{"id":116475,"date":"2013-12-09T11:35:17","date_gmt":"2013-12-09T06:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=116475"},"modified":"2013-12-15T12:34:36","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T07:04:36","slug":"south-african-assistance-is-best-alternative-to-international-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/south-african-assistance-is-best-alternative-to-international-investigation\/","title":{"rendered":"South African Assistance Is Best Alternative To International Investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jehan Perera<\/span><\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Jehan<\/a>

Jehan Perera<\/p><\/div>\n

There has been speculation that the government will soon be setting up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission<\/span><\/a> (TRC) on the lines of the one made famous by South Africa after its transition from apartheid to democratic governance.\u00a0 Government sources have disclosed that the possibility of South African assistance to Sri Lanka was discussed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/span><\/a> and South African President Jacob Zuma<\/span><\/a> on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting last month in Colombo.\u00a0\u00a0 This bilateral meeting was preceded by several visits to South Africa by members of the Sri Lankan government and opposition.\u00a0 There was also a major South Africa- Sri Lanka joint conference on reconciliation that took place just prior to CHOGM in which South African experts on participated.\u00a0 President Rajapaksa\u2019s visit to South Africa to attend the funeral of the iconic peacemaker Nelson Mandela<\/span><\/a> will provide yet another opportunity for possible collaboration to be discussed.<\/p>\n

The urgency in regard to setting up a new type of commission of investigation comes in the aftermath of the Commonwealth Summit during which the British Prime Minister David Cameron<\/span><\/a> declared his intention to pursue the issue of accountability for human rights violations in the last phase of Sri Lanka\u2019s war.\u00a0\u00a0 With the UN Human Rights Council to meet in Geneva in March 2014, there is a prospect of increased confrontation between the government and sections of the international community on the issue of accountability.\u00a0 The government has taken strong exception to the announcements by leaders of countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada that they will insist on an independent international investigation into the last phase of Sri Lanka\u2019s war unless the Sri Lankan government itself sets up a credible process of investigation prior the March meeting in Geneva.<\/p>\n

Regardless of Sri Lankan displeasure, however, the international pressure is growing more rather than less.\u00a0 The French humanitarian organization, Action Against Hunger (ACF-France) which lost 17 members of its staff in Trincomalee during the last phase of the war in the east in 2006, is the latest to join the international call for an independent international investigation into the past.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ACF\u2019s report into what happened gives the reasons why.\u00a0 The report is titled \u201cThe Truth Revealed about the Assassination of 17 Humanitarian Aid Workers in Sri Lanka.\u201d\u00a0 The aid workers, 16 ethnic Tamils and one Muslim, were killed when government forces took over Muttur.\u00a0 The ACF statement claims that the perpetrators were from the government\u2019s security forces and that there was a cover up at high levels.\u00a0 The identity of the perpetrators was contested at the time of the incident with government spokespersons strongly denying the culpability of the security forces in the killings.<\/p>\n

International Spotlight<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the eastern campaign was successfully accomplished the government took pride in the fact that civilian casualties had been virtually zero.\u00a0\u00a0 But the allegation that the 17 aid workers were the victims of the security forces has not gone away.\u00a0\u00a0 It was bound to remain in the international spotlight.\u00a0 The international humanitarian system depends for its very survival on the guarantee of maximum security to those who work on behalf of people trapped in war zones.\u00a0\u00a0 The failure of the government to hold an independent and credible investigation into those killings has been one of the reasons for the general erosion of the government\u2019s credibility with regard to its denials of responsibility for civilian deaths and wartime atrocities.\u00a0\u00a0 On the other hand, if an investigation had taken place and the perpetrators on the ground at that time identified, the leaderships of the government and military might not have been under international scrutiny, as they are today.<\/p>\n

