Moving forward: an assessment of ongoing initiatives

Text of a lecture by Prof Rajiva Wijesinha, MP, Adviser on Reconciliation to the President given at the panel discussion on Reconciliation arranged by the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies’ Reconciliation and Development for Peace Section on December 15, 2011

[Continued from yesterday]

I should note that better planning for education is something through which we can also ensure that the particular talents of the Jaffna Peninsula are put to good use. One factor to which I believe government has not paid sufficient attention is the difference between the Wanni and Jaffna. The results of the recent election showed that in the Wanni there was significant appreciation of the basic services government had provided, whereas in Jaffna there is need of more if reconciliation is to proceed apace. Despite the tensions and violence of the period in which the LTTE still functioned, Jaffna had basic services and it is therefore necessary, following the elimination of the terrorist threat in Sri Lanka, to provide much more. Government should be proactive in promoting intellectual and cultural activity, and in involving civil society in planning and programming. There should also be intensive programmes to involve the students of leading schools in projects together with their counterparts in the south.

I am aware that much is being done in this connection, but it is sporadic in its impact. Rather, active use should be made of social groups, Interact Clubs, UNESCO activity groups in schools, St John's Ambulance Brigades, religious bodies, to ensure that students not only work together, but that they also think and work together. Special measures should also be taken to promote applications and recruitment to the police and the armed forces, not only cadeting in as many schools as possible, but also familiarisation camps for youngsters to encourage them to experience active involvement with their peers from other communities.

We should also try to open the minds of these youngsters to the world at large, for instance by setting up joint study groups across schools to establish contacts with particular countries, encouraging the various embassies in Colombo to engage in outreach programmes in this regard. The supply of pictures and films and music to such associations would be beneficial all round.

Whilst all these positive new initiatives are indicated, as doctors would say, we also need to pay more attention to resolving problems. Most prominent amongst these is the vulnerability of women and children, and we need much better structures to provide them with support and counseling. At the first meetings of the District Reconciliation Committees we have set up, this was perhaps the most urgent topic raised, and I am happy that it was approached without the prejudices that have prevented suitable remedial action. Far too often we are told that the presence of the military is the reason for the problem, but when I ask for specifics, hardly any are given. I was given this generic complaint even by one of the brighter and more positive thinking of ambassadors, so I can just imagine what the Coffee Club get up to when they meet, in whatever new incarnation they have created for themselves.

The social workers in Kilinochchi pointed out that there had been a great increase in the number of unwanted pregnancies, but still there is no hospice for such cases in the area. There is also a lack of trained personnel in this and related fields while, as has become endemic in Sri Lanka, there are so many different officials who might be responsible for care that cases can easily slip through the net. It is essential that systems are set up in small geographical units to monitor the situation, to involve educationists and medical personnel also in support groups, and to ensure that hotlines are available and responded to promptly. It is also particularly important that greater attention is paid to mental health, in addition to reproductive health.

I should note again that much is being done, and I was happy to see in Kilinochchi a 'Happiness Centre' as it is termed in the Maha Vidyalaya, one of several that have been set up, to look after children with learning disabilities whilst also monitoring others in the school. But there should be more of these, and more trained personnel, on the lines perhaps of the Counselling Service set up in the East a few years back. There should also be better coordination, to make sure that the availability of support is not just a matter of the right people being in place in any particular area.

Other matters in which more concerted action is needed include remedial action with regard to one of the main reasons for conflict, namely the divisive and exclusionary language policy that was put in place in the fifties. That was in theory changed in the eighties, with a constitutional amendment, but nothing was done about this until the Ministry of National Languages introduced regulations to ensure bilingualism in the public sector five years ago. Training facilities however are inadequate, and in any case much more should be done in schools, and to produce more teachers. This year the budget speech laid great stress on this, but I believe there is need of dedicated effort in this regard since existing institutions have failed to deliver. In this regard, though the Ministry of National Languages has shown extraordinary commitment, it needs to ensure conceptual changes in the manner in which government policy is implemented.

