Ceylon Today Editorial

India, not Ban, the adjudicator

 29 August 2016

As reported on these pages yesterday, UN Secretary General (UNSG) Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit the island on Wednesday.

During his visit, he's supposed to meet President Maithripala Sirisena. Ban Ki-moon is also expected to visit Jaffna and meet with Northern Province Governor Reginald Cooray. The UNSG is also billed to speak on the UN's global development goals in Colombo.

UNSG's visit to Colombo on Wednesday will be his second to the island. His first visit was soon after Sri Lanka's 26-year old war with the Tamil terrorists was over on 17 May 2009. During that visit he also met Tamil refugees, then, veritably housed, in their tens of thousands, in refugee camps in the North.

According to the Rehabilitation and Resettlement Ministry website, despite the war end seven years ago, there are still 43,864 internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the North and the East, waiting to be resettled. Ministry Adviser Bradman Weerakoon told this newspaper that those numbers embrace all communities and do not include only the Tamils displaced.

Therefore, this number may also comprise part of the 72,000 Northern Muslims whom LTTE terrorist Leader Velupillai Prabhakaran ejected in 1990. Nonetheless, immediately after the war end, Tamilian refugees from the North alone were allegedly to have had numbered some 300,000.

Still for all, the government needs to find a viable solution to resettle those 43,864 IDPs belonging to all communities of Sri Lanka's, not least Tamils and Muslims.

Meanwhile, Ban's visit to the island comes at the tail-end of his career. Next year there will be a new UNSG on that seat. His visit comes a few weeks after UNESCO Secretary General Ms. Irina Bokova, an aspirant to get into Ban's shoes, visited Sri Lanka.

Bokova denied that her visit was to get Colombo's support for her candidacy to the UNSG post. One wonders whether Ban's visit is to garner support for one of the nine aspirants who are vying for the UNSG post! Ban is on record of having had said that he prefers a woman to succeed him. Of the nine candidates, four are women, including Bokova.

Meanwhile, in respect of Ban's first visit to Sri Lanka (this was when President Mahinda Rajapaksa was at the helm), the UN's website, among other things, had this, in its last para, to say: "Sri Lanka reiterated its strongest commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights, in keeping with international human rights standards and Sri Lanka's international obligations. The Secretary-General underlined the importance of an accountability process for addressing violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. The government will take measures to address those grievances."

After Rajapaksa was twice kicked out by the electorate last year, the mantle of carrying on with these promises now lie on the shoulders of UPFA Leader and President Sirisena and his Prime Minister, UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe. At the UN Human Rights sessions in Geneva last year, Sri Lanka, together with the USA, co-sponsored a resolution to investigate into alleged war crimes 'committed by Colombo during the closing stages of its war with the LTTE. This resolution was passed.

Nonetheless, Sirisena is on record of having had said that he will not allow foreign jurists to probe alleged war crimes. He has said that that will be done by a local tribunal. A few days ago, the government passed the Office of the Missing Persons (OMP) Act, a law which aims at trying to trace all those who have been listed as missing since 1980.

The period covers both the Tamil terrorist and the JVP terrorist engineered conflicts. This undoubtedly is a step on the right direction, which, undoubtedly would also be right up Ban's sleeve. The other, i.e. of getting/not getting foreign jurists is a vexing affair, with international and local ramifications.

If Sri Lanka goes against a resolution which it has jointly sponsored, of, allowing foreign jurists to 'meddle' with Sri Lanka's internal affairs, that may incur the wrath of the West, led by the USA, Sri Lanka's largest market.

On the other hand, if it does, this may be political oxygen to Rajapaksa who's trying to make a comeback on the back of Sri Lanka's overall, 70%, Sinhala-Buddhist vote, who may think that this is a move to punish the security forces and the police, considered as war heroes, for their successful prosecution of the LTTE Tamil terrorist war.

The bulk of the island's Sinhala and Jaffna Tamil population, the latter being the cause of the war, look at each other with suspicion.

It may however ultimately be in the hands of Sri Lanka's closest and giant neighbour India, with its 1.3 billion strong and economically growing population, commercially wooed by the USA and the West, to adjudicate this situation.