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| Change in Sri Lanka will never be a reality, unless Sri Lankans urge for it and work towards it. |
(April 22, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Can the same institution have diagonally opposite views on an issue? It is possible, provided it is an institution like the Roman Catholic Church. Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith from Sri Lanka said that the recent report by the independent panel constituted by the United Nations' Secretary General to study the allegations of war crimes committed in Sri Lanka is a malicious attack by the 'west' upon the nation and its path to recovery from the civil war. The island nation's English language newspaper, The Island, reported the Cardinal's statement on April 19. Responding about similar circumstances in Pakistan, the Catholic Church spared no words to express its anguish concerning the safety of Christians in that country, claiming that the justice institutions in Pakistan are not capable enough to protect minority rights.
The opportunistic reaction of the Roman Catholic Church will not surprise those, who have understood the dubious role it played to undermine the prosecution of General Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator after his arrest in UK, a watershed event in international criminal law and universal jurisdiction. Cardinal Ranjith is the protégée of the same institution, and in that his training has been demonstrably impeccable.
" The United Nations' report on Sri Lanka is slated. None should be surprised if the current administration is able to muster a massive nationalistic movement against any form of criticism against the administration. This is because there is hardly anyone in the country who is capable of understanding that the criticism in the report is not against the Sri Lankans, but against the administration and those who are involved with the running of the country, its institutions, in the past and in the present. The alleged political opposition that will continue their shameless silence will do nothing to instil a sense of unacceptability to the status quo."
Let us leave aside the minority question for the time. Wars, literal and intellectual have been won and lost all over the world, for and against the minorities.
The parallels between Sri Lanka and Pakistan are several, of which an important one is about the functioning of the justice institutions. Justice institutions exist externally in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, but internally they have wilted and have lost its inner core, including its independence. Both countries have gerrymandered their constitutions; mostly to suit the whims of those who held fort in Islamabad and Colombo and evidently to the destruction of the legitimate framework of a democratic administration, turning Pakistan into a military state, where elected governments made cameo appearances and Sri Lanka to have a dictatorial presidency, that ironically sought legitimacy by approaching the people, an exercise for which at least three successive governments in Sri Lanka received ill-founded international appreciation.
It is today history's irony that the same Secretary General of the United Nations who praised the Sri Lankan President within hours after his declared victory in the last election, even when the Election Commission of Sri Lanka was visibly reluctant to declare the election results, a process which his office should have ensured to be undertaken impartially with the support of the administration which was not the case, had to subsequently constitute an international independent panel to look into the allegations of war crimes committed during the last phase of the Elem war. It is a question that is still left unanswered in Sri Lanka whether the election was impartial; given the havoc the war has created upon the social psyche of the island nation and the unquestioned power the president's office enjoyed, to the extent that the main opposition candidate, a military general who led the country's forces to win the war was held in captivity in Colombo, even before the results were declared. That the opposition in Sri Lanka, to the extent to which it exists, had no other candidate to field in the election other than a former military general who had no previous experience in politics or in the running of a nation, speaks volumes about the dearth of intellect and political statesmanship that the country has come to tune with and the absence of sensible options within Sri Lanka's narrow democratic space.
The report leaked initially and soon to be 'officially' published, of the independent panel constituted by the United Nations' Secretary General that has 'studied' the allegations of war crimes has criticised not just the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE, the two parties in the conflict, but also the United Nations itself for not doing enough for the people and the country, that could have probably reduced the miseries of war. In that the report is also an introspection of the international framework that exists today in preventing conflicts and the casualties of war. What matters now however is whether the report could work as a catalyst to bring about change to the unacceptable status quo of affairs, domestically in Sri Lanka, and internationally, within institutions like the United Nations.
Nothing could better help to bring about a change in Sri Lanka, than the Sri Lankans resolving to say enough is enough. For this they will have to introspect about what has befallen upon their country. They will have to inject life into creating a sensible political opposition, for which a functional institutional framework that could nurture democratic debates is required in Sri Lanka. At the moment, situations are such that any voice of internal descent is stifled with the utmost brutality by the administration. In that the President of Sri Lanka is a practitioner of the Bush doctrine, "you are either with me or against me".
The role played, by some of the political parties in Sri Lanka, in the run up of creating this silencing atmosphere is not small. Most of them, by nothing more than inaction; supported the repeated constitutional amendments, most importantly the setting up of the executive presidency; did visibly nothing when those independent bodies constituted after the 17th amendment of the constitution ran out of gas, and thus their legitimacy; when the president, by way of a ill-founded supreme court judgment was declared to be above the constitution the president has sworn to serve, a position which the current president also fortified by way of an amendment to the constitution; are some among many such similar occasions.
Many among the 'empowered elite' of Sri Lanka, in their scramble for finding self-convincing excuses blamed the former Chief Justice, Mr. Sarath Nanda Silva, and even proposed that India is behind Sri Lanka's doom, a comfortable ghost that many in Sri Lanka often pulls out from the closet when they find it uncomfortable to blame themselves for their inaction for letting the ground slip away under their feet. None admitted that the problem in Sri Lanka stems out from the country's absence of sensible institutions that could have created a reasonably level ground for democratic debates. Former Chief Justice Silva, the present President Mahinda and his bulldog like brothers and ministers are mere opportunists who finds it easy to occupy the political and intellectual vacuum that exists in the country. In that these entities are similar in their level of opportunistic engagement of the religious extremists that operate in Pakistan like in the North Western Frontier Provinces.
None admitted that the decay of the independent justice framework in Sri Lanka began much before Silva became the Chief Justice. A proposition that the country has already suffered repeated and crippling assaults upon its intellectual social fabric, also intensified by the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna sponsored and privately undertaken assassinations was not selling currency in Sri Lanka. It probably is still not.
The collective result of the resultant social quagmire is reflected in the stunting of development of all institutional frameworks that could have played a balancing act by fastening accountability and transparency, as inalienable norms in Sri Lanka. Not many spoke, when the police as an institution deteriorated into nothing more than uniformed criminals. Those who spoke were silenced. It is into this environment, the disconnected international community, including the United Nations tried to solve the problems of Sri Lanka by approaching it from an angle limited to resolving ethnic conflict. Indeed a conflict did exist, but hardly anyone bothered to look beyond the surface to find out how could a conflict be resolved without any effort being made to create an institutional environment to augment a rectification process. Active conflict did not exist in many parts of Sri Lanka, the capital included. Those who were persecuted in Colombo and non-Tamil dominated villages and districts were not the Tamils, but Singhalese. They were persecuted for manifold reasons, like to snatch a piece of land or vehicle, or simply to steal money. A fallen justice apparatus could not stand up to the task of protecting the aggrieved. None bothered to intervene. Those who tried were either eliminated or had to flee from the country. This is Sri Lanka for at least the past two decades.
It is in this environment that the new United Nations' report on Sri Lanka is slated. None should be surprised if the current administration is able to muster a massive nationalistic movement against any form of criticism against the administration. This is because there is hardly anyone in the country who is capable of understanding that the criticism in the report is not against the Sri Lankans, but against the administration and those who are involved with the running of the country, its institutions, in the past and in the present. The alleged political opposition that will continue their shameless silence will do nothing to instil a sense of unacceptability to the status quo. In a year, the new report, like many others made by the United Nations in similar circumstances concerning other countries will recede into oblivion.
Change in Sri Lanka will never be a reality, unless Sri Lankans urge for it and work towards it.
(Bijo Francis is a human rights lawyer from India. He can be reached at francisbijo@gmail.com )
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