Not the TRC dance again

Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe and Foreign Minister Ali Sabry were on a visit to South Africa last week, supposedly to learn about the much celebrated and recently criticised Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of that country. Later it was announced that Sri Lanka will establish a joint working group with South Africa to work out the modalities of the proposed truth and reconciliation mechanism proposed to be established here. 

Sri Lanka which is now facing international scrutiny over its outstanding human rights abuses, promised at the Human Rights Council session in October 2022 to set up a TRC.

This is not the first time Sri Lanka has toyed with the idea of a TRC. In 2015, the Yahapalana Government with Ranil Wickremesinghe as the prime minister, promised a comprehensive transitional justice process which included a TRC. The transitional justice blueprint also included an Office on Missing Persons, an Office for Reparations, and a special prosecutor to bring perpetrators of human rights violations to justice. Out of these four institutions, only two, i.e. the OMP and the reparations office, were eventually established, amidst significant protests from the then opposition. The cabinet memorandum for the establishment of a TRC gained approval days before the 2018 constitutional coup precipitated by president Maithripala Sirisena. The matter has been shelved since.

From 2015 to 2018, the then Government carried out numerous fact finding missions, negotiations and consultations with numerous groups before proposing the TRC in October 2018. All these drafts should be in the archives of the justice and foreign ministries that led the efforts. If there is an actual interest for this process all that the ministers in charge of these ministries should do is look into their own records and complete the process that was almost at the finishing line. 

Ironically, Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe and Ali Sabry are two individuals who significantly contributed to the derailing of the transitional justice processes under the previous Ranil Wickremesinghe administration. Rajapakshe as the justice minister in 2015, along with a Geneva based senior diplomat, was directly responsible for creating strife between then premier Wickremesinghe and President Maithripala Sirisena over the proposed domestic accountability mechanism. As justice minister, Rajapakshe is on record promising not to allow any legal action against Gotabaya Rajapaksa, one of the main accused in numerous cases of human rights and humanitarian law violations. Ali Sabry remains the personal lawyer to former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa who is now sanctioned by foreign governments for gross violations of human rights.

Sabry, while holding office as justice minister oversaw the forced burials of Muslims, release of convicted mass murderers under presidential pardon and persecution of numerous police officers who investigated some of the most heinous crimes committed under previous regimes.

The time for disingenuous attempts to hoodwink the international community has long passed. Since the adoption of resolution 46/1 at the Human Rights Council in 2021 and subsequently its renewal in 2022 through resolution 50/1 has now ensured that international accountability mechanisms are well and truly underway. They do not require the cooperation of the Sri Lankan Government.

Both Ali Sabry and Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe are responsible for these international mechanisms being applied in Sri Lanka since they contributed significantly to the stifling of the domestic transitional justice processes. These two charlatans delivering anything resembling a TRC let alone reconciliation is but a cruel joke on the victims of violations in Sri Lanka.