Also, the government has published another bill titled, “Commission for Truth, Unity and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka” in the government gazette on January 1, this year. The idea for this commission was also mooted in 2015 under the premiership of President Wickremesinghe
Nearly 15 years after the end of the separatist war, the government has taken steps to promulgate a law last Tuesday enabling the establishment of an “Office of National Unity and Reconciliation (ONUR).” The office is not entirely a new entity but a re-establishment through an Act of Parliament of an entity that has been in operation under the same name since 2015.
Despite it having been passed with the backing of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), it was President Ranil Wickremesinghe who has been instrumental in rejuvenating the office of reconciliation. It was also Mr. Wickremesinghe who as the then Prime Minister established the previous ONUR, chaired by former President Chandrika Kumarathunge in 2015.
Also, the government has published another bill titled, “Commission for Truth, Unity and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka” in the government gazette on January 1, this year. The idea for this commission was also mooted in 2015 under the premiership of Mr. Wickremesinghe during the so-called Yahapalana Government. The then Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera gave a commitment to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) not once but twice in 2015 and 2017 to establish such a Commission. But it did not materialize for reasons known only to those who were behind the move.
The governments, irrespective of the political party in office, would make some important announcement with some relevance to the ethnic problem and human rights when the regular session of the UNHRC approaches in March almost each year. For instance, Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena told the world’s human rights body in February 2020 that the government would appoint a commission to review the recommendations of past commissions on human rights issues and make fresh recommendations to implement what can be implemented. However, the government did not keep to that pledge until January 2021 when President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed the Nawaz Commission when another UNHRC session was around the corner.
Similarly, the Cabinet of Ministers approved a concept of a Truth and Reconciliation mechanism in January last year. Yet, the commission did not see the light of day, but a bill to that effect was published in the gazette on January 1, this year.
Despite the professed purpose of these commissions, committees and offices with regard to human rights and reconciliation giving a guarantee of future security to the Tamil people who bore the brunt of the three-decade long war, Tamil parties voted against the ONUR Bill on Tuesday. The reason they had cited was their lack of trust on the commitments pertaining to human rights and reconciliation given by the successive governments.
The plethora of commissions, committees and offices that were established in the past, attest to their point. Although the history of commissions on human rights goes at least back to the commission on missing persons appointed by former President Ranasinghe Premadasa in the early 1990s, the commissions and committees appointed since the tail end of the war drew more international attention. In fact, the very cause for those commissions to be appointed was heavy international pressure and not any genuine interest on the part of the governments of the day to ascertain who really violated human rights.
Subsequent to serious allegations of human rights violations against the armed forces and the LTTE, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa within the first year of his Presidency initiated two investigative processes – one a domestic commission and the other a committee of international experts. The commission headed by Supreme Court Judge Nissanka Udalagama was assigned to investigate 15 serious incidents which are still being considered by the UNHRC as emblematic cases while the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) was formed under the former Indian Chief Justice, P.N. Bhagawati to oversee the work of the Udalagama Commission.
However, the IIGEP ceased its operations two years later in March 2008, citing lack of political will on the part of the government. Rajapaksa also appointed the All Party Representative Committee (APRC) under the Chairmanship of Professor Tissa Vitharana to find a solution to ethnic problem.
When the commitments in the joint communiqué issued by the then UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa a week after the end of the war in May 2009 were ignored by the Sri Lankan government, the UN Secretary General appointed a panel of experts in 2010 to advise him on Sri Lanka’s human rights situation. Former President Rajapaksa then appointed the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) to counter that move in the same year.
As the LLRC report was also met with the same fate as those of previous commissions, the US-sponsored first resolution was adopted by the UNHRC in 2012, calling for Sri Lanka to implement the recommendations of its own commission, the LLRC. However, with the rejection of that resolution and the subsequent ones by Sri Lanka, the latest resolutions provide for prosecution of those Sri Lankan military and political leaders who are being accused of human rights violations and war crimes.
Following the second US backed UNHRC resolution, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa appointed the Paranagama Commission in August, 2013 to look into the complaints of missing persons during the war. The commission received over 19,000 complaints and the report of it was handed over to the Presidential Secretariat in 2016. It was against this backdrop President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed the Nawaz Commission to review the reports of past commissions.
The process to find the missing persons was continued by the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) established by the Yahapalana Government which under the Premiership of Ranil Wickremesinghe initiated several other entities as well to bring in reconciliation. The Office of Reparation (OR), The ONUR under Ms Kumaratunga, The Secretariat for Coordinating the Reconciliation Mechanisms (SCRM), and The Consultations Task Force (CTF) under the SCRM were the most important among them. There was also a plan to appoint a Truth Commission. Interestingly, nobody questioned if we needed such a lot of mechanisms with overlapping mandates to bring in reconciliation.
Similarly, now the current government under President Wickremesinghe has also passed the ONUR Act, and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is on the cards while the OMP and the OR are also functioning. Also the final report of the Nawaz Commission is said to be handed over to the President soon. In the meantime, the President has pledged to the Tamil leaders during a recent discussion that a new Constitution would be introduced within a year after the next Parliamentary election through which a lasting solution to the ethnic problem would be found. How complicated the things are!
The frustration among the Tamil leaders against this backdrop is sometimes manifested in the form of extreme statements. TELO leader, Selvam Adaikkalanathan told a gathering in Batticaloa in October last year that he sometimes regretted the laying down of arms in 1987, and felt like taking to arms again. ITAK Parliamentarian, Govindan Karunakaram questioned in Parliament how Tamils would forsake the dream of Tamil Eelam amidst the government’s inaction towards the problems faced by his community.
However, in spite of the Tamil leaders having been left without options under these circumstances and bitter rivalries among Tamil political parties, it is dangerous to invite the past horrendous times again, even out of frustration.
