Necessary to both address and redefine war crimes

| by Jehan Perera

(October 11, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Today, the Sri Lankan government is under international pressure on account of war crimes that were allegedly committed in the last phase of the war. The Canadian Prime Minister has said that he may not attend the Commonwealth Heads of State summit to be held in Sri Lanka in 2013. Legal cases against Sri Lankan government representatives have been filed in US and other courts alleging war crimes and serious human rights violations. There is every likelihood that Sri Lanka will become a major issue for discussion and possibly become even a subject for a resolution at the forthcoming meeting of the UN’s Human Rights Council in Geneva in March next year.

The war in Sri Lanka lasted for nearly thirty years. There were atrocities in the previous decades also, but with no extraordinary pressure for war crimes investigations as is occurring today. There is a greater human rights consciousness in the world regarding Sri Lanka than in the past. Even as humanitarian crises occur in other parts of the world, most notably in Libya, the pressure on Sri Lanka for what occurred in the past mounts day by day.

There is a need to learn from the experience of other countries that faced similar post-war challenges and have become a model of post-conflict hope and reconciliation. In making this shift from confrontation with the international community to cooperation, the government might wish to consider the experience of other countries.

When Sri Lanka’s war was being fought to its bitter end there was a great deal of pressure on the government to negotiate rather than take the war to a final bloody conclusion. The tragedy of Sri Lanka’s war was that it was internal, between sons and daughters of the nation. It is noteworthy that there has been no international demand on the part of the international community for a negotiated end to the war in Libya perhaps because it is seen as a threat to the world at large. Former President Muammar Gaddafi is reported to have offered to negotiate and proposed that he would be the non-executive head of state of a new Libya, but no one took up his offer.

The need for consistency in the use of international standards of human rights has come up in the case of the war in Libya. For over seven months there have been military bombardments of Libya by NATO forces with sanction from the United Nations. The tragedy that has occurred in the city of Sirte, hometown of the deposed Libyan leader Gaddafi, has been in slow motion for weeks. How many thousands would have died is anyone’s guess as the military forces of the new Libyan administration pound the city with artillery supported by air bombing by NATO forces.

Worthy response

There is general international acceptance that Libya was under a brutal dictator people wanted to rid themselves of. This is why NATO forces intervened to protect the civilians who were fighting at the risk of their lives against that dictatorship. But, the war there has been dragging on for months and those who fight for the fallen President appear to be willing to give their lives to prevent a change of government. The civilians who managed to flee the city of Sirte and were interviewed on television did not seem to be overjoyed, and did not appear to welcome the NATO backed forces who had destroyed their homes.

However, with regard to Sri Lanka there is an important expectation of the international community that is being stated repeatedly and to which the government must make a worthy response. It is that there must be a credible process of ascertaining the fate of the people who lost their lives in the last battles and accountability of those who committed human rights violations that amounted to war crimes. The government did not permit anyone from either the international agencies or media to go into the battle zones. As a result there is no reliable account of what happened, how many people died or what their fate was. It is a basic matter of justice that the affected families should know what happened to their members who did not make it out alive.

There is a need to learn from the experience of other countries that faced similar post-war challenges and have become a model of post-conflict hope and reconciliation. In making this shift from confrontation with the international community to cooperation, the government might wish to consider the experience of other countries. The instinct of a government that has won a war once thought to be unwinnable by defying international expectations might be to fight once again when faced with opposition. But, the better way would be to cooperate with the international community, focus on the economy and become an example to other post-war societies.

There is also a need to identify a consensual view internationally of what is a war crime. Why were the weeks of encirclement, siege and final bombardment of the city of Sirte by forces of the new Libyan administration and NATO bomber planes not a war crime? The answers to this and other questions are not what the big powers of the world should decide on by themselves with their veto powers in the UN Security Council. If Sri Lanka can handle its war crimes challenge by taking the best examples from the world, it will be able to contribute to a more just and legitimate international order.

More forthcoming

Although the government’s initial position was that there were no civilian casualties due to a "zero tolerance for civilian casualties" policy, it has been more forthcoming in recent times. It has stated that the nature of the military operations against a foe such as the LTTE inevitably involved civilian casualties. The government needs to follow up on this admission with an independent and credible inquiry that takes off from where its Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission will stop. The LLRC’s primary mandate was not to ascertain what happened in the last phase of the war, but was to look into the causes of the breakdown of the peace process and the consequences that flowed from that.

The Sri Lankan government’s refusal to accept an independent international inquiry into what happened in the last phase of the war could to be considered in the light of what other countries are doing and are getting away with. But, this does not make what happened right. Two wrongs do not make one right. An accounting of what happened in the whole course of our thirty year war would be Sri Lanka’s testament to the international community and to the Sri Lankan people that never again would such a situation be permitted to arise. There needs to be compensation to victims and deterrent action to perpetrators that is devised and implemented by Sri Lankans themselves.

To the extent that Sri Lanka makes a genuine effort to be accountable to its people and the world, it will gain the moral stature to join with countries that are not actors in the world of violence and double standards. It is with countries that do not act as big powers that the future of international morality lies. The experience of other countries that have gone through similar traumatic experiences, such as South Africa, East Timor, Argentina, Rwanda and former Yugoslavia are there to instruct us in charting our own path to reconciliation within the country and with the world.