Different Stories

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha Secretary, Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights

The Disaster Management and Human Rights Ministry is disturbed by a newspaper report that serious Human Rights violations were committed by the armed forces several months ago. The information is said to have been supplied by Sarath Fonseka in an interview published on Sunday.

Such a claim by Sarath Fonseka is not new. There was also a report some months back of his saying something similar, but claiming responsibility for this himself. This report was a significant component of the American State Department report on possible war crimes. That said he made a speech at his old school, in which he had appeared in triumphal mode. He was reported to have claimed that he 'managed the war like a true soldier' and resisted pressures from others, and thus states that 'We destroyed any one connected with the LTTE'.

That story raised questions which the Government has pledged itself to answer through the committee appointed to report on allegations contained in the State Department report. In fairness to the State Department, it did not assert that Fonseka had incriminated himself, but rather referred to reports which required explication. The Government then is duty bound to question Fonseka with regard to the report. The current interview makes it even more essential that the matter be inquired into.

This interview also raises several other questions. Fonseka still claims overall command responsibility for what took place 'as he supervised the final stages of the war', but he declares that he had no information about this incident until he received it from journalists.

The interview does not mention when this information was received, whether it was before or after the July 10 speech in which he is mentioned previously in Tamilnet and other such sources.

There is no explanation as to why Fonseka did not act on the information he received until an interview designed to promote his political career. Understandably the person who interviewed him did not think it necessary to ask such questions.

The person who conducted this part of the interview was not clearly indicated, though the Editor informs us that she did it herself. Inside the paper there is the text of an interview that seemed to have been given by Fonseka to a reporter who belongs to the family of the Opposition leader, but it seems that that interview too was conducted by the Editor. The separation of the two sections of the interview seems strange, but we are informed that this is common journalistic practice.

The interview is not clear about where Fonseka was when the purported incident took place.

There are stories that he was in fact in China during the final stages of the war, but it is still claimed that he supervised the final stages. If he was not here, then it is understandable that decisions were reached without him, including implementation of the brilliant tactics that ensured the freedom of the tens of thousands who flooded out to safety in the week before the purported incident. But one would have expected that, when he got back to duty, whenever that was, he would have inquired about what had taken place in his absence, and in particular dealt with important issues.

Nothing of that sort seems to have happened. Instead he seems to have concentrated in the week after the victory in trying to catapult the Government into expanding the Army by enormous amounts.

Had he succeeded in that aim, doubtless we would have heard nothing of the current claims, and there would have been no intimate revelations to such journalists. But the Government was quietly, and privately, firm in its resistance to unnecessary additional expenditure that would not have sent the right message to the nation or the world.

And so we are subject now to selective revelations that were earlier presented as part of a personal military triumph. If not for the sake of the Army, if not for the sake of an accurate response as pledged to the State Department report, if only for the sake of human rights for the future, it is desirable that Fonseka be questioned closely now on how he responded to the rumours that were circulating. It is to be hoped too that, in the future, such matters will be dealt with in a more consistent and principled fashion.