Jehan Perera
In a recent media interview President Mahinda Rajapaksa has extended the August deadline for eliminating the LTTE given earlier by the government to over a year and a half.
While the government forces have been making progress on the ground, the progress has been relatively slow.
The issue of protecting human rights and ensuring practices of good governance takes on heightened importance in the context of the likely prolongation of the war. The events of the past weeks have given a foretaste of what the country can expect in the months that stretch ahead.
There was a spate of brutal attacks against civilians, most of them traveling in buses. An attack that took centre stage in the emotions of the people was the suicide bombing that killed the coach and baseball stars of one of Colombo’s most prestigious schools, D S Senanayake College, named after the country’s first prime minister. The media images of the funerals of the victims of these terror attacks and the emotional speeches have served to harden sentiment against the LTTE. One of the by-products has been the anger and irritation against those who continue to advocate a negotiated political settlement between the protagonists to the conflict and who lobby and act on behalf of human rights.
In the recent past, particularly in the last year, the main thrust of human rights campaigners has been the impunity with which agents of the government violate human rights. There have been mass arrests, kidnappings for ransoms, abductions and disappearances, and extra judicial executions in which government culpability has been alleged. However, the killings of innocents by the LTTE have exposed these campaigns as being limited.
The problem for human rights campaigners is that little they say or can do has an impact on the LTTE which is an organization that has been banned in many countries. In addition the government’s military campaign have left the LTTE-controlled areas cut off from the rest of the country, providing the outside community no access to what goes on within. It is evident that the LTTE has made its decision to supplement its conventional and guerilla military capacities with terror strikes. In a situation of violence, where there is fear, such as presently prevails in the country, the growth of mistrust and suspicion is to be expected.
There were parents in Colombo, for instance, who decided not to send their children to school on Monday even after the government re-opened the schools it had suddenly ordered closed for the whole of last week on account of the escalated LTTE violence. Those parents preferred to see what happened on Monday before sending their children to school again.
This unhealthy environment has played into the hands of the nationalist section of the government and its allies. They have utilized this opportunity to make villains out of those who continue to stand for the possibility of a negotiated political settlement of the present conflict rather than its military resolution.
A common term being used on the political platform today is that of traitor. The utilization of the state machinery, including its media, to hound human rights, humanitarian and peace organizations, particularly those with an international affiliation, is a manifestation of the dominance of these nationalist forces at the present time.
ICES CRISIS
The government’s deportation of the executive director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Dr Rama Mani, is the most recent action taken against an international organization. Founded two decades ago by one of the country’s most outstanding intellectuals, Dr Neelan Tiruchelvam, ICES influenced an entire generation of human rights and minority rights activists.
Despite the assassination of Dr Tiruchelvam by the LTTE a decade ago, the Colombo branch of the organization remained a bastion of liberalism. In the aftermath of the crisis over Dr Mani, who was sacked and reinstated by the ICES board of management in an internal power struggle, much information has surfaced about mismanagement within the organization.
But none of this should have led to heavy handed government intervention in the form of police raids, police questioning and the rapid expulsion of the organisation’s executive director as a security threat, after a one-sided debate in Parliament and the utilization of the state machinery to rescind her visa. ICES is only one of several organizations that have been targeted for punitive government action in recent months.
Another organization has been the Berghof Foundation for Conflict Studies, which was established about five years ago with a mandate to support the peace process. Its director, Dr Norbert Norbert Ropers had experience and theoretical knowledge that was a valuable asset to his Sri Lankan counterparts, who included both government and opposition politicians and civil society members. Recently he too had his visa rescinded.
Apart from ICES and the Berghof Foundation, which have been the two most seriously affected, even UN agencies such as UNICEF have not been spared distorted criticisms and threats from the same nationalist sources.
There are now indications that the targets of nationalist attack will soon be widened. There have been media reports that a list of 25 organisations have been identified to be placed on a government blacklist. The current climate of violence, fear and mistrust lend themselves to witch hunts. There is a need for more responsible and moderate sections within the government to oppose these dangerous trends.
INTERNATIONAL ROLE
Organisations that seek to foster ideals of human rights, minority rights, humanitarian law and reconciliation are a necessary part of any democratic society in which there is war, displacement, ethnic conflict, human rights violations and intolerance. At the present time the government is devoting itself single-mindedly to the defeat of the LTTE.
But in seeking to defeat the LTTE, which is an undemocratic, violent and intolerant organization, the government appears to be losing sight of its own commitment to democratic values and to good governance.
The government’s determination to control all the levers of power in society and to achieve its objectives has other manifestations that are detrimental to good governance. The President has show himself reluctant to constitute the Constitutional Council that was established under the 17th Amendment to the Constitution to de-politicise the process of appointments to key public offices.
This is yet another manifestation of the desire to concentrate power even at the cost of disregarding a constitutional provision that was approved unanimously by Parliament in 2001. In the absence of the Constitutional Council, the President has exercised his powers to make appointments to key national institutions, such as the Police, Human Rights Commission and Public Service, at his discretion which has impaired the credibility and legitimacy of those appointments.
In the prevailing situation, internal processes within the country appear unable to restore the balance and wisdom required for good governance. Even the opposition parties appear to be silenced by the juggernaut of war and ethnic nationalism. Therefore it is necessary that the international community, of which Sri Lanka is a longstanding and active member stemming from the days of the San Francisco Conference and the Non Aligned Movement, should apply pressure on the government to observe the basic principles of good governance.
A particularly important role falls upon those countries that are greatly assisting Sri Lanka at the present time. Chief amongst them would be the United States and India, which are contributing to the government’s success in the war against the LTTE, and Japan, which has for long years been Sri Lanka’s most generous donor of development assistance. These key countries, together with the rest of the international community, have an obligation to the people of Sri Lanka.
They need to use their good offices to ensure that there is, at least, incremental progress, in protecting and restoring the institutions of good governance in the country.