Country Context
SRI LANKA
Sri Lanka endured a 26-year civil war from 1983–2009, whose roots lay in 150 years of discriminatory British colonial policies, which gave the ethnic minority Tamil people greater access to education and public employment opportunities than the Sinhalese ethnic majority.[i] The ethnic tensions intensified by these colonial practices came to the fore after independence, when the newly elected parliament adopted the Official Language Act of 1956 declaring Sinhala the official language of Sri Lanka.[ii] Additional polices advantaged Sinhalese over Tamil people in terms of educational and employment opportunities, which, coupled with the Official Language Act, raised barriers for Tamil people.[iii] A Tamil separatist movement arose.[iv] The civil war began in July 1983, dubbed “Black July” after riots claimed approximately 3,000 lives, destroyed 5,000 Tamil businesses, displaced 150,000 and forced 500,000 Tamil people into exile.[v]
For the next 26 years, the Sri Lankan government fought Tamil separatist groups, dominated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the 1987–1989 insurrection of the People’s Liberation Front (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna). Acknowledging and reckoning with the past is essential for any truth, justice or memory endeavor in Sri Lanka. The civil war period was marked by gross human rights violations committed by both state and non-state actors, including forcible displacement, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killing, torture, sexual violence and forcible conscription.[vi] The UN has estimated that at least 100,000 people were killed and more than a million displaced over the course of the war, and civilians were frequently targeted during the conflict.[vii] Even in the final months of the war, the Sri Lankan armed forces engaged in indiscriminate shelling of civilians in the no-fire zones, killing 40,000 Tamil civilians and displacing almost 300,000 before declaring a unilateral end to the conflict.[viii] Hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians were interned by the government and forced to remain for years in overcrowded, dangerous and unsanitary conditions in Manik Farm camp.[ix] For their part, the LTTE killed prisoners, assassinated political figures who opposed their tactics, forcibly conscripted children and engaged in forcible disappearances, torture and extortion. LTTE also bombed Buddhist shrines and religious gatherings.[x]
Human rights violations did not end with the war. Torture and enforced disappearance continue to be used by the Sri Lankan government as tools of political repression. International organizations have repeatedly called for repeal of Sri Lankan laws permitting arbitrary pre-trial detention and torture to extract confessions, the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1979 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Act of 2007, but they remain in place.[xi] These two laws have increasingly been used against perceived enemies of the state and to punish Tamil expressions of identity or memory. As one example, in 2020, Muslim poet and teacher Ahnaf Jazeem was detained for more than a year without charges and without access to counsel under the Prevention of Terrorism Act for publishing a Tamil-language poetry anthology.[xii] Human rights lawyer Hejaaz Hizbullah was imprisoned in 2020 for 22 months without bail under the same act.[xiii]
After the civil war, there were ebbs and flows of political and communal violence; however, social and political tensions escalated again in 2019, first with the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings and again following the presidential election. The Easter bombings killed 270 people in three churches and three hotels, inciting anti-Muslim violence and revealing new ruptures in Sir Lanka’s socio-political landscape.[xiv] No one has yet been tried or convicted for the bombings, although authorities say dozens of people have been charged.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa,[1] who had been defense secretary during the final brutal phase of the war, won the 2019 presidential election, which further increased ethnic and political tension.[xv] After his election, the sparse progress that had been made toward transitional justice came to a halt, and CSOs reported that the old practices of surveillance and silencing had returned.[xvi] In addition to all these factors, the government’s response to COVID-19 introduced new restrictions on social gatherings and mobility, increased the challenge of civilian monitoring of human rights violations and adversely impacted the religious rights of Muslim Sri Lankans through forced cremation of remains.[xvii]
Although there have been several official investigations into incidents of political and communal violence since 2010, they are done to appease an international community, with little political will behind the effort. As a result, perpetrators are rarely held accountable, particularly when they are affiliated with the military or the government. Transitional justice mechanisms, such as the independent truth commission promised in 2015 and a hybrid special court recommended by UNOHCHR, have either not been established or have been rejected by subsequent governments.[xviii] Where they do exist in Sri Lanka, investigative organizations are rarely independent, justice sector institutions are highly politicized and existing laws are abused or manipulated to pretermit violations.[xix] At the same time, cycles of violent repression make it difficult for civil society or the public at large to pressure the government for change. Victims have few viable avenues to seek redress or reparations.
