U.N Report on Sri Lankan War: Resolution Ahead?

On September 16, 2015, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights published a report calling for justice to be brought against perpetrators of war crimes committed during the Sri Lankan Civil War. In particular, the council in Geneva proposed a tribunal with equal domestic and international representation. Despite the international spotlight cast upon this issue, a resolution does not appear to be on the horizon. Displaced persons from the civil war in Sri Lanka (Wikimedia Commons)

The Sri Lankan Civil War was a conflict between the Sinhalese majority and the concentrated Tamil minority in the northeast, which was represented primarily by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) militant group. The war lasted from 1983 to 2009, under the leadership of president Mahinda Rajapaksa. According to the U.N. report, the alleged war crimes were committed near the end of the war, between 2002 and 2009. An estimated 40,000 people died during the final stages of the conflict, a figure supported by “years of drip-by-drip accounts of atrocities from journalists and human rights groups and a previous United Nations investigation in 2011.”

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a statement, “Our investigation has laid bare the horrific level of violations and abuses that occurred in Sri Lanka.” The 272-page report highlights a number of crimes including unlawful killings of politicians, aid workers, journalists and civilians by security forces; sexual and gender-based violence against both males and females as a “deliberate policy to inflict torture”; responsibility for tens of thousands of disappearances; forced recruitment of children and adults, and the deliberate impediment of food aid and medical supply deliveries to the northern province threatened by starvation.

Notably, the report called for international intervention in the form of a “hybrid special court, integrating international judges, prosecutors, lawyers and investigators.” The U.N. does not believe that the Sri Lankan domestic government is strong enough to deal with the issue on their own, pointing to the lack of a victim and witness protection program and a “domestic legal framework” to deal with large scale international crimes, as well as the rampant corruption of the Sri Lankan security sector and justice system.

Already, the U.N. report has faced opposition, and Western states have begun to shift support towards the Sri Lankan government, in fear of losing a pro-Western ally. On September 25, Sri Lanka proposed a draft resolution, supported by the U.S and the U.K., to create a “domestic judicial mechanism with a special counsel with the participation of Commonwealth and other foreign judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers.”

A poll conducted in 2014 by the Center for Policy Alternatives (a Sri Lankan NGO) revealed that 35% of the Sinhalese felt that the Rajapaksa government had done enough and 40% of the Tamils believed that the Rajapaksa government had done nothing. The poll also asked “whether there should be a credible mechanism to look into what happened during the last stage of war.” The results once again varied between ethnic groups, with 32% of the Sinhalese and 84% of the Tamils saying yes. Although the report accuses both sides of war crimes, , there appears to be significantly less support for investigating the Sinhalese, who make up three-quarters of the population.

John Fisher, the Geneva director at Human Rights Watch, believes that “the Sri Lankan government should build on the goodwill of the international community and embrace this important initiative.” However, the early signs indicate that resolution of this issue will not come to pass in the short term. Following the report’s publication, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe publicly rejected any international involvement last Monday and announced that these charges of war crimes would be addressed domestically.