The announcement by the IIGEP of the ending of their involvement in the Presidential Commission of Inquiry to Investigate and Inquire into Alleged Serious Violations of Human Rights came yesterday (31st March). A day later, the Jaffna-based University Teachers for Human Rights (UTHR J) issued a report naming the perpetrators of the killings of the five students in Trincomalee and the 17 aid workers of Action Contra la Faim (ACF). Both events reveal the extent to which the Sri Lankan government and its propaganda agencies are involved in sabotaging investigations into gross abuses of human rights and are making a mockery of justice in the country. In fact in todays Sri Lanka there is no place for justice. Justice is dead in the country now. The Presidential Commission of Inquiry is a stage show carefully and extravagantly choreographed as a theatre of the absurd to entertain the cynically minded within the government itself, of their ability to deceive the country and the world. The two events mentioned above go in some way to expose this crude attempt at a ploy by the government.
Violators of human rights and those who commit these grave crimes are not difficult to identify in Sri Lanka. It is a small country with a strong tradition of oral communication where news travels fast. When a crime happens, people get to know who the possible culprits are within a short time. Where investigators into crime are allowed to function in a normal manner and to do their duties according to the way prescribed by law, it does not take much time to identify perpetrators and to bring them before courts. As the Asian Human Rights Commission has pointed out consistently the countrys investigation mechanism has adequate competence to deal with crime. However, so called failures into the identification of criminals are well planned. There is now a long established practice of how to create the impression that there is not enough evidence to prosecute perpetrators of certain crimes. What goes on is a well contrived deception in trying to suppress information in order to protect the culprits of these crimes.
This contrived and orchestrated denial of justice goes to destroy the very core of a nation. A nation that deliberately denies justice to its people cannot hold its people together. It is justice that cements the peoples belief in the ability to stay to together and to cooperate with each other. The primary function of a nation is to enhance the cooperation among its people despite of their differences in interest. Where justice fails, cooperation also fails, and that is what is being witnessed in the country, in the south, north and the east.
It is now a well entrenched belief in the political establishment that the police and the military should be free to engage in crimes. At the police stations people who have been arrested and are alleged to be habitual criminals are shot dead and the usual report that is filed in court is that the person tried to escape from police custody or tried to attack the police and as a result he was fatally short. There are even reports about people taking poison inside the police stations after arrest. Such events are constantly reported and perhaps the publicity into such killings is used by the government as a propaganda ploy to instill fear and to create a fear psychosis.
This is also the approach that is adopted in terms of politically motivated crimes which too are directed towards the creation of fear and intimidation in the population. The killing of the five students and the 17 aid workers as well as several Tamil members of parliament is all a scheme that has the blessings of the government. After each of these killings the government spends quite a lot of the national budget to cover up such crimes.
The actions of the IIGEP as well as the report of the UTHR J goes some way to expose the mockery of justice that is being staged in Sri Lanka. The local and international pressure alone can bring back the hope of the return of justice to the people.
