The need of the hour is for reconciliation through justice

by Shanie

"The nation is at the crossroads of history. The respite from violence must be transformed by galvanizing the collective resources of the nation into a foundation of peace, harmony and development through justice, fair play, empathy and understanding and a genuine effort to remedy the grievances of youth rooted in pervasive injustice and denial of opportunity."


(December 04, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) That was from the report of the Presidential Commission on Youth released over two decades ago, The Commission was appointed in the aftermath of the second southern insurgency. But its conclusions are relevant even today as we struggle to recover from the long northern insurgency and come face to face with the beginnings of another round of student unrest across our university system. Indeed, the need of the hour at the present time is to transform our country by actively promoting reconciliation in our country. This is what many eminent public spirited citizens, like Christopher Weeramantry, Jayantha Dhanapala and many religious leaders, have urged before the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. They have concentrated on addressing the fifth and last of the items under the Commission’s terms of reference, namely, the measures needed to promote national unity and reconciliation.

Reconciliation is not an easy task to achieve. Hurt and divisions in society sometimes go deep and cannot be erased unless conscious and meaningful steps are taken to heal memories. Persons who have been widowed or orphaned because of a suicide bomber or from aerial bombing, persons whose child has been conscripted to fight and then killed in a meaningless war or killed in a land mine explosion or from misdirected shelling, and persons who have seen their loved ones abducted, taken away and then disappear without trace are people with deep hurt. Talking forgiveness and reconciliation to them will have no meaning unless they know that their hurt is genuinely acknowledged and not denied; and that adequate measures are being taken to ensure justice for all of them, irrespective of whether they are Sinhala or Tamil civilians, whether they are families of services personnel or of LTTE cadres.

Memorials and Remembrances

The LTTE set up war heroes cemeteries with headstones to remember their cadres who had been killed in battle. All these cemeteries have now been bulldozed and instead. in selected places, war memorials have been erected for security force personnel killed during the war. The LTTE cadres, whether volunteers or conscripts, remembered in the LTTE cemeteries had families and loved ones who naturally mourned their loss. To obliterate their memory by bulldozing all the headstones was therefore such an insensitive move. The families have no where to mourn the loss of their children or the loved ones. Reconciliation becomes harder when these families know that only those dead from among the services are being selectively remembered with monuments and memorials being erected in various parts of the North and East. There were thousands of civilians who died over the years in this war. Even they are not remembered. Surely, it would promote reconciliation and comfort to the families of the misguided cadres who had fought for the LTTE that their loved ones are remembered, as much as it would to the families of those misguided youths who were killed during the southern insurgences if they are collectively remembered. Memorials and monuments may not be essential for reconciliation but it is counter-productive if they are only selectively erected.

The end of the war in May 2009 was welcomed with relief throughout the country. This should have been nurtured to promote national unity And reconciliation. Instead the government, by commission or omission, encouraged a display of majoritarian supremacism. The government seems intent to continue this by celebrating that as a day of national liberation. This has left a large portion of the minorities in the cold. It would have been far more sensitive and far more helpful in the process of healing and reconciliation if that day were to be observed as a day for National Unity, Peace and Reconciliation.

Tilting at Windmills

This week’s cancellation by the Oxford Union Society of its invitation to President Rajapaksa was an embarrassment not only to the President but also to the country. The natural reaction is to find some scapegoats for this humiliation. UPFA parliamentarians seek shift the blame to fellow parliamentarian Jayalath Jayawardene merely because he was in London last week and, along with Wickremabahu Karunaratne, addressed a gathering in one of the committee rooms in the House of Commons. In reports published earlier, there was no indication that the duo had even referred to the President’s impending visit. It was unpardonable for a senior minister like Dinsh Gunawardene to charge Jayalath Jayawardene of having been present at the Heathrow Airport demonstration when it appears that Jayawardene was not even in UK on that day. President’s Secretary Lalith Weeratunge says that pro-LTTE activists were responsible for having influenced the Oxford Union Society. Weerawansa has bashed everybody from the British Government, the NGOs, to the Sri Lankan High Commissioner and is planning to stage a demonstration outside British High Commission here. It is not known if he will stage another fast unto death. From available reports, it does appear that the President Rajapaksa undertook this unofficial visit to the UK as a public relations exercise to show Sri Lankans, here and abroad that he was not afraid of arrest for war crimes. It turned out to be a public relations disaster for which no one but his advisers should take the blame.

But the larger question remains. Reconciliation being the primary need at this time, the President should be engaging with all sections of Sri Lankans to build unity and peace. There should be ‘U turn’ from the policy of crushing dissent by any means. The country can develop on the social and economic fronts, only if there is development on the political front – ensuring democratic freedoms, ensuring the rule of law and upholding the independence of the judiciary. Justice Weeramantry in his submissions this week to the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission quoted from the President’s Manifesto which he presented to the country at the last Election: "The Mahinda Chinthana of 2010 said that while the present President had been particular1y careful when exercising the powers of the "Executive Presidency", the Executive Presidency had in the past been used "to postpone elections, to topple elected governments, to disrupt the judiciary, to ban political parties, to suppress demonstrations and lead the country towards a violent culture, to sell state institutions at under-valued prices, to defend criminals and to grant concessions to unscrupulous businessmen. Agreements that betrayed the country were entered into using the powers of the Executive Presidency’."

It is left for the country to see how much of the Presidential powers which led to alleged abuses by previous Presidents are now being exercised carefully by the present President. This week, a Deputy Minister who was charged with fraud while being an opposition parliamentarian, was discharged by the Court because the Attorney General found that the original documentary evidence was mysteriously not available. Also this week, in the writ application by Sarath Fonseka against his conviction by the Court Martial, the Attorney General came up with the astounding argument that even if the Court Martial findings were found to be invalid, the imprisonment of Fonseka should stand because the Court Martial findings had already been confirmed by the President and the President’s action cannot be challenged in view of the constitutional immunity be enjoyed!.

The Defence Secretary is reported to have said that the Emergency Regulations continue to be in place only because of the activities of the JVP and TNA. Any country that seeks to promote democratic freedoms needs a strong opposition and a vibrantly free press. Today, it is only the JVP and the TNA in the north who are providing that opposition. They have not infringed any of the laws of the land. Even if they do, the normal laws of the country are quite adequate to deal with any possible infringements. On the contrary, we see activists of those two parties being subject to extra-judicial violence, the emergency regulations being used or abused against them.

Justice Weeramantry closed his submissions to the LLRC with these apt words: "A constitution entrenching power that can be abused by other office holders in the manner described in the Mahinda Chinthana 2010 is not an institutional measure promoting confidence and reconciliation. This is an institutional, administrative and legislative field which has such deep implications for the future of a united Sri Lanka living in harmony, peace and equality under the protect of the law."