The Sunday Times Focus on right

Unfortunately, these same stringent standards cannot be applied to the Tigers who carry out their acts of terror at will. But, as this column has emphasized before, statehood is not that of the Tigers to claim. Indeed their very acts of barbarism have swerved support away from them. It is amply seen that their fight is not for the Tamil people but instead for the building up a cult presided over by meglomaniacs who are obsessed with decimating all those who do not agree with their opinions. Assuredly the Sri Lankan State cannot apply these same rationale to its own functioning.

During the wave of state terror in response to attempts to overthrow the State by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna in the eighties (accompanied as it was by an increasingly grim Northern conflict), government resistance to international scrutiny was at its height.

From the agonisingly involved vantage point of learning the law in pure theory while recording its blatant abuse and mockery in actual practice, I remember contrasting the polished explanations of our diplomats in Geneva and New York with the systematically brutal practices being condoned at home. And even as the back of the 'Sinhala terrorist" movement was broken by the arrest and execution of its leader Rohana Wijeweera, the country began to accustom itself to the realisation of the most horrific excesses visited upon Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim innocents (both in the name of and against the State).

The extreme revulsion that this generated led to Sri Lanka's name being further tarnished in the world. Domestically, the then leadership of the United National Party distanced itself from its predecessor leadership to the extent of not even acknowledging the development work that had been initiated during those times in the most far flung villages. It also brought into power on a tide of goodwill and indeed, bearing an unprecedented mandate for peace, Chandrika Kumaratunge whose gradual demolishing of all these expectations during her disastrously damaging Presidency is now a matter of historical record.

To reiterate the point, she bears direct responsibility for the weakening the institution of the Supreme Court to which Sri Lankans had been wont to turn for redress, even in a limited manner, in the past. This is a heinous crime for which she ought never to be afforded clemency. And the price that she is now paying in that specific regard, (given particularly the judicial pruning down of her term in office and certain consequent orders thereafter ruling against her entitlement to gifts of land as well as her reduction in security), has a tinge of almost Bibilical justice to it. I, for one, have little sympathy to spare for a President who has classically reaped what she herself had sown, thinking only of her political survival and with scant disregard for the well being of the country's institutional democracy.

But to return to the theme with which this column commenced, the Presidency of Kumaratunge's successor now sees a return of that old resistance to international scrutiny in perhaps an even more extreme form. This is borne out by the shifts and turns in government policy towards allowing an international monitoring mission, along the lines of the mission set up by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal. This was staffed by experienced individuals with a proven commitment in human rights who had performed their tasks extremely well to the universal praise of the Nepalis.

An earlier willingness by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to permit a like mission for Sri Lanka has now been replaced by a lukewarm permission for 'international observers.' This might end up, heaven forbid, much like those teams of election monitors that descend upon Sri Lanka come election time and expend enormous resources on their work resulting in lengthy reports and portentous recommendations to improve the country's democratic election systems which are, thereafter, tossed aside like so much chaff in the wind by the government.

But even this reluctant concession to allow international observers in, may be of short duration, judging by recent developments. Notably this concerns the government refusal to bestow formal observer status on a British silk nominated by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) to observe the inquest proceedings of the seventeen aid workers of Action Contra L'Faim killed in Mutur in early August.

The official explanation is that such observation is not required as the inquest is not a judicial proceeding and given further that a team of Australian forensic scientists have already been permitted to function as observers.

This explanation is, however, hardly credible as the ICJ observer would be vested with a specific mandate to ascertain whether the inquest, (certainly a legally related proceeding), is being conducted with the due observance of legally applicable standards of inquests into extra judicial killings. This is certainly not a mandate that forensic scientists, (whether Australian or otherwise), can be entrusted with. These refusals, heavy handed as they are, should be re-thought by the Government since they tend to foster the immediate perception that the process of justice is not all that it should be.

And for those who may take umbrage at this questioning of the local procedures, I may need to only remind that this was the very case that was taken out of the hands of the Magistrate of Mutur (sitting in Trincomalee) and transferred to a location as far away as the Magistrate's Court of Anuradhapura and this too, by the mere ipse dixit of the Secretary to the Ministry of Justice conveyed through a phone call no less.

Its re-transfer to the Magistrate's Court of Kantale, (which case continues to be heard by the Magistrate of Anuradhapura), has not greatly redressed the situation except to make it easier for witnesses to attend. The initial question remains; why was the case transferred out of the Magistrate's Court of Mutur in the first instance? Was this the proper and best way whereby a case that was as controversial as this should have been treated administratively? While there may be innocent explanations for all this, the perception that justice is being done is as important as the fact that justice is, in fact, been done. This is a cardinal principle of the law and its infringement gives rise to apprehensions that cannot be dismissed as mere flummery.

Then again, we have the expulsion of expatriates attached to some international non-governmental organisations on the alleged basis that they have been collaborating with the terrorists. While certain charges such as the use of the Tiger emblem on equal parity with the state symbol is a legitimate cause of grievance in regard to one organisation, other genuine humanitarian networks should not be blacklisted due to hasty judgement.

Conclusively, no State can be expected to look upon monitoring by any force beyond its shores with perfect equanimity. But where the lives and liberties of ordinary Sri Lankans are not being protected sufficiently, such international scrutiny becomes inevitable. This week's deferring of a European Union sponsored text on Sri Lanka in the United Nations Human Rights Council evidences an increased pressure on the government. To deflect the urgency of such demands, the government needs to re-establish credibility in its processes of justice rather than engage its diplomats in smooth tongued explanations of double speak. The latter approach had notably little long-term impact in the eighties. Undeniably it cannot have any greater measure of success now.