The ignominy suffered by Rajapaksa government at the hands of the world body and human rights groups alike was a self-inflicted wound. And it is, in a sense, an object lesson to all regimes -civilian and proletarian dictatorship.

In a theatre of insurgency or fight against terrorism, a premium on transparency will prove costly in the end. Colombo’s fight against LTTE was not a conventional war. For close to three decades, the LTTE had been holding the gun at Colombo and it used every trick in the trade to hoodwink world opinion. Civilian deaths were inevitable since the LTTE used human shields. On its part, the LTTE was not known for upholding human rights. In fact, it was ruthless against dissent in its own ranks and in the areas where it had held its sway.

Rajapaksa could have emerged as the darling of the world with his victory over Tiger terrorism but he harmed his cause by his insistence that his troops had adhered to a "zero civilian-casualty policy". He stuck to the refrain even when credible evidence surfaced of rights violations by the armed forces and even when allegations of up to 40,000 civilian casualties were heard.

While releasing the report, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said utmost consideration shown was shown to the aged parents of LTTE leader Prabhakaran, when they entered the government controlled territory along with hundreds of other displaced Tamil families. Both were given care and attention till they died – father in January 2010 and mother in February 2011. Similar consideration was shown to the families of other LTTE leaders, according to Gotabhaya.

The Defence Secretary, who is also the younger brother of the President, may, indeed, be right. There is no reason to believe that Colombo was as ruthless as it is painted by the expatriate ethnic Tamil groups and the Human Rights groups.

But neither Gotabhaya nor Mahinda Rajapaksa is unlikely to collect brownie points with their insistence even now that the Sri Lankan army committed no human rights violations and did not execute prisoners taken in the Eelam War.  Indeed, the claim may prove counterproductive. It is in their own interest to ensure that the official ‘factual’ analysis of the ‘Humanitarian Operation (Eelam War IV) is not seen as a desperate attempt to whitewash war crimes.