Memory
Public memorials and remembrance activities by Tamils have been limited if not outright prohibited as part of the Sri Lankan government’s efforts to shape a favorable historical narrative about the war.[i] This has been especially damaging to survivors and victim communities, for whom collective memory is culturally important.[ii] As one interviewee shared, “Memorialization is very important because we come from a culture that considers memorialization very important to help people to move on from tragedy. [When] people don’t have the space for memorialization, [their] ability to move on is completely damaged, and it is about well-being and mental health in the end.”[iii]
State and International Initiatives
The Sri Lankan government actively interferes in Tamil community-led memory events and has not sponsored or facilitated any memory initiatives of its own. The Tamil community has two significant days of memorial: “Mullivaikkal Day” (May 18) to remember victims from the final period of the war in 2009, and “Maaverar Naal” (Great Heroes Day) to honor fallen fighters of the LTTE. Observance of these days was prohibited until 2015; between 2015–2019, memorials were frequently subject to harassment and intimidation; and retaliation has only increased since 2019. A recommendation from the 2011 Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission to hold an event on National Day to honor victims of the civil war has never been implemented.
In addition to denying memorials on days of significance, the government of Sri Lanka has prevented acts of memory in other ways. For instance, police used COVID-19 protection measures repeatedly in 2020 to specifically ban Tamil memorial events.[i] Jaffna University authorities destroyed a monument commemorating Tamil civilians in January 2021.[ii] Authorities have also obtained court orders prohibiting community leaders and activists from participating in memorial events and repressed activity by groups looking for missing and disappeared persons.[iii] For instance, police violently prevented the Mullaitivu Disappeared Relatives’ Association from holding a protest during the Prime Minister’s visit to the Mullaitivu area in March 2022.[iv] Physical memorials are also imperiled. One of the only remaining physical monuments to LTTE fighters in the country is the pile of broken gravestones near Kilinochchi where an LTTE cemetery was bulldozed and the rubble abandoned.[v]
This behavior stands in stark contrast to the numerous monuments and memorials erected to honor the Sri Lankan military and significant military victories. These memorials are intended to convey a victor’s narrative, but they also support a narrative that military action, especially in the final phase of the war, was really a humanitarian operation.[vi] They are found throughout the country, including traditional Tamil areas in the north where some of the military’s worst abuses occurred. The style of memorial ranges from large abstract monuments that anchor public spaces to small bus stop installations commemorating a specific act or attack.[vii] They are frequently treated with almost religious reverence by visiting Sinhalese-Buddhists.[viii]
Community and Civil Society Initiatives
Despite government obstruction, communities and civil society continue to organize events and engage in public memory. In some cases, acts of memory are as simple as refusing to repair bullet holes made in the wall of a mosque.[i] The 2022 Aragalaya protests were seen as opening new space for memorials, at least for people in southern Sri Lanka. One interviewee recounted holding a small public remembrance event for Mullivaikkal Day in Colombo: “We were here in the middle of the Aragalaya, and the government didn’t know what to do with all these people claiming their rights and speaking up for other people as well, and that was also permitted. I don’t know whether we would be able to do it anymore under this current administration. But, definitely, more and more successive governments and increasingly more and more insecure governments have been very afraid and very hostile to communities.”[ii]
In the absence of state support or resources, a number of web-based museums, archival projects and exhibitions have been put together by local and international non-governmental or multilateral organizations. Although limited by access to internet connections and digital devices, these projects contribute to collective memory by sharing victim and community perspectives through documentation, visuals, research and analysis. Two notable examples are shared below.
Office of the Missing Persons
Although the government has not initiated any formal memorials for Tamil victims of the civil war, it did create the Office of Missing Persons (OMP) in 2017. The OMP was mandated to search for missing persons, clarify the circumstances under which they went missing and identify the avenues of redress available to their surviving relatives.[i] Friends and family of the disappeared have called the OMP, at best, an “inactive mechanism.”[ii] For instance, families who gave evidence to the OMP in 2019 reported in September 2022 that the only action taken on their cases had been a receipt acknowledging submission.[iii] The OMP also requests a large amount of documentation from families before opening a case. As of November 2021, families were expected to submit 20 different documents,[1] many of which were never originally issued or were destroyed in the conflict or by the multiple displacements that families endured.[iv]
In addition to inactivity, and reminiscent of previous initiatives,[v] the OMP has also been criticized for attempting to prematurely close cases by declaring the missing person dead.[vi] Many families resist a simple declaration of death because their missing loved ones were last seen when they surrendered to the military. Families say it is the responsibility of the OMP to investigate the truth around their relatives’ disappearance before declaring them dead.[vii] The Chairman of the OMP further undermined the OMP’s legitimacy in November 2022 when he told the press that most of the disappeared had been kidnapped by the LTTE and there was no evidence to suggest that people who surrendered to the military had gone missing.[viii]
Museum for Religious Freedom
The Minor Matters’ trilingual virtual Museum for Religious Freedom was launched in 2019 as a national campaign to promote freedom of religion or belief and foster religious harmony in Sri Lanka.[i] The museum includes a thematic focus on “Ethnic Conflict and Religious Harm,” which centers on incidents of religious harm that took place during the civil war and includes the virtual reconstruction of sites affected by the armed conflict as well as audio testimonies. Since June 2022, Minor Matters has been facilitating workshops for youth from around the country on freedom of religion and belief and Sri Lankan history.[ii]
Historical Dialogue Platform
The Historical Dialogue Platform is a digital platform intended to “bring together researchers, organizations, journalists, students, and anyone with an open and questioning mind interested in issues relating to memorialization and the post-war situation in Sri Lanka.”[i] The platform hosts a wide variety of initiatives focused on memory, including podcasts, memory walks, interviews with public figures, films, theatre productions and more.
