Battling the internal enemy | Daily News

Battling the internal enemy

A friend of mine told me “I am not sure of your conclusion that we can’t handle many things at once. GoSL is wasting millions of money and hours in utterly useless things. It needs to priorities and first implement the mandate given to them. As for CTF, rather than acknowledging its recommendations GoSL has rejected them from the very beginning and denied ownership.”

I stood ground and argued back “we cannot agree now to foreign judges and I have repeatedly suggested majority Tamil speaking judges to be used from a selected pool. Why are they against that?” He answered, “The issue is not judges. The judicial system itself is corrupt and is not geared to punish war crimes or crimes against humanity. Therefore, the call for special courts and international judges is valid. Any selection in Sri Lanka will be done by the government which is hell bent to safeguard ‘war heroes'. The most important point is the call for international jurisdiction comes from TAMIL VICTIMS. If we can suggest a better way, we need to engage with victims and discuss with them and find a way forward. Even the recent UN fact finding mission found massive flaws in the judiciary and security forces THAT DEFINITELY NEED REFORM.”

Democratic revolution

Yes we need reforms but we cannot dismiss the democratic revolution made by the people in this country. Nobody could believe a sitting Executive President who mobilized the majoritist establishment in fascistic manner could be defeated. Yet that happened due to the mass intervention led by mostly professionals including lawyers. Latter played an important role. The mass intervention demolished the fascistic enhancement in judiciary and administration. Pro Mahinda chief justice was thrown out by the Bar association activists. No doubt those armed forces are not cleansed in the same way. But investigation has gone to the level of commodore is inspite of intervention of some leaders.

President Sirisena’s Cabinet complains two weeks ago not just for his ministers to hear but for the whole country to know. Not that the likelihood of a silent understanding between the Rajapaksa clan and the higher echelons of the UNP was not known all along, but the President saying it set off a flurry of speculations about the relationship between the President and the UNP, and the future of the unity-government itself. The President’s complain may not have surprised anyone, but his claim at the Cabinet meeting – that if things were left to him he would have done everything in three months, is not viable. We remember that in October last year President Sirisena publicly took to task officials in the CID, FCID and the Bribery Commission for their allegedly disrespectful handling of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Navy Commanders over allegations of abuse of authority and financial misdemeanours in Avant-Garde enterprise.

Political calculations are considered to be the main reason for the general lack of progress in corruption investigations, even total inaction in some instances.

It is commonly suspected that the UNP’s calculation in protecting the Rajapaksas and giving them political space is to keep the SLFP divided and benefit the UNP electorally. On the other hand, President Sirisena, protecting military officials from investigation is necessary to counter the patriotic claims of the Rajapaksas. Some say the political hypocrisy in this triangular relationship is quite transparent. What may not be readily apparent is the cultural common ground over corruption for which all of us are responsible.

War is a man-made disaster that demolishes civilizations made by unknown generations. In the end what are left are not just death, injuries and destruction, but undying suspicion and distrust. To heal, it will take time but great leaders with humanistic ethics could do wanders. They have to stand against plunder and exploitation creating the need to communication, understanding.

Faith can be created in the modern world by standing for equality, autonomy and the right of self determination; and then only sense of correcting the wrong done to a community is possible. In this venture, Lankan Government is harassed and beaten by a fascistic majoritist group making it faltering, despite promises to its own people, as well as to the international community.

Lanka’s three-decade war between basically Sinhala soldiers and Tamil guerrilla military organisation arouse because Lankan government failed to address the grievances of Tamil speaking people. It was seen as a conflict between major Sinhala nationality and the minor Tamil nationality. Tamil clandestine army was named Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the war killed an estimated 100,000 civilians, left many more injured and displaced, and widened a seeming unbridgeable rift between the minority Tamil nationality, and majority Sinhala nationality.

United Nations Human Rights Council

After an October 2015 pledge to the United Nations Human Rights Council to address justice and accountability, Lanka’s Government in 2016 embarked on a nation-wide consultation to find ways to deliver answers. The Government entrusted the task to an 11-member Consultation Task Force (CTF), representing a cross-section of Lanka’s ethnic, regional, and religious groups. Nearly half of the team, including the head of the CTF, was women. The consultation process was a complicated one.

The CTF recruited representatives of local civil society, political, feminist, healthcare and religious leaders as Zonal Task Force members (ZTF), who could conduct consultations on the ground across the various districts and provinces. These findings were accepted as valuable to indicate how human rights and social-economic rights should be improved in a new constitution. However, pressing need was to propose a new constitution sans executive presidency but with a substantial devolution giving power over land and police to the provincial councils. This was undertaken by the investigation carried out by Lal Wijenaike committee. People participated with many valuable proposals. On this basis under the leadership of the Prime Minister discussions are continuing in order to bring a proposal for a new constitution; to be debated in the constitutional council.

Hence it is incorrect to say that Lankan Government has let the important initiative of the CTF to languish. Officials travelling abroad boast about the consultation process and herald it as a signal of the Government’s determination to abide by the Human Rights Council resolution.

However, it has to come behind the effort to resolve Tamil national problem and the problem of executive president. Government report by CTF is not banished into silence. Meanwhile many task force members, both national and zonal, are absorbed in the struggle against fascistic Mahinda group. While many joined the effort with a fair degree of commitment, they are aware that the Lankan State had undertaken many commissions of inquiry which in the end led to no redress so far.

A CTF member described both the exhilaration of the process and the attendant disappointment: “The consultations gave way to an amazing non-patronizing community of support…the best thing about the experience is that people had ideas. But by January 2017, I was wondering: what the hell?” ZTF members, particularly community leaders who have spent years building relationships of trust, feel they are bearing the brunt of public rage over the lack of action. They feel exposed, and are confronted daily by their communities, yet another failed promise but this time by trusted local leaders. “They are very angry with us, people have lost their faith, even with me,” one ZTF member told Human Rights Watch. “And now, I also have lost faith.”

This disappointment is due to misunderstanding of the political crisis. Lankan government is struggling against an internal enemy fed by fascistic ideas. There are sabotage actions taking place throughout the country. Some are obvious some are very subtle.

Facing this menace Yahapalanaya is struggling to satisfy UN human rights conditions. The Government of Lanka has publicly acknowledged the findings of the consultation report and ensures that its recommendations are appropriately implemented through robust justice mechanisms. 


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