Beyond accountability: the struggle for coexistence in Sri Lanka

AHILAN KADIRGAMAR and MAHENDRAN

THIRUVARANGAN 2 June 2015
The promised report of a UN investigation into war crimes in Sri Lanka will
achieve little unless accompanied by real introspection by both Tamil and
Sinhala communities. (Tamil), (Sinhalese)
Sri Lankas civil war ended in May 2009. For years, the lack of accountability for the
grave human rights abuses committed during the last phase of the war has seemed for
many actors to be the sole issue of concern. Powerful states, international human
rights organizations, vocal sections of the Tamil diaspora, alongside some NGOs and
courageous activists in the country, brought increasing international pressure to bear
on the authoritarian Rajapaksa regime. This culminated in March 2014 when the UN
Human Rights Council (UNHRC) established an investigation into the violations during
the war.
The UN report is likely to be released in September. In January 2015, a wide spectrum
of Sri Lankan society democratically overthrew the Rajapaksa regime, electing a new
government under President Maithripala Sirisena. It is uncertain how it will respond to
the UN report and whether it will pursue accountability. What is certain is that the
international effort for accountability and the national debate about it have both been
deeply politicized. The UN report itself may do little to promote the introspection by
both Tamil and Sinhala communities that is so urgently needed to achieve genuine
reconciliation.
Geopolitical reasons, particularly the proximity of the Rajapaksa regime to China, led
the United States to sponsor the UNHRC resolution against Sri Lanka. The report it
called for was to have been published in March 2015. But when President Sirisena

was elected, interventions by powerful western states and India led the UN to delay
publication, giving the new government a chance to pursue its own investigations.
However, Tamil nationalist sections both in Sri Lanka and in the diaspora vehemently
protested even this modest delay.
For the survivors, accounting for the war affected, for the dead and the disappeared, is
necessary. But their calls for truth and for engagement with the UN investigation are
mediated by nationalist politics and by the interests and agendas of the international
human rights community. Such politicisation and internationalization of the lives of the
survivors disregards their socio-economic suffering that continues after the war; or it
attempts to equate this suffering solely to attacks by the state.

Flickr/Veronica Olivotto (Some rights reserved)

A Tamil man converses with a Sinhalese man.

Indeed, accountability is linked to memory, to the past and also to the future. It requires

collective introspection on the part of communities. It is precisely such introspection

that is lacking in Lankan society, particularly among the nationalists in the Sinhala
Buddhist and Tamil communities. Their nationalist propaganda, alongside western
portrayals of Sri Lanka as a place only of ethnic conflict, and where only war crimes
and accountability appear to matter, debilitates processes of truth-seeking and
polarises communities.
An earlier report by a panel mandated by the UN Secretary-General in March 2011
alleged that in the last months of the war the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
held thousands of Tamil civilians as hostages, forcibly recruited youth and children,
and killed many who attempted to escape. Public reflection by Tamils on these LTTE
atrocities is necessary to chart an alternative political path for the future; and to
change the Sinhala communitys views on the genuine grievances of minorities as
distinct from the LTTEs politics. The LTTEs brutal attacks against Sinhalese and
Muslims during the civil war need to be acknowledged by the Tamil community, no less
than the Sinhala community needs to recognise the brutality of the state which led to
the alienation felt by many Tamils. Unfortunately, Tamil nationalists avoid such
reflection, and attack or attempt to isolate Tamils critical of the LTTE; this further stifles
critical thinking.
In southern Sri Lanka, Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists use anti-imperialism as a
convenient cover to avoid examining the abuses of the State; including the many
massacres, indiscriminate attacks on civilians, and the torturing and disappearing of
thousands, which are etched in the minds and bodies of the Tamil survivors of the war.
While it is true that the interests of powerful western states and other emerging

powerful states shape the agendas of supranational organizations like the United
Nations, political engagement in Sri Lanka cannot be in opposition to imperialism
alone. The struggle is at many levels including vigilance against imperialism,
challenging the majoritarian national security state and so-called liberation
movements, all of which undermine the rights and aspirations of the people.
Local understandings of human rights and accountability are
shaped by the discourse on these issues by both the state and
nationalist forces at home, and powerful actors including NGOs
abroad. For instance, when the LTTE took advantage of the
Norwegian-mediated ceasefire and peace process in the 2000s,
and persecuted Tamil dissenters and recruited children, the failure
of local and international human rights organizations to initially
register their protest gave human rights a bad name. Similarly,
today, these organizations remain silent on the polarizing
discourses propagated by Tamil nationalist actors in the name of
accountability, including when they brand Tamils who seek to
engage the state and the Sinhala community as traitors.

Local
understandings
of human rights
and
accountability
are shaped by
the discourse on
these issues by
both the state
and nationalist
forces at home,
and powerful
actors including
NGOs abroad.

A local human rights group, the University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna)
consistently throughout the war recorded the abuses by all actors, the Sri Lankan
state, the LTTE and the other armed groups. While it exposed some of the worst
human rights abuses, UTHR(J) also saw its role as opening the space for dissent and
introspection among Tamils. Similarly, future human rights initiatives, whether they are
local or international, should recognize that it is only when communities mutually

engage through self-criticism that processes of accountability can lead to their coexistence.
In Sri Lanka, addressing the historic grievances of minorities and the legacy of the long
civil war and its aftermath are mammoth tasks. The oppression of women, the social
exclusion of oppressed castes, the exploitation of the rural and urban under-classes
all must be addressed. All citizens of Sri Lanka, not just those in the north and east
who survived the war, will benefit from the reform of a militarised and centralised state,
the democratisation of an authoritarian political culture and an end to the
dispossession of marginalised peoples. Discussions on the political future of Sri
Lanka, which often reduce the national question to a Sinhala-Tamil ethnic conflict,
should recognize the history of exploitation faced by the up-country Tamils (who came
as colonial indentured labor from India). It should address too the mass violence that
the Sri Lankan Muslim community suffered at the hands of both Sinhala-Buddhist and
Tamil nationalist forces.
The UN investigation and report can polarize as much as reconcile. It is the work of
progressive local actors willing to take a resolute stand including by challenging the
state, chauvinistic forces within their own communities and powerful international
interests, which will ultimately determine the UN reports lasting impact.
Posted by Thavam