Reconciliation Commission – a small step in pleasing the West but a giant leap towards ultimate reconciliation

I listened to the short interview on BBC Radio 4 conducted by Martha Kearney, the Irish-born news presenter, with Mr Nihal Jayasinghe, the Sri Lankan High Commissioner in London yesterday, almost by accident.

Based on the report submitted by Charles Haviland, the BBC correspondent in Colobmo, on the Lesson Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) that commenced yesterday in Sri Lanka, she threw three relatively-simple straight-forward questions at the top diplomat.

The first question was that since the commission was heavily inclined towards the government whether they – perhaps, the BBC - could trust the commission?; the High Commissioner replied that the commission consisted of very eminent people in Sri Lanka – and therefore, they could be trusted; her second question was as to why an independent inquiry was not allowed to carry out the investigation for which Mr Jayasinghe in turn asked why we needed a commission, independent or otherwise, in the first place, which then led to the final inquiry by Martha – to investigate the crimes committed by both sides during the last days of the war and according to Amnesty International!

Mr Jayasinghe’s instinct was right from the very outset about the nature of the interview; he knew he was going to meet someone who was determined to be cynical whatever he would say; he wound up in the end while pleading with her to give the commission a chance to carry out its mission within its mandate, before casting doubt on the outcome.

The BBC is not the only organization which regularly referred to the commission with typical cynicism; some members of the US congress have expressed their views along the same line.

However, Mr Jayasinghe could have responded a bit more robustly to the three questions raised by Martha Kearney, especially the last one – her source of information, the Amnesty International.

I wish Mr Jayasinghe hit back by saying that the folks in the Indian Subcontinent did not regard this particular organization as a body represented by some holy men and women who were about to reach the pinnacle of their moral career path; he could have gone on asking her as to where these people were when the peasants were hacked to death in their sleep and when men, women and children were blown up on public buses or places of worship for no fault of their own - in short, about the existence of gaps in the ‘compassion’ exhibited by human right warriors.

Since Mr Jayasinghe is no stranger to international justice, he could have gone even further by asking about the legality or relevance of the findings of the organizations which habitually cry out about human right abuses that may take place in the extreme circumstances, especially confronting with a ruthless foe, while turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed by terrorists.

Martha Kearney referred to both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch which, according to her, must be the source of information that is more or less reliable. These are voluntary organizations, appointed neither by the UN nor by the Pope. So, why do we have to care about what they say, so disproportionately, at the expense of what our existing local bodies say? No one ever said that Sri Lanka is a land of savages, even at the height of the war.

War is far from perfect: it is ugly and mistakes do happen, as soldiers are also human beings who love to live for another day, as everybody else does. The angry reactions to Wiki-Leaks clearly show that even self-appointed moral champions have plenty of skeletons in their own cupboards.

The strangest thing in the case of Sri Lanka is the fact that everyone who is keen on investigations, wants to focus on the very last stage of the war – the series of incidents that revolved around so-called ‘white-flag’ episode. We know very well this is the phase during which the Tiger leadership saw their end. So, was it just coincidental?

It is even far more intriguing to note the way some have conveniently forgotten a particular event – but, very significant - that took place just a day before the very thing they are hell bent on focussing on; a group of soldiers were gunned down by a team of Tigers who pretended to be civilians in need of help to cross the lagoon.

Having learnt a bitter lesson the previous day, the soldiers may have taken extra precaution in welcoming any one who approached them on all fours since then. Who can blame them for taking these steps for self-defence – and for survival.

We are grateful to the security forces for getting rid of terrorism from our motherland for good; it is a sentiment expressed not only by the Sinhalese from the south, but also by the Tamils who arrive back in the country by the planeloads daily from all corners of the earth.

Metaphorically speaking, if the armed forces, the police and the civil defence force were the planets, Mr Gotabaya Rajapakse was the star in the solar system who provided the team with much-needed gravity to keep the superbly-functioning bodies in orbit – and, then moving them with least friction. President Rajapakse, meanwhile, handled the most difficult political elements, both locally and internationally, while being subjected to tremendous pressure of unprecedented magnitude on various fronts.

In this context, no Sri Lankan with a conscience will ever allow ‘Rajapakse Brothers’ to carry the can for what happened during the decisive phase of the war. That is why there is so much resistance against the move for war crime investigations; people, by instinct, know what the objects of focus are going to be.

Against this backdrop, the creation of Lesson Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, also known as Reconciliation Commission, is a step in the right direction. Western journalists with an agenda always cast doubt on these things as soon as they were announced: the appointment of Truth and Reconciliation commission in post-apartheid South Africa and a similar body in Rwanda after the genocide – that killed 800000 people in a matter of three months - met the same fate of scepticism and cynicism at that time by these folks; because, they are less dramatic – genuine display of human weaknesses and the power of forgiveness in equal measure.

In South Africa, the country did not fall apart along the ethnic lines as predicted by some. In Rwanda, the Hutus and Tutsis now live side by side, even if some of them had committed murder in the rival community during the appalling genocide, thanks to the effort made by the reconciliation commission to heal the wounds – something western media organizations never anticipated.

If they worked in South Africa and Rwanda, why such a thing would not work in Sri Lanka? Apart from the politically-encouraged ugly incidents that took place during the riots in 1983, the Tamils and Sinhalese were not at each other’s throats since then, despite the repeated, extremely-provocative efforts made by the Tigers, not to let that be the case.

In this context, the commission, both by its mandate and extended vision, has the potential to bring about an irreversible reconciliation among the major communities in Sri Lanka. All they have to do is to ignore the critics and move on while defying odds; victory will be on their side because, when the motives are noble, healing is always real.

- Asian Tribune -