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Accountability required in SL to achieve reconciliation: US

Colombo: The US Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour Tom Malinowski said Thursday Sri Lanka has a chance to achieve peace and reconciliation, but that this will require accounting for the "wrongdoing of the guilty", on all sides.

The US will continue to encourage those processes, he added after meeting government officials in Colombo. He is the first high ranking American official to visit Sri Lanka after the change of guard here. The US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected later this month signalling  a thaw in the Sri Lanka-US relations, which have nose dived after  the Rajapaksa regime embraced the Dragon.


“Sri Lanka has a chance now to achieve reconciliation, justice and true peace. That will require, in part, looking backward, to acknowledge the suffering of the innocent and account for the wrongdoing of the guilty, on every side. The United States will continue to encourage that process, because experience has taught us that no society can move forward by burying the past. But our greatest hope is that you will keep moving forward”, he said at a meeting of the Forum on Women’s Role in Post-War Reconciliation.

Malinowski highlighted the role women are playing in developments on the island. “They help the needy and displaced, encouraging people to build secure and prosperous communities. They’re supporting ex-combatants and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, among other human rights abuses, providing counselling and psycho-social services”.

The assistant secretary said the US welcomes the actions taken by Sri Lanka and will do everything in its power to help the country in the "hard choices" that need to be made.


"We welcome actions taken by the Sri Lankan government to rebuild trust with the Sri Lankan people; and we stand ready to support your efforts in establishing just and lasting peace, and while only you can make the hard choices needed to keep moving forward, we will do everything in our power to help you if you do”.

Another important visitor to the island nation these days is Pablo de Greiff, the UN Special Rapporteur for Truth, Justice, Reparations and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) told him rather bluntly that they have no faith in Sri Lankan govt’s war crimes inquiry.  This statement doesn’t come as a surprise given the levels of trust deficit between Jaffna and Colombo.

A TNA delegation led by R Sampanthan met Greiff in Colombo on Thursday.  TNA lawmakers Suresh Premachandran, Selvam Adaikalanathan and M A Sumanthiran were members of the delegation. “We do not have faith in the internal investigation due to be launched by the [Sri Lankan] government into war crimes and human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. War criminals should be punished based on the UN report”, the TNA leaders told Grieff.

The UN investigation report is expected this September.

The TNA contention was simple. “The Maithripala Sirisena government came to power promising to resolve all the problems of the Tamil people. However, the new government is showing a delay in making these promises into actions”, the Tamil leaders told the UN official."

So they want the UN to continue to put pressure on Colombo and ensure that it delivers on its promise to find an immediate solution to the long standing ethnic conflict. They also want the government to pay urgent attention to issues like missing persons, resettlement of the displaced families, demilitarisation of the North and East, and release of Tamil political prisoners  
“UN resolutions on Sri Lanka play crucial role to make Tamil issues be heard in the international arena.”
 
“Therefore, in addition to the UN delivering justice for the sufferings faced by Tamils in Sri Lanka, it should deliver a permanent political solution."
 
The key for a way out is political will, and it remains on short supply still. The Tamil Civil Society Forum (TCSF) passionately holds this view.  

The government lacks political will in pursuing truth and justice and has done virtually nothing to consult victims in the design of an internal mechanism to establish these, the TCSF told the UN Special Rapporteur Pablo de Greiff

“The UN Human Rights Commissioner in his address to the Council on the 5th of March 2015 insisted that GoSL should consult the victims in designing this internal mechanism. To date no such process has been initiated,” the TCSF stated in a memorandum presented to Greiff.

It went to add:  “We submit that it is more than clear from the above that the current Government has done very little or nothing to consult the victims in the design of its internal mechanism. The entirety of the process is being designed in secrecy. From what has been made public GoSL is attempting to show progress by rehashing the previous regime’s strategy of talking to the South Africans and using the services of a person whose credibility and standing are highly suspect.”

The TCSF has taken objection to Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera’s statement that the objective of working with the international community on the establishment of a domestic mechanism was to “clear the name of the armed forces”. The minister’s stand is deeply problematic, the civil society group of Tamils told the visiting UN official.
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From this concern flowed its recommendation. “Unless the unitary character of the Sri Lankan State imagined and constructed around a Sinhala Buddhist Nation-State is abandoned Tamils will not feel secure in this island”.

There is no short hop for reconciliation and peace in Sri Lanka

–by Poreg Team


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