Focus on Rights

The killings and displacement in Mutur, the indiscriminate bomb blasts in Colombo and other parts of the country and the present climate of insecurity in Sri Lanka ultimately terrorises ordinary people the most.

The poor are the first victims of the conflict; they are the ones in the refugee camps with only athe clothes on their backs, they are the ones shot execution style in the night or herded like cattle at checkpoints prior to being disposed of in one way or another. And it is in reference to their protection that an effective mechanism for monitoring human rights and humanitarian abuses has become an absolute priority.

Who should constitute this mechanism? Indisputably, it should not be encompassed within domestic human rights bodies such as the National Human Rights Commission. This would be exceedingly futile for reasons traceable to the currently illegal mandate of the NHRC, the lack of a demonstrated human rights protection record on the part of its present membership as well as its inherently limited authority in terms of Act No 21 of 1996. Indeed, such an effort would be counterproductive, resulting in the denial of human rights abuses rather than their being effectively addressed. Equally no other domestically based body has sufficient authority and credibility for this purpose.

Then again, it should not consist of members of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), given its history of ineffectual interventions and its direct albeit highly critiqued involvement between the parties as a 'facilitator" or a "negotiator" as the case may be.

In the vacuum, a strong case should be made out for an international human rights monitor with the authority of the United Nations. Though the involvement of the United Nations in Sri Lanka's conflict has been strongly opposed by extremist forces in the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and the Jathika Hela Urumaya, this opposition has not emanated from anything more credible than a paranoid distrust of any 'outsider intervention."

While this may do credit to the increasingly strident nationalist agenda of both parties, it does little to assuage the pain and anguish of the many thousands who are displaced or the numbers who have seen their loved ones being ruthlessly killed. Consequently, we should not scruple to dismiss these arguments as lacking both force and logic.

During a recent visit to Nepal this year for a different purpose, I was incidentally able to observe the manner in which such a United Nations mission in that country did much to rein in human rights violations and act as an effective mediator between the Maoists and the government forces. Here too, an international mission was the preferred alternative, as domestic monitors such as National Human Rights Commissioners had no credibility. Shortly after democratic rule was restored, all these discredited Commissioners resigned.

The UN mission functioned through a Memorandum of Understanding between OHCHR and the Government of Nepal which had established a Nepal Office of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Coming from a standpoint where the SLMM had attracted such intense hostility by its interventions in Sri Lanka, it was a lesson in point for me to see a monitoring mission being handled with such extraordinary sensitivity and impartiality. There was no talk in the Nepali press of the nation's sovereignty being imperilled or of distrust of the motives of the mission. Its success was in no small measure due to the impeccable human rights credentials and commitment of the man who headed it, Ian Martin as well as the quality of his staffers, both domestic and international. Its interventions acted as a considerable force in compelling the monarchy to yield to the will of the people and withdraw from its authoritarianism.

Though the context of the conflict is different in Sri Lanka, there is a pressing need for such a mission. Ideally, of course, this should have been established immediately after the ceasefire agreement instead of an abandoning of the north to the ferocious mercies of the LTTE. It is an indictment on the human rights community in the South that no sustained cry was raised in that regard; the ineffective interventions of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) was a weak substitute.

The amount of money as well as energy spent during 2002-2005 on conferences in five star hotels, glitzy campaigns in the name of peace and many other extravagant excesses, (resulting in precisely zero impact on lightening the burden of Tamils and Muslims living in the North-East), have been stupendous.

If these efforts had been expended instead on a ceaseless campaign to set up a monitoring mission on a non-negotiable basis of rights protection, we may have well witnessed a different dynamic in relation to the renewed war. The sporadic attempts to formulate a 'road map' for rights monitoring during this period is disgraceful testimony to the manner in which human rights was pushed conveniently to the back by the government as well as so-called "civil society" groups, more interested in appeasing the LTTE than in anything else. And if we are to retain some shreds of our conscience, this attitude needs to change at least now.