Sword of Damocles in Geneva
07 March 2017
The Rajapaksa government preened itself on saving the country from
terrorism and pledged to defend the armed forces against international
forces bent on pressing war crimes charges against them. The present
administration, some of whose leaders the previous government branded as
‘traitors’, boasts of having saved the ‘saviours’! It says its foreign
policy has helped win over the world powers and obviate the need for
an international war crimes probe.
In a dramatic turn of
events replete with irony, President Maithripala Sirisena, speaking at
the Palali military base the other day, vowed to do everything in his
power to defend the armed forces personnel vis-a-vis war crimes
allegations. He has also said there won’t be a hybrid war crimes court.
The President’s much-publicised pledge to the military must have come
as a big disappointment for the pro-LTTE groups which threw in their
lot with him at the last presidential election and did their damnedest
to ensure his victory. They did so as they expected an international
war crimes tribunal to be set up under a new government. They were
cock-a-hoop when the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration
co-sponsored the US crafted UNHRC resolution calling for a hybrid war
crimes court.
It is being speculated in some quarters that
the deadline for setting up a war crimes tribunal in keeping with Sri
Lanka’s UNHRC commitments may be extended by two more years. UNHRC
Chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein refuses to budge on that score, but he has
to do as the western powers say. The tail cannot wag the dog. In fact,
he has got under the skin of US President Donald Trump with his
diatribe against the latter last September, when he called for action
to halt ‘demagogues and political fantasists’. He will be lucky if Trump
does not retaliate.
The western bloc has let down the
Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government, which has not received any
financial assistance from it. Sri Lanka’s ever worsening economic woes
are weighing heavily against the yahapalana regime so much so that it
keeps postponing elections on some flimsy pretext, unable to face them.
The situation is bound to take a turn for the worse in time to come
with the depreciation of the rupee. A turn of the screw in Geneva will
spell disaster for the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe regime. This is also a
worrisome proposition for the foreign powers which helped engineer the
2015 regime change to prevent Sri Lanka from becoming China’s sphere of
influence. Hence, the yahapalana government is not likely to be forced
to honour its Geneva commitments at this juncture. The government
leaders may have got an assurance from their foreign masters to that
effect. Else, President Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil
Wickremesinghe would not have made bold public statements that there is
no need for foreign judges or a hybrid tribunal.
It may
also be argued that what the President and the Prime Minister have said
of the UNHRC-recommended hybrid court is for local consumption and the
government’s official position on the issue has been articulated by
Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera recently in Geneva. Samaraweera
has said, inter alia: ‘In the face of roadblocks and other obstacles in
the day to day world of realpolitik, there may have to be detours from
time to time, but the destination will remain the same. Our resolve to
see the transitional justice process through has not diminished.’ The
question is how the government proposes to ‘see the transitional
justice process through’. What kind of mechanism it will put in place
to achieve that goal? Samaraweera has left much unsaid for obvious
reasons.
The western powers will keep the Sword of Damocles
hanging over the heads of President Sirisena and PM Wickremesinghe in
Geneva. That will enable them to leverage their influence at the UNHRC
to use Sri Lanka to further their interests in this part of the world.
They are already busy scouting out the lie of the land in Trincomalee
and Hambantota.
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