Ceylon Today Editorial

Blunderbussing West

24 February 2017

Ms. Anna Uggla, Delhi based Swedish Embassy's Political Affairs Counsellor, speaking to this newspaper recently, said that South Africa's former High Commissioner to Colombo Geoffrey Doidge had impressed upon her the importance of foreign judicial involvement to guarantee the accountability and reconciliation process in Sri Lanka. (See 'Ceylon Today's' 16 February, 2017 issue)

She was speaking in the context of the pledge that Colombo had given the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in September 2015, of permission for foreign jurists to sit in judgment over Sri Lanka in respect of alleged human rights abuse, especially during the closing stages of its war against the LTTE.

Whereas those persecuted in South Africa was the majority black population by the minority whites, the situation in Sri Lanka was somewhat different, where, in the latter context, it was the alleged persecution of a minority community, i.e. Jaffna Tamils living in the North, by Sri Lanka's 75% Sinhala majority population, in the form of its armed forces, acting on the instructions of the Government of Sri Lanka.

While one cannot condone persecution in any form, whether it be in the form of the minority persecuting the majority or vice versa, one also has to take into account ground realities. 'One size fits all' in this context may be apt in dealing with countries, which do not have a developed judicial system, or, for that matter, a skewed judicial system, such as that which was practised by the then apartheid South Africa, which acclaimed the supremacy of the whites, while at the same time denigrating the other races to the status of lesser beings, no better, or a little better than the animals living in the wilds of South Africa.

Sri Lanka doesn't have that culture, nor does it have a Constitution that extols the superiority of one race over the other, like that of apartheid South Africa's. The island's Constitutions, since Independence, or, on the eve of Independence, beginning with the Soulbury Constitution of 1947 and ending with the Second Republican Constitution of 1978 (the current Constitution now in force), has always emphasized the equality of races. None of the three Constitutions of post Independence Ceylon/Sri Lanka harped on the superiority of once race over the other/s.

On the other hand, all of those Constitutions upheld the rights of man, regardless of race, religion, caste or social status. Quite different to Doidge's South Africa, where the former High Commissioner was one of the alleged freedom fighters of Nelson Mandela's African National Congress which was responsible for the overthrow of South Africa's apartheid regime with the least amount of bloodshed 23 years ago in 1994.

In fact in 1994, the year that South Africa's apartheid regime was dismantled, the only Constitution that South Africa had, then, was its apartheid Constitution which prescribed the superiority of the white race over all other races.

It's no wonder that a 'truth commission' was formed in post-apartheid South Africa a year later in 1995, under the shadow of South Africa's white supremacist apartheid Constitution, with the apparent participation of international jurists.

South Africa finally drew up a Constitution, recognizing the rights of all, regardless of colour, creed or any other man made differences as late as in 1996, i.e. two years after the dismantling of its apartheid regime and a year after the establishment of its Truth Commission. Small wonder, therefore, as to why that Commission, to mete out justice, had to go beyond its own domestic laws which were partial towards white supremacy, then.

Sri Lanka doesn't have such a primitive or a young judicial system like South Africa's. Nonetheless South Africa's judicial system, complementing its Constitution, vis-à-vis impartiality, i.e. recognizing the rights of all, is only 21 years old! Whereas, the island's judicial system, in tandem with its Constitutions, post- Independence, or, on the eve of Independence, is more than three times that age, at 70 years as old as its recognition of the rights of man.

That's the initial premise as to why there is no need to have foreign jurists to find out the truth in Sri Lanka's case. And the second and last premise, by insisting of such, there is the danger of Sri Lanka becoming another Iran, playing into the hands of Sinhala-Buddhist extremists, which particular community forms 70% of the island's population, but much less than the overwhelming black population, the victims of apartheid, in the then South Africa.

Sri Lanka has systems and mechanisms, with a strong judicial system in place, to seek after the truth, on behalf of its own citizens. It has no need of an uplift like in the case of South Africa in 1994, which had no impartial Constitution of its own, then, that apparently drew the necessity for international jurists to meddle in its internal affairs, to seek justice to its overwhelmingly strong, black, majority population.