National policy and thinking to the fore

Text of speech delivered by External Affairs Minister Prof G.L. Peiris at the ‘National Conference on the Role of Education in Reconciliation’ held at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute, Colombo on March 13

Sri Lanka has gone through an excruciatingly painful conflict. The pain and anguish of that conflict has impeded Sri Lanka’s efforts for accelerated economic development for three long decades. Now we are leaving that behind us and are looking to the future with fortitude and confidence. In situations of that sort the national institutions, national policy, national thinking must bear the primary responsibility for devising appropriate solution by which I mean solutions that are suited to the culture of the country, its societal structure, its history, its heritage and that is why primacy has to be given to the national effort.

This does not mean that the international community must stand aside and do nothing at all. It is an accepted norm that the international community must come in only when the local procedures have proved to be ineffective. If they have broken down, if its abundantly clear that they are going nowhere and it is in that situation that, to fill the lacuna or hiatus that the international community needs to come in.

Now let us look at the specifics of the Lankan situation and ask ourselves whether by any stretch of imagination that these requirements have been fulfilled. Can we really say that there has been no vibrant national process, there is a total blank and the international community needs to come in at this time? The hostilities ended in May 2009, at that time the international community readily conceded that a local commission appointed by the President of the Sri Lanka is the right way forward. That is a commission that would take into account the history of the country, the aspirations of its people and the nature of its people.

National effort

It is a commission that would address issues of that country which was given the mandate to consider all aspects of this situation and to make pragmatic recommendations with regard to a course of action that ought to be followed to ensure inclusivity bringing all the people of Sri Lanka together in this national effort irrespective of language, religion or cultural backgrounds, so that they can all be active participants in a task which could not be embarked upon for such a long period because of the prevalence of terrorism.

So let us clearly recognize that. And it was stated that the international community was looking forward to the report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. Now that report was presented to the Parliament of Sri Lanka on December17 last year. It was presented to President Mahinda Rajapaksa about a month before that and the government was actively engaged in studying those recommendations and in seeing what actions were appropriate on our part. The obviously the right thing to do was to share this with the elected representatives of the people of Sri Lanka and that is why this report was presented to the Lankan Parliament on December 17 last year. Then we had the festive period, Christmas and the New Year, although many of us worked diligently through at this task right through the festive period. Then work in earnest began throughout the spectrum of all government departments in the first week of January this year.

Now we were given notice that a resolution of this kind would be brought before the Human Rights Council in Geneva on January 25, so we did not have even a clear month. Now it is not at all a logical or acceptable argument that one has to go back three years right back to May 2009 because there are numerous statements, it is not my wish to quote them on this occasion but they can be readily quoted, there are numerous statements saying yes, a local commission is the answer we are glad that a local commission has been appointed, we have confidence in that commission, we know that it will do a good job, we are looking forward to a report by them. Now the commission report is presented to the President, the President in turn presents it to Parliament and not even a month elapses before a decision is taken to move a resolution against Sri Lanka at the Human Rights Commission. Not even one month had passed.

LLRC report

Now let us see what the progress was during that period. The period intervening between the submission of this report to the President and the time at which we received notice that a resolution would be brought. There was a thorough study made of the LLRC report, we broke it down to its main essential components which I will deal with very shortly, then we decided, what are the measures that are necessary to implement the major recommendations,- short term, medium term and long term. What are the priorities in this regard and most importantly, the attributions of responsibility to different organs the government with regard to the implementations of the major clusters of recommendations that are contained in the report. It’s a multi-faceted report consisting of 400 pages which straddles the whole spectrum of public policy. So the government had to decide what are the ministries, departments, statutory corporations and other entities that should be entrusted with responsibilities for carrying out different aspects of the recommendations. Now simultaneously with the presentations of the LLRC report to the Parliament on December 17 last year, the government on the floor of the house explained to Parliament, and through Parliament to the people of Sri Lanka what measures we are taking in response to the recommendations of the LLRC report.

What is our reaction to the more important to the recommendations. We did not think it was sufficient simply to table the report, now hear again I must tell you with all frankness that there was a great deal of cynicism.

Public document

Now one thing that is very unfortunate, is that an adverse presumption, was all too readily made against Sri Lanka. And adverse presumption which was very wrong. We were told at that time that this report was never going to made public, that assumption was made clear by some people. Then when it became crystal clear that this report was indeed going to be presented to Parliament which indeed makes it a public document because its presented to Parliament it becomes a public document. It appears on the internet and it is accessible in all parts of the world. When it became clear that yes definitely the report is going to be published we were told “no no your not going to publish the whole report”.

International intervention

If you look at the media at that time there was a vigorous controversy that we were going to publish only chapter 9 which is roughly the equivalent of an executive summary, and that we are going to publish only that and not the whole report. And however much we said no we have no intention of hiding the report and we are publishing it in full that was never believed in some quarters and we were repeatedly told no we are going to publish only a section of the report. Then the report was published in full and mind you we are talking about December 17 last year, we are not talking about five years ago or eight years ago.

Also don’t forget that we were dealing with a 30 year conflict. I will come to that later. Where is the equity, the justice and above all the consistency in this? How long has it taken for conflicts in other parts of the world to be resolved, there has been a problem of this complexity, which went on for more than a quarter of a century. Has there been this kind of demand in respect of other situations, how long did those situations take? Was there a chorus of protest? Were there resolutions at the Human Rights Council? Was there any semblance of uniformity or consistency with regards to this attitude? So these are matters I think that teaches above all educationists, those above all as I said, who are chartered with the sacrosanct responsibility of moulding young minds these are issues that should agitate your minds. So now we are talking of this phenomenally brief period.

As I told you we were not content with simply tabling the report, we made what we considered to be an entirely appropriate statement. The statement was delivered on the floor of Parliament by Leader of the House Nimal Siripala de Silva. He spoke on behalf of the government of Sri Lanka. Now that statement consisted of a succinct, a very clear statement of policy. Now I ask you to consider in a spirit of objectivity and detachment whether what was said on that occasion and what was done thereafter in pursuance of the undertakings that were given. Whether that is sufficient? Whether that is reasonable or is it horrendously inadequate and warrants this form of international intervention at this particular moment in time. Now these are things we have done so far.

One of the main elements of the report was accountability it is totally wrong to say that accountability was not addressed in that report. It may not have been addressed in the way that some people would have liked. But these are essentially Sri Lankan issues and the wishes of the Sri Lankan people, our culture our interpretation of accountability, these are not unimportant. About a year ago there was an international Buddhist conference that took place in Kandy.

To be continued