The struggle to account for war crimes committed during the civil conflict in Sri Lanka (prior posts here and here) has taken several interesting turns of late. Let's start by scrolling back to June, when Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed a U.N. Panel of Experts to investigate violations of human rights and humanitarian law during the conflict in Sri Lanka. President Mahindra Rajapaksa's administration called the appointment of the panel a violation of its sovereignty, accusing the West of applying double standards. Hundreds of Sri Lankans, including Buddhist monks, responded to the creation of the panel by protesting outside the U.N.'s offices in Colombo, burning an effigy of Ban Ki-Moon and staging a five-day hunger strike. When police arrived to break the siege and escort U.N. officials out of their compound, the Sri Lankan Defense Secretary (and brother of the President) Gotabaya Rajapaksa ordered the police to leave.In response to the panel, President Rajapaksa created an eight-member Commission on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation charged with investigating events occurring between February 2002 and May 2009 -- a vague mandate that requires neither analysis of violations of international law nor identification of those responsible for such violations. The Commission held its first public hearings in Colombo, the capital, last week, and held two more hearings this week in the northern, predominantly Tamil town of Vavuniya.
Last week, the U.S. State Department's Office of War Crimes Issues submitted a report to Congress raising concerns about the Commission's ambiguous
mandate and questioning the independence and impartiality of its members, its failure to establish a witness protection program, its lack of consultations with the Tamil community, and potential government limitations on the scope of the inquiry.
Despite these flaws, many Tamils came forward and testified before the Commission over the weekend, bearing witness to the disappearance of loved ones at the hands of the military and unidentified militia. On the other side of Alice's looking glass, Defense Secretary Rajapaksa testified before the Commission on Tuesday that the Sri Lankan army did everything possible to avoid civilian casualties during the war, and blamed the United Nations for failing to prevent the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam from using civilians as shields.
Though the UN Panel of Experts has yet to finalize its report, it's quite unlikely that it will share either Rajapaksa's view of responsibility for the war crimes in Sri Lanka. The situation presents quite a puzzle for theorists of transitional justice, with sharply contested versions of the "truth" and seemingly little space for common ground. The widespread resentment of the U.N. suggests that a regional body might be a more effective sponsor of investigations, though Asia's regional human rights mechanisms are hardly up to the task. With Buddhist monks siding with the government's position, it will be difficult to find a relatively neutral moral authority, though the question is surely worth careful study. The EU's decision to withdraw trade concessions worth $150 million in response to the Sri Lankan government's human rights record is an interesting one; time will tell whether this will prove an effective stick or a provocation to further anti-Western tirades. An approach that engages with the government's perspective may be more successful in extracting concessions, but would require quite a delicate balancing act. After 25 years of war, shared truths will take time and care to construct.
Last week, the U.S. State Department's Office of War Crimes Issues submitted a report to Congress raising concerns about the Commission's ambiguous
mandate and questioning the independence and impartiality of its members, its failure to establish a witness protection program, its lack of consultations with the Tamil community, and potential government limitations on the scope of the inquiry.Despite these flaws, many Tamils came forward and testified before the Commission over the weekend, bearing witness to the disappearance of loved ones at the hands of the military and unidentified militia. On the other side of Alice's looking glass, Defense Secretary Rajapaksa testified before the Commission on Tuesday that the Sri Lankan army did everything possible to avoid civilian casualties during the war, and blamed the United Nations for failing to prevent the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam from using civilians as shields.
Though the UN Panel of Experts has yet to finalize its report, it's quite unlikely that it will share either Rajapaksa's view of responsibility for the war crimes in Sri Lanka. The situation presents quite a puzzle for theorists of transitional justice, with sharply contested versions of the "truth" and seemingly little space for common ground. The widespread resentment of the U.N. suggests that a regional body might be a more effective sponsor of investigations, though Asia's regional human rights mechanisms are hardly up to the task. With Buddhist monks siding with the government's position, it will be difficult to find a relatively neutral moral authority, though the question is surely worth careful study. The EU's decision to withdraw trade concessions worth $150 million in response to the Sri Lankan government's human rights record is an interesting one; time will tell whether this will prove an effective stick or a provocation to further anti-Western tirades. An approach that engages with the government's perspective may be more successful in extracting concessions, but would require quite a delicate balancing act. After 25 years of war, shared truths will take time and care to construct.