It was in recognition of the gravity of the Muttur incident and other such incidents that the Presidentially-appointed Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC<\/span><\/a>) decided to go beyond its mandate.\u00a0 Although not specifically empowered to look into individual acts of killings and other human rights violations, the LLRC made its own recommendations in regard to this incident and to a few other serious and controversial ones.\u00a0\u00a0 Apart from the Muttur killings, these included the killing of five students on Trincomalee beach [ para 9:120], the Channel 4 allegations of battlefield excesses [para 9.39],\u00a0 the killing of 600 policemen by the LTTE [para 9.207] and the alleged disappearance of LTTE surrendees [para 4.242 -4.258, 9.23]. The LLRC stated that there was a duty to ascertain more fully the circumstances under which such incidents could have occurred, and if such investigations disclose wrongful conduct, to prosecute and punish the wrong-doers and provide appropriate redress to next of kin as a gesture that would help the victims to come to terms with personal tragedy.<\/p>\n

However, the statement issued by ACF with regard to the killing of their workers accuses the Sri Lankan government of not having sought to find the truth.\u00a0 It alleges that the killers were protected by the Sri Lankan authorities at the highest levels and describes an official investigation into the killing as characterized by the systematic destruction of evidence and multiple irregularities.\u00a0 On this basis, ACF has demanded an independent international investigation.\u00a0 The failure of the government to conduct a credible investigation at the time of the incident, or even afterwards as the LLRC recommended, highlights the problem of credibility that the government now faces.\u00a0 This is the basis of the ever increasing international demand for an independent international investigation into the past.<\/p>\n

Best Option<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the context of the failure of previous government commissions to deliver the expected results, getting international support for yet another commission is going to be difficult.\u00a0 At a minimum, for the process to be domestically and internationally credible, the establishment of any new commission will require bipartisan government \u2013 opposition support that includes the UNP, TNA and SLMC.\u00a0 TNA Parliamentarian M A Sumanthiran<\/span><\/a> speaking in Parliament has offered such support provided there is international involvement in the process. There also needs to be significant changes in the enabling environment.\u00a0\u00a0 In South Africa many persons faced charges in the Courts and the TRC was a forum for confessions by the accused with amnesty granted only if there was a full and fair disclosure. The victims had no fears of intimidation or revenge attacks on them when they gave evidence before the Commission.\u00a0 This requires a Witness Protection Law and the independence of the judiciary and the police will need to be secured.<\/p>\n

Creating a conducive environment for the truth to emerge could prove to be difficult to the government which has got accustomed to controlling processes as much as the truth. As a result, the government appears to be considering an easier option, which is to focus on the LLRC recommendations on accountability and implement them more fully to meet the expectations of the international community.\u00a0 The problem with the government’s proposed implementation of the accountability recommendations of the LLRC is two-fold.\u00a0 The first is that the international community has always taken the position that the accountability provisions within the LLRC are weak. This is understandable, as looking into the human rights violations of the past were not part of the LLRC mandate.\u00a0 The LLRC took this issue up on its own.\u00a0 The second is that even where the government has set about trying to implement the recommendations of the LLRC, they have done it in a way that is half hearted.<\/p>\n

Therefore, in order to ensure the success of any proposed truth and reconciliation process, it is important that the Sri Lankan government should be able to answer its detractors and convince them that it is not engaging in a time-buying ploy to thwart the call for an independent international inquiry into allegations of serious human rights violations and war crimes.\u00a0 The role of South Africa would be to ensure that the highest standards of transparency and that there will be fairplay to all sides, not only targeting the government.\u00a0 Such a partnership with South Africa in pursuing the path of truth and reconciliation can go a considerable part of the way to win over many undecided countries to support a nationally driven process of truth and reconciliation but which has international involvement.\u00a0 At the present time it seems that a properly constituted and mandated TRC with South African support is the best option to transform Sri Lanka\u2019s internal and external relationships in a positive direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":42344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"\nSouth African Assistance Is Best Alternative To International Investigation - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/south-african-assistance-is-best-alternative-to-international-investigation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"South African Assistance Is Best Alternative To International Investigation - 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