Justice
Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency was a blow to the limited progress made in transitional justice between 2015–2019. Given Rajapaksa’s prominent role in overseeing atrocities committed during the war, his election called into question whether truth would prevail over impunity. Once elected, Gotabaya further undermined public confidence by appointing a number of alleged war crime perpetrators to senior military and intelligence posts.[i]
State-Led Accountability and Justice Mechanisms
Sri Lankan government has resisted accountability and other forms of justice, whether at the state or international level. This trend accelerated during Rajapaksa’s administration, which retreated from previously made commitments. The government of Sri Lanka cosponsored UN Human Rights Council Resolution 30/1 in 2015 that promised to establish “a judicial mechanism with a special counsel to investigate allegations of violations and abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law.”[i] It renewed that commitment in 2017 and 2019 without having taken any steps to bring the promised judicial mechanism into being.[ii] In February 2020, however, Rajapaksa’s government withdrew its support for UN Human Rights Council Resolution 40/1 and all linked resolutions, claiming that the resolution interfered with its own plans to create a domestic commission of inquiry, headed by a justice of the Sri Lankan Supreme Court.[iii] Even when the accountability mechanism is the formal judicial system, the government sometimes undermines justice. For instance, a military officer convicted of killing eight Tamil civilians was granted a presidential pardon in 2020.[iv]
Where the government has been willing to pursue them, investigations have not consistently led to accountability measures if they've implicated members of the Sri Lankan government or military. The response to the 2019 Easter bombings illustrates this trend. Following the bombings, former president Maithripala Sirisena established a Commission of Inquiry. The Commission of Inquiry completed its report in February 2021, which included a recommendation that criminal charges be brought against Sirisena and other senior government officials for failing to take preventive action[1] despite multiple warnings that an attack was likely.[v] Then-president Rajapaksa appointed a committee to study the report, but did not share the report with Parliament, the attorney general or the public until a year later, following a public pressure campaign from the Catholic church and UNOHCHR.[vi] Meanwhile, two senior security officials were acquitted in February 2021 of failing to act on warnings about an attack because of insufficient evidence.[vii] No further action was taken until September 2022, when a member of the National Catholic Committee for Justice to Easter Sunday Attack Victims filed a private complaint against Sirisena in civil court.[viii] That case resulted in a January 2023 order from the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka for Sirisena to personally pay 100 million rupees in compensation to the victims of the attacks.[ix] As of January 2023, no criminal charges had been brought despite the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry, which had no independent power to order a criminal investigation.[x]
Legal, Political and Social Constraints to Accountability
Between legislative and judicial delays, the politicization of the process and impunity within the system, legal professionals agree that victims have limited options to seek accountability or reparations. Other constraints to accountability include an adversarial judicial system that often results in victims changing their testimony, the use of emergency regulations to permit arbitrary arrests, detention without access to counsel, the admissibility of confessions obtained through torture and a general distrust of institutions. As one observer noted, “It is very antithetical, the participation of victim survivors to the modus of operation in our country, which is one of silencing. So if they really approach individual or collective trauma [or] injustice or social level grievances, [it] is this approach of silencing. Then, there’s absolutely no incentive to create spaces for people to articulate because the official line is that there is nothing to articulate to begin with.”
Women, ethno-religious minorities and the socioeconomically marginalized face additional burdens to accessing justice. Female victims and female activists who advocate for them are frequently subjected to harassment and intimidation by state officials and security personnel. Both the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE frequently engaged in sexual violence during the war, but survivors routinely encounter social and procedural obstacles when seeking justice for those crimes. These obstacles include social stigma related to issues such as sexual violence or a woman’s marital status, a shortage of Tamil-speaking police officers to take reports, significant judicial delays and the risk of further exploitation when survivors report assaults. A 2020 study of rape cases found that it takes between three and 11 years to file a case and five to 19 years to obtain a judgment from a High Court.
