official notification to confirm how his forces will respect human rights when they execute the war? Will he tell in his statement what mechanisms have been created to deal with human rights violations and war crimes by the forces? Will he confirm how accountable the government will be to respond to serious violations by the forces?

As the ‘Commander in Chief of the Forces’ he must be made to become accountable to the conduct of the forces as the power flows from him to his subordinates to the ground level forces.

With the heavy infiltration of the racist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) supporters and sympathisers into the forces and with their established power base in the South, this war is expected to take a nasty turn. Some say this war will be nastier than the previous wars.

As the ‘Commander in Chief of the Forces’ the President must be held fully responsible for war crimes emanating from this war. The international community cannot watch patiently when the ‘Commander in Chief of the Forces’ does not provide firm directions to his forces, giving scant regard to human rights and allow them to go on the spree as they have done during major Eelam Wars in the past.