International justice is the only option for the Church

The Catholic Church has appealed to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to back its efforts to secure a transparent investigation into the 2019 Easter Sunday carnage. Archbishop of Colombo Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith is reported to have reiterated this call when he met the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Nada al-Nashif in Geneva this week.

According to news reports, the subject of these discussions was the lack of progress in domestic judicial processes to deliver justice for the Easter Sunday attacks that affected the Christian community in Sri Lanka the most, when three churches became the targets of the suicide bomb attacks. The Cardinal has now firmly expressed his trust in international mechanisms for justice for the over 260 civilians killed on 22 April 2019. 

President Ranil Wickremesinghe has also justified these calls for international action by refusing to offer a credible domestic alternative. In the wake of damning accusations made a few weeks ago by UK based Channel Four, which claimed that there is reasonable evidence that Sri Lanka’s State intelligence agencies were either involved, were known to the perpetrators or orchestrated the Easter Sunday attacks, the President and the defence ministry he heads have outright dismissed the allegations. Instead of carrying out a comprehensive, transparent and credible investigation, the President has appointed yet another committee which lacks all these elements. In a bizarre interview to German television the President also severely criticised the Cardinal, apparently claiming that his quest for justice differs from other clergy, a claim that has been categorically rebutted by the Catholic Bishops Conference.

The fact that the Catholic Church now resorted to international legal remedy is yet another indictment in the abysmal failure of the local judicial system which has for long years failed victims, be it the 100,000 or more enforced disappeared or extrajudicially killed or those routinely murdered in State custody. The Easter terror attacks are just another reminder of this broken criminal justice system.

The Cardinal has not always been a champion of human rights or efforts to seek justice for victims of crimes committed by the State, internationally. Not so long before the Easter Sunday attacks, he famously proclaimed that human rights were ‘the religion of the West’. But there is no joy in this reversal of opinion by the Cardinal because it is the pain and denial of closure for his flock that he carries with him to Geneva and beyond. In his quest for justice for victims of the heinous bombings, one hopes that Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith will also carry the prayers and appeals of thousands of Sri Lankans spanning the length and breadth of the island who are still crying out for justice 10, 20 and 40 years down the road from crimes committed by the State.

Due to the Sri Lankan Government’s repeated failure to deliver domestic remedies for crimes committed by the State, in 2021 the UN Human Rights Council resolved to establish an international mechanism at the OHCHR that would gather evidence of the serious human rights humanitarian law violations. Since by its own admittance and inaction the Sri Lankan President and the Government have demonstrated that they are neither willing nor capable of delivering justice for the Easter Sunday victims, the Cardinal and the Catholic Church should request the truth-seeking mechanism already established within the OHCHR to be empowered to investigate the attacks as it does with other violations. Beyond the realm of divine justice, the only remedy available for the victims of this heinous crime is international, extraterritorial jurisdictions.