Activism or tokenism?

The new United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres took office on 1 January as he pledged to personally help broker peace in various conflict-ridden regions. Guterres has also promised to champion humanitarian causes making his victory even more significant.

Although his appointment is unlikely to alter the UN’s stance on Sri Lanka and its commitments to reconciliation and investigations into war crimes, it may embolden activists and help speed up the domestic reconciliation process.

Meanwhile, the Consultations Task Force (CTF), a special task force set up by the Government to solicit public views on reconciliation, recommended that there be a majority of local judges and at least one international judge on every bench to prosecute war crimes that allegedly took place in Sri Lanka.

The CTF submitted its final report on the design of transitional justice mechanisms to former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, the Chairperson for the Office for National Unity and Reconciliation, in which it had also recommended that a special prosecutor be appointed to initiate investigations into the controversial cases without delay.

However, a member of the CTF stated that it remained to be seen if the Government would allow these public views to impact the final design of the mechanisms set up to deal with justice or if it was merely going through the motions to please the international community in the short term. The commitment of the UN and other international bodies towards truth and reconciliation following the change in Government two years ago has also come into question in the recent past. Sections of the public believe that the intense pressure exerted by the international community in years gone by was nothing more than a tool for regime change. The CTF report was also significant in breaking down some of the common misconceptions of what people from different regions of the country desired through a reconciliatory process. People in the north desire a hybrid court despite what hardliners in the region have demanded while the families of missing soldiers in the south want the involvement of foreign forensic experts to find answers. Commitment towards incorporating these findings into creating a mechanism for justice that will be meaningful and competent is somewhat fractured within the Government. Cabinet Spokesman Rajitha Senaratne rejected the recommendations of the CTF, claiming that no foreign judges would be included at these hearings. Senaratne went on to say that various institutions and committees are free to make recommendations but the Government’s position would remain the same – a position that he claims was accepted by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. This acceptance has however not been voiced by the UN in any capacity. Senaratne’s nonchalant dismissal of the recommendations of a Government-appointed task force and the absence of the President and Prime Minister at its presentation are certainly causes for concern. The Cabinet Spokesman’s lack of respect for the findings of the CTF also raises serious questions of why the task force was appointed in the first place. Was it nothing more than a quick fix to keep activists and sections of the international community at bay? Minister of Foreign Affairs Mangala Samaraweera recently highlighted the new UN Secretary General’s shared New Year’s resolution to ‘put peace first’. Although he also stressed the commitment of the Government to move towards reconciliation and achieving durable peace, its contradictory behaviour has suggested that its perceived progressive efforts may be nothing more than a hollow exercise of tokenism.