Another area in which the Ministry, which also includes Social Integration in its brief, has contributed significantly to resolving problems is through the mobile secretariats it operates to help with documentation etc. But this too is an area in which more thorough and swift action is needed, as well as clearer guidelines to deal with conflicting claims with regard to land and property. In this, as in so much else, we find that the breakdown in administrative efficiency causes continuing problems which is why I believe that, if Reconciliation is to succeed, we also need much better training for public servants and the development of a new ethos which ensures prompt and courteous service.

The fact that letters are not responded to promptly, and indeed some public servants believe that they are required to let letters lie unanswered for three days at least (which is how they interpret the directive that responses should be sent in three days at most), is symptomatic of a lack of concern for the citizenry which can prove disastrous. Given the sensitivities roused by the conflict, it is obviously essential to ensure that there is no room for imagined slights or neglect.

I have refrained from commenting on the assertions, put most forcefully by the more bitter elements in the diaspora along with a few relentless Western observers, that reconciliation cannot be achieved without retribution. It is clear from their arguments and descriptions that this is what they mean, though they couch their claims in terms of accountability.

With regard to accountability itself, what needs to be pursued is clarification, in particular to assuage as best possible the grief of the bereaved. We need to investigate queries about alleged disappearances, a process that is finally being conducted with an urgency that should have been displayed earlier. Unfortunately the real grief of those who are unwilling to accept that their loved ones may be dead has been complicated by wild allegations, including claims that there was secretiveness about former cadres.

Visits were permitted from the start to those undergoing rehabilitation, as I have observed on all my visits, and few restrictions are placed on these. The last time I was there I saw a lady with half a dozen girls, one of whom was her daughter.

The rest were friends, and they all said that they had had parental visitors too, though not as often as their friend, whose mother lived very near. Registration as the cadres came through was a transparent process, and the ICRC indeed also registered 10,000 of them. International agencies were in and out of those detention centres from the start, though some resentment was caused, and then exploited by various commentators, because government made it very clear that responsibility for rehabilitation belonged to the Sri Lankan state, not external actors. Meanwhile the ICRC continued throughout to provide its admirable services with regard to the imprisoned, having lists of all those in Boossa and visiting regularly.

But we must continue to be sensitive. The unwillingness of parents to accept that their children might be dead is apparent from the fact that there were several representations to the LLRC about incidents that had occurred in the last century. Unfortunately, though commissions of inquiry were held in the past, their work was not comprehensive or well reported. It seems too that there was continuing uncertainty in some cases because of ongoing conflict. However, now that we have peace, we should establish systems like the one in Vavuniya that has received queries from all areas over the last couple of years. So far these there have been just a few thousand and, though more may come in, it would seem the numbers we are concerned with are far fewer than is heard from the more vociferous opponents of reconciliation.

Finally there is the question of the possible political changes that are currently being negotiated. I believe I should not discuss content since in theory we are supposed to maintain confidentiality. As the new kid on the block as it were, I think I should avoid the propensity to leak that some of my senior colleagues indulge in. But I should say that I believe we need to move quickly, and I hope very much that we will dwell on the many areas in which consensus is within easy reach, which will help us to realize that there is little that divides us, much more that binds us together.

Let me conclude then with an even greater poet than Auden. In my old fashioned way I believe he is about the only English poet of the 20th century who will be taken seriously during the present century. But his great predecessor T S Eliot, a product of the period before what Auden registered as the slump, noted that

the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time Language, employment and empowerment on the basis of equity is what was requested to begin with, it is what we should supply without stint or grudge. Doing so is not difficult if we are committed to reconciliation.

I recall now what Tarzie Vittachi, who recorded the first outbreak of racial violence in 1958, told me in the eighties when I asked what he thought was required to solve the problem. The solution was easy, he said, but he did not think it was likely to occur because it required generosity of spirit, and this he said J R Jayewardene had never possessed. The answer may seem facile but I believe it was prophetic, given that in the eighties most of us did not think things would get so much worse so soon.

But Tarzie turned out to be right, and things had to deteriorate further before we were all able to realise that we had to love one another, or die.