Perspectives on Truth, Memory and Justice in Sri Lanka
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Confronting the Complexity of Loss Perspectives on Truth, Memory & Justice in Sri Lanka Gehan Gunatilleke Law & Society Trust 2015 Confronting the Complexity of Loss Perspectives on Truth, Memory & Justice in Sri Lanka © Law & Society Trust, 2015 All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Law & Society Trust. ISBN 978-955-1302-66-5 Cover design by Nishika Fonseka. Photo credits (left to right): Kevin Clogstoun/Getty Images, Sebastian Zelechowski and David Lazar Law & Society Trust (LST) No. 3, Kynsey Terrace Colombo 8 Sri Lanka Tel: 94 11 2684845 / 94 11 2691228 Fax: 94 11 2686843 Email: [email protected] URL: www.lawandsocietytrust.org Foreword Justice, Truth and Reconciliation are terms that have entered Sri Lanka’s human rights discourse from time to time, and now more than ever. The year 2015 marks a historical shift in Sri Lankan politics, as Sri Lanka co-sponsored a resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, marking a landmark recognition of the need for truth, justice, reconciliation, and reparation if Sri Lanka is to achieve lasting peace and reconciliation for its peoples. In light of these political dynamics, this study presents important findings at a crucial time, on mapping the attitudes, perceptions and viewpoints of victims and survivors, in relation to these concepts. As Sri Lanka experiments with different mechanisms and frameworks, which are discussed in academic circles and lawmakers’ chambers, the difficulty of the quest to truly meet the needs of the victims in order to achieve justice, truth and reconciliation equally, assumes monumental proportions. Gehan Gunatilleke in this study challenges the notion of a unique ‘Sri Lankan approach’ to truth, memory and justice, which is suggested by many, and grapples instead with the plurality of the views of victims, where each narrative can have a different outcome and perspective. While he does not arrive at broad conclusions on the ‘Sri Lankan approach’, his research provides a clear argument for the need for Sri Lanka to capture the diverse voices of victims and survivors in any mechanism to achieve lasting peace and reconciliation. The Law and Society Trust hopes that this study will provide fertile ground for building true victim and survivor centric reconciliation frameworks for Sri Lanka and its peoples in the next few years. Law and Society Trust, Colombo i Acknowledgements The author and the Law & Society Trust (LST) wish to thank Kasun Chamara Munasinghe, Mathini Vigneswaran and Vigitha Renganathan for their invaluable commitment and courage in conducting interviews and focus group discussions within a challenging, and often dangerous environment. We also thank Donald Reegan, Subhashini Abeysinghe, and Surekha Samarasena for their support during the training of field researchers. We are indebted to Mala Liyanage (former Executive Director of LST), Dr. Nimal Gunatilleke, Dylan Perera, Sanjayan Rajasingham and Rasika Mendis for their useful comments and observations on previous drafts. Above all, we thank the 45 participants who displayed incredible resolve and sincerity in coming forward to tell their stories and share their views with us. We dedicate this study to these participants and others like them, some of whom remain voiceless. ii Confronting the Complexity of Loss: Perspectives on Truth, Memory & Justice in Sri Lanka Gehan Gunatilleke* Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................1 Background to the Study ..........................................................................1 Research Method, Limitations and Presentation ...............................3 Part 1: Context and Chronology .................................................................8 1. Context of Ethnic and Religious Relations ......................................8 1.1 Demographic distribution ....................................................................... 8 1.2 Historical and contemporary relations ................................................ 9 2. A Chronology of Key Events ............................................................ 21 2.1 The 30-year ethnic war ......................................................................... 21 2.2 The JVP insurrection ............................................................................. 29 2.3 Post-war human rights violations ...................................................... 32 1958…’71…’77…’81…83........................................................................... 35 Part 2: Narratives of Loss .......................................................................... 36 1. Home and Belonging .......................................................................... 36 * Gehan Gunatilleke is an attorney-at-law and researcher based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He is currently the Research Director at Verité Research. He also teaches post-graduate courses in human rights, democratisation and development offered by the University of Sydney, University of Colombo and the Open University of Sri Lanka. He is the co-author of ‘The Judicial Mind in Sri Lanka: Responding to the Protection of Minority Rights’ (Law & Society Trust: 2014) and a contributing author of ‘Embattled Media: Democracy, Governance and Reform in Sri Lanka’ (Institute of Commonwealth Studies: 2015). iii 2. Personal Narratives ............................................................................ 38 2.1 The 1983 Pogrom ................................................................................... 39 2.2 Abductions during the JVP insurrection ......................................... 41 2.3 Expulsion from the North .................................................................... 43 2.4 LTTE raids on border villages ........................................................... 44 2.5 LTTE bombings of civilian targets ................................................... 45 2.6 Military personnel killed or missing in action .............................. 48 2.7 The final stages of the war .................................................................. 49 2.8 Disappearances and displacement in the aftermath of war ....... 50 2.9 Riot in Aluthgama .................................................................................. 53 3. Reflections on Truth, Memory and Justice ................................... 54 3.1 The context of loss ................................................................................. 54 3.2 Self reflection .......................................................................................... 58 3.3 Telling others ........................................................................................... 61 3.4 Memorialising ......................................................................................... 69 3.5 Justice and the perpetrator ................................................................... 72 3.6 Future prevention ................................................................................... 84 Part 3: Conclusion ........................................................................................ 89 1. Heterogeneity and the Reductive Narrative ................................. 89 2. Factors that Shape the Views of Victims ....................................... 97 2.1 Legitimacy of context ........................................................................... 98 2.2 Self reflection ........................................................................................ 100 2.3 Timeframe .............................................................................................. 101 3. Truth, Justice and Reparations .................................................... 102 3.1 Truth ......................................................................................................... 103 3.2 Justice....................................................................................................... 105 3.3 Reparations ............................................................................................. 106 Bibliography ............................................................................................... 109 Annexes ........................................................................................................ 119 iv Introduction Background to the Study Historical and contemporary narratives often shape the manner in which a society confronts violence and loss, and the questions of truth, memory and justice that consequentially emerge. The Eighteenth Century revolutions and subsequent anti-slavery movements in Europe and North America contributed towards the development of a liberal- democratic ideology rooted in liberty and justice. Less than two centuries later, two World Wars prompted discourses on international justice and galvanised universal human rights norms. These discourses also grappled with the contradictions of colonialism and the injustices that often lingered in its aftermath. The post-World War era accordingly witnessed a spate of independence struggles in the Global South, which shaped conceptions of rights and justice in those societies. Meanwhile, in Latin America, a recent history of gross injustices under military dictatorships led to remarkable grassroots demands for truth and justice. African experiences,