Reconciliation: The way to revival - Editorial
25 October 2012 09:12 pm
More than three years after the war ended, the efforts of the Rajapaksa government to bring about reconciliation or peace with justice appear to be in a muddle. At least three hardline parties in the ruling UPFA are calling for the repeal of the 13th Amendment, which moderates and independent analysts see as the basic foundation for power devolution.
Senior Minister Tissa Vitharana who headed the All Party Representative Committee said the hardliners were giving ammunition for an international conspiracy to destabilize Sri Lanka. Amid this confusion, conflict of interests and contradictions, President Mahinda Rajapaksa needs to rise to the level of statesmen like South African Leader Nelson Mandela to find a just and lasting solution to the ethnic conflict.
Mr. Mandela taught the world a lesson in grace-loving or helping someone who has hurt you and does not deserve love. After emerging from 27 years in prison and being elected president, he asked his jailer to join him on the inauguration platform. He then appointed Archbishop Desmond Tutu to head an official government panel with a daunting name, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Mr. Mandela sought to defuse the natural pattern of revenge that he had seen in so many countries where one oppressed race or tribe took control from another.
At one hearing, a policeman named Van de Broek recounted an incident when he and other officers shot an 18-year-old boy and burned the body, turning it on the fire like a piece of barbecue meat to destroy the evidence. Eight years later Mr. de Broek returned to the same house and seized the boy’s father. The wife was forced to watch as policemen bound her husband on a woodpile, poured gasoline over his body, and ignited it.
The courtroom grew hushed as the elderly woman who had lost first her son and then her husband was given a chance to respond. “What do you want from Mr. de Broek,” the judge asked. She said she wanted de Broek to go to the place where they burned her husband’s body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial. With his head down, the policeman nodded agreement.
Then she added a further request, “Mr. de Broek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice a month, I would like him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And I would like Mr. de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real.”
Spontaneously, some in the courtroom began singing, “Amazing Grace” as the elderly woman made her way to the witness stand, but Mr. de Broek did not hear the song, he had fainted.
This is the way to revival.