Unpacking the President’s speech

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Wednesday addressed the UN General Assembly, and for those who were listening to it, it was one that would have been hard to fault. The President, to his credit, said all the right things; every point that both his supporters and detractors would have been hoping to have been covered was touched upon. But for those with a lived-in reality of Sri Lanka, some of those might have rung a little hollow.

The President’s comments on sustainability and climate change were nice to hear, but hard to believe. The President pointed out: “Sri Lanka’s philosophical heritage, deeply rooted in Lord Buddha’s teachings, also emphasises the vitality of preserving environmental integrity. It is in these contexts that Sri Lanka is a Commonwealth Blue Charter Champion and leads the Action Group on Mangrove Restoration.”

Yet, from Anawilandawa to Hantane to Akkaraipattu, mangroves, forests and nature reserves are under a merciless assault. Several reports have surfaced of hundreds of acres of forest land being cleared. In Sinharaja, the last remaining primordial rain forest in the west zone, a UNESCO declared ‘man and biosphere reserve,’ a World Heritage Site, the Army is building a road to connect Lankagama, a tiny village inside the forest reserve to the large southern town of Deniyaya.  

Environmental scientists are justifiably anguished by the President’s decision to proceed with the road construction. While the construction will take place in the rainforest buffer zone, environmental activists remain concerned because the area just outside the forest reserve is also home to endemic flora and fauna that is not only unique to Sri Lanka, but also found only in this particular forest on the island. As such, is it any mystery as to why the public has grown weary and sceptical of Government assurances over the country’s environmental wellbeing?

Environment aside, the most glaring eye roll might feasibly have been reserved for the following: “Fostering greater accountability, restorative justice, and meaningful reconciliation through domestic institutions is essential to achieve lasting peace.” Such a statement is factually beyond reproach, yet reconciling such utterances with the fact that the Office on Missing Persons (OMP) is being systematically defanged is a hard, if not impossible, task. 

The fact remains that since the early ’90s, at least 10 Presidential Commissions of Inquiry have been launched into the matter of enforced disappearances with little by way of recompense. The final report of the commission appointed by President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga revealed that 90% of disappearances at the time were attributed to the Sri Lankan Military and Police, while the remaining 10% were chalked up to paramilitary groups such as the LTTE. In fact, the report named several Police and Military personnel whom there was enough evidence on to prosecute. That, out of the 21,215 verified cases of enforced disappearances in the report, less than 500 have resulted in indictment, is damning.

Since Gotabaya Rajapaksa came to power, the likelihood of this record being bettered has grown increasingly unlikely – especially with the appointments retired Judge Upali Abeyratne to the post of OMP Chairman, and later, the appointment of former war-time Police Chief former IGP Jayantha Wickramaratne as a member of the OMP. Both moves have been decried by activists, with the former responsible for previous exonerating military officials accused of abduction and murder in several emblematic disappearance cases, while Wickramaratne had been in charge of three Police units named by the United Nations investigation as involved in mass enforced disappearances at the end of the war. 

And this is not even touching on the plight of those detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, a draconian law mostly used to intimidate political opponents, activists, journalists and human rights defenders rather than protect the country against terrorism. 

The President’s speech may have played well to the Western gallery, but until those words are backed up by actions, those at home will not be so easily swayed.