{"id":140247,"date":"2015-03-01T01:13:22","date_gmt":"2015-02-28T19:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=140247"},"modified":"2015-03-07T15:32:41","modified_gmt":"2015-03-07T10:02:41","slug":"mangalas-trident-instruments-of-inquisition-into-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/mangalas-trident-instruments-of-inquisition-into-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"Mangala\u2019s Trident: Instruments Of Inquisition Into Sri Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dayan Jayatilleka<\/span><\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/a>

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka<\/p><\/div>\n

Does President Sirisena<\/span><\/a> know what Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera<\/span><\/a> is up to or has he been kept in the dark, which isn\u2019t a safe place to be, depending on the company? Does the Parliament or do Mr. Samaraweera\u2019s Cabinet colleagues know what he is up to\u2014and I don\u2019t mean in his spare time?<\/p>\n

Mr. Samaraweera has fashioned a trident, a three pronged policy on human rights, accountability and reconciliation which undermines Sri Lanka\u2019s sovereignty, national security and national interest. What are the three prongs of the trident?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. An agreement with the UN High Commissioner and his office for a six month interval in which the High Commissioner hopes to gain access to \u201cnew information\u201d which will lead to a \u201cstronger\u201d report in August 2015.<\/li>\n
  2. A domestic mechanism to investigate allegations, which will be \u201cdeveloped\u201d by working together with the UN High Commissioner and his office, and worse still, will involve \u201ctechnical assistance\u201d from \u201cinternational rights watchdogs\u201d i.e. international human rights NGOs\u2014which by the way, are advocacy groups, not recognized or acknowledged sources of \u2018technical assistance\u2019.<\/li>\n
  3. Another process of a Truth Commission to be evolved in conjunction with South Africa, though the South African government has made it explicit that the TRC of that nation is not for export and transplantation.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This is clear from a news item by Dharisha Bastians in the Daily FT<\/em>, amounting to a scoop of sorts. It reads as follows:<\/p>\n

    \u201cA special Task Force on Reconciliation and Transitional Justice has been established within the Foreign Ministry, Minister Mangala Samaraweera said. The Task Force will liaise with other ministries and line agencies working on reconciliation and transitional justice issues, Minister Samaraweera told the Daily FT. \u201cWe didn\u2019t ask for a deferral of the UN investigation report as a delaying tactic. We will take a two-pronged approach with a Truth Commission to advance reconciliation and a domestic mechanism to investigate the allegations of rights abuses,\u201d the Foreign Minister said. Minister Samaraweera, who heads to Geneva for the 28th Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva next week, said the Government was reaching out to the UN and even international rights watchdogs for \u2018technical assistance\u2019 with the domestic mechanism. \u201cWe are also going to be talking to the South Africans regarding the setting up a Truth Commission to help to build trust between communities and promote reconciliation,\u201d<\/em> he said<\/em>.\u201d (\u2018Task Force for Reconciliation and Transitional Justice at Foreign Ministry, Dharisha Bastians, Daily FT<\/em>, Feb 27th<\/sup> 2015)<\/p>\n

    Thus the unelected minority administration of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe<\/span><\/a>, through its Foreign Minister Samaraweera is planning on (a) a Geneva bureaucratic mechanism and inquisitorial process which even our neighbor India voted against, being granted more time and space to ferret out more information (b) a so-called domestic mechanism which will actually be a joint venture with two international partners, not just the one: the Office of the High Commissioner as well as international human rights NGOs which have consistently taken a hysterically prejudiced stance against Sri Lanka, its armed forces and its war of liberation from terrorism. (c) A Truth Commission which is inapplicable to contexts such as the Sri Lankan war.<\/p>\n

    Foreign Minister Samaraweera is using two concepts which make no sense in the Sri Lankan context. The first is that of Transitional Justice<\/strong>.<\/p>\n