For months, the global press had been speculating about the contents of the long-awaited United Nation Human Rights Council report about the last stages of Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war, which finally ended in May 2009. When it was finally released on Wednesday, it confirmed suspicions of war crimes by both the Sri Lankan forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The release of the report was featured prominently in papers around the world. “Sri Lanka war crimes horrific: UN,” said the headline in India’s The Hindu. Reported The Guardian, which is published in the UK, "Horrors of Sri Lanka’s civil war carnage to be exposed in UN report.”
But back home in Sri Lanka, the responses to the report range from the sceptical to the confident – confidence that a purely domestic mechanism to address the alleged war crimes could win global support.
The two-volume report produced by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was originally due to be released in March but was postponed to allow President Maithripala Sirisena’s new government to find its feet.
Both sides indicted
UN Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein says that the report describes “the horrific level of violations and abuses that occurred in Sri Lanka, including indiscriminate shelling, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, harrowing accounts of torture and sexual violence, recruitment of children and other grave crimes”. The report covers a nine-year period up to 2011 ‒ two years after the LTTE, which was fighting for a separate Tamil homeland in the north of the island, was defeated decisively by the Sri Lankan armed forces under former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The report indicts both sides.
Zeid said that he hopes this report will help pave the way for “a most intense reckoning with the past”. To accomplish this, he recommended the establishment of a dedicated court with international magistrates and investigators that could tackle the challenge of examining the alleged crimes. “A purely domestic court procedure will have no chance of overcoming widespread and justifiable suspicions fuelled by decades of violations, malpractice and broken promises,” Zeid said.
It was this recommendation for a so-called hybrid court that caught the attention of the Sri Lankan media more than the details of the crimes listed in the report. “Hybrid’ healer for ‘horrors’,” was the headline in the Daily FT. The article noted, “United Nations Human Rights Chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has called for the setting up of a special ‘hybrid court’ comprising international judges and prosecutors after a report by his Office revealed ‘horrific’ violations strongly indicating that war crimes were most likely committed by both government forces and the LTTE and declared the country’s justice system incapable of dealing with the seriousness of the crimes.”
However, the Sri Lankan government was pressing for a local mechanism to investigate the violations, The Sunday Times reported. The government “will seek the international help when it comes to formulating the local mechanisms that will address the human rights violations and crimes against humanity alleged to have been committed during the civil war”, the paper said.
Addressing one of the big domestic concerns, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera told The Sunday Times: “This is not a hunt against the Sri Lankan military. They have not pointed fingers at any individuals, they have entrusted us to find out that.”
Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka, who was Commander of the Sri Lankan forces when they defeated the LTTE in 2009, told the Daily Mirror that as far as he was aware, there had been no killing of civilians who had surrendered during the last phase of the war, as the report alleged. But he said that the government should investigate the charges nonetheless.
Lack of will
Even citizen journalism website Groundviews seemed sceptical of the proposal for a hybrid war crimes probe, emphasising there was “no political will even for [a] domestic probe” The site took note of the ambitious plan laid out by Minister of Foreign Affairs Mangala Samaraweera that included establishing a Commission for Truth, Justice, Reconciliation and Non-recurrence to be evolved in consultation with South Africa; a dedicated Office of Missing Persons; an Office of Reparations; a judicial mechanism with a special counsel to be set up by statute and most critically a new constitution that would help “guarantee non-recurrence”.
But Kusal Perera, the author of the article, was of the opinion that the Sri Lankan government would not be able to fulfil these commitments: "His [Samaraweera’s] promises that are too many for a government that plays hide and seek on the issue of reconciliation and a political solution for long-standing Tamil grievances, this seem like Santa on Christmas night stuck with too heavy a load for “Rudolph” the reindeer to pull along."
Some commentators feared that implementing the recommendations could cause a political backlash. A columnist in Daily FT gave voice to that perspective: The UN has neither “a right nor mandate to ‘ensure an accountability process that produces results…and deep institutional changes’ in any sovereign country”, the paper wrote. “That is primarily an internal matter, and in a country like Sri Lanka which is at peace and does not constitute a threat to regional still less international peace, it is a purely internal matter.”
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The release of the report was featured prominently in papers around the world. “Sri Lanka war crimes horrific: UN,” said the headline in India’s The Hindu. Reported The Guardian, which is published in the UK, "Horrors of Sri Lanka’s civil war carnage to be exposed in UN report.”
But back home in Sri Lanka, the responses to the report range from the sceptical to the confident – confidence that a purely domestic mechanism to address the alleged war crimes could win global support.
The two-volume report produced by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was originally due to be released in March but was postponed to allow President Maithripala Sirisena’s new government to find its feet.
Both sides indicted
UN Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein says that the report describes “the horrific level of violations and abuses that occurred in Sri Lanka, including indiscriminate shelling, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, harrowing accounts of torture and sexual violence, recruitment of children and other grave crimes”. The report covers a nine-year period up to 2011 ‒ two years after the LTTE, which was fighting for a separate Tamil homeland in the north of the island, was defeated decisively by the Sri Lankan armed forces under former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The report indicts both sides.
Zeid said that he hopes this report will help pave the way for “a most intense reckoning with the past”. To accomplish this, he recommended the establishment of a dedicated court with international magistrates and investigators that could tackle the challenge of examining the alleged crimes. “A purely domestic court procedure will have no chance of overcoming widespread and justifiable suspicions fuelled by decades of violations, malpractice and broken promises,” Zeid said.
It was this recommendation for a so-called hybrid court that caught the attention of the Sri Lankan media more than the details of the crimes listed in the report. “Hybrid’ healer for ‘horrors’,” was the headline in the Daily FT. The article noted, “United Nations Human Rights Chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein has called for the setting up of a special ‘hybrid court’ comprising international judges and prosecutors after a report by his Office revealed ‘horrific’ violations strongly indicating that war crimes were most likely committed by both government forces and the LTTE and declared the country’s justice system incapable of dealing with the seriousness of the crimes.”
However, the Sri Lankan government was pressing for a local mechanism to investigate the violations, The Sunday Times reported. The government “will seek the international help when it comes to formulating the local mechanisms that will address the human rights violations and crimes against humanity alleged to have been committed during the civil war”, the paper said.
Addressing one of the big domestic concerns, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera told The Sunday Times: “This is not a hunt against the Sri Lankan military. They have not pointed fingers at any individuals, they have entrusted us to find out that.”
Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka, who was Commander of the Sri Lankan forces when they defeated the LTTE in 2009, told the Daily Mirror that as far as he was aware, there had been no killing of civilians who had surrendered during the last phase of the war, as the report alleged. But he said that the government should investigate the charges nonetheless.
Lack of will
Even citizen journalism website Groundviews seemed sceptical of the proposal for a hybrid war crimes probe, emphasising there was “no political will even for [a] domestic probe” The site took note of the ambitious plan laid out by Minister of Foreign Affairs Mangala Samaraweera that included establishing a Commission for Truth, Justice, Reconciliation and Non-recurrence to be evolved in consultation with South Africa; a dedicated Office of Missing Persons; an Office of Reparations; a judicial mechanism with a special counsel to be set up by statute and most critically a new constitution that would help “guarantee non-recurrence”.
But Kusal Perera, the author of the article, was of the opinion that the Sri Lankan government would not be able to fulfil these commitments: "His [Samaraweera’s] promises that are too many for a government that plays hide and seek on the issue of reconciliation and a political solution for long-standing Tamil grievances, this seem like Santa on Christmas night stuck with too heavy a load for “Rudolph” the reindeer to pull along."
Some commentators feared that implementing the recommendations could cause a political backlash. A columnist in Daily FT gave voice to that perspective: The UN has neither “a right nor mandate to ‘ensure an accountability process that produces results…and deep institutional changes’ in any sovereign country”, the paper wrote. “That is primarily an internal matter, and in a country like Sri Lanka which is at peace and does not constitute a threat to regional still less international peace, it is a purely internal matter.”