International Accountability and Justice Mechanisms
Intergovernmental organizations continue to put pressure on the Sri Lankan government to deliver justice for victims. In response to the Sri Lankan government’s withdrawal from UN HRC Resolution 40/1, the UN Human Rights Council established the UNOHCHR Sri Lanka Accountability Project in March 2021, which is mandated “to collect, consolidate, analyze and preserve information and evidence relating to violations and abuses of human rights and related crimes in Sri Lanka, and to advocate for victims and survivors, and to support relevant judicial and other proceedings, including in UN Member States, with competent jurisdiction.”[i] In September 2022, it released a follow-up report highlighting the ongoing use of intimidation, torture and surveillance; supporting public demands for accountability measures; and calling on the government to renew efforts toward a victim-centered approach to transitional justice and accountability.[ii] UNOHCHR reported that its human rights documentation project team had been denied permission to visit Sri Lanka in July 2022, although other UN entities were given permission to visit in May and August of that year.[iii]
Other entities within the UN have been approached concerning the culture of impunity for government officials and military officers in Sri Lanka, which resulted in some actions. In January 2021, the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) and the daughter of newspaper editor and human rights activist Lasantha Wickrematunge filed a complaint against the government of Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Committee for its role in her father’s assassination.[iv] This was followed in May 2022 by a coalition of press freedom organizations filing a complaint before the People’s Tribunal in The Hague.[v] In November 2022, four UN bodies[1] issued a joint communication calling for Sri Lanka to hold the relevant officials accountable for gross human rights violations during the 1989 Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna uprising in Matale District; the official in command of Matale at that time was Gotabaya Rajapaksa.[vi] The UN Human Rights Council released its sixth monitoring report on Sri Lanka’s implementation of the ICCPR in March 2023, noting concerns about ongoing impunity for military officers.[vii]
Sri Lankans have also sought justice using national courts in other countries. Prior to the official announcement of Rajapaksa’s candidacy for president in Sri Lanka, 11 plaintiffs filed a case against him in a U.S. District Court for his alleged role in their torture.[viii] That case was withdrawn after Rajapaksa acquired head-of-state immunity following his 2019 election victory. Prior to making their complaint to the UN Human Rights Committee, the CJA brought a civil suit against Rajapaksa for his alleged involvement in the killing of Lasantha Wickrematunge.[ix] The government of Canada, meanwhile, has imposed targeted sanctions against four Sri Lankan state officials, including former presidents Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, for their role in gross and systematic human rights violations.[x]
Community and Civil Society Contributions to Justice
CSOs and communities have been essential in documenting violations, compiling reports and victim testimonies and directing the attention of partners at the international level. For instance, in 2022, a shared investigation by the International Truth and Justice Project and Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka revealed Rajapaksa’s role in more than 700 cases of enforced disappearance during the 1987–1989 People’s Liberation Front insurrection.[i] The Center for Policy Alternatives, a CSO devoted to good governance and conflict transformation in Sri Lanka, published a report in January 2021 on 10 cases that represent how the Sri Lankan justice system has failed victims.[ii]
Education
The Sri Lankan government has consistently failed to invest in the education sector, resulting in significant barriers to learning, particularly in underserved areas such as poor urban, rural and farming communities. The only notable effort to incorporate truth education into the Sri Lankan school curricula was the “Education for Social Cohesion” program, which ran from 2016–2019 but was not implemented beyond the pilot phase. The state in Sri Lanka has historically used discriminatory education policies against specific targeted groups.[i] This practice continues through the present time, as represented by the government’s closure of more than 1,000 Islamic schools and a ban on the importation of Islamic books to advance a policy of “deradicalization.”[ii]
Public school history education does not include components on recent Sri Lankan history.[iii] Educational experts agree that history education has actively privileged the perspective of the majority and othered ethno-religious minorities. One creative practitioner and educator interviewed for this report described the state of history education in grim terms: “The information that we have in schools is not just abysmal [but] completely non-existent. I actually think it is dangerous, the silences in history books. My children are learning the same history that I was taught in school, and it is pretty much the same history that our parents were taught in school: [it] ends with independence. So none of the conflicts, none of the insurrections, the Sinhala Only, riots from the 50s onwards, nothing is covered in our history books…History is being rewritten in our children’s history books in order to leave things out and push a particular narrative.”[iv] Another education specialist observed that hardly any independent historians are involved in the process of writing the curricula, which is produced by the National Institute of Education or by local universities. As a result, the process “does not reflect an inclusive effort with a diversity of views.”[v]
CSOs and international NGOs have conducted sporadic educational initiatives including exhibitions, training programs and workshops. While virtual/digital initiatives can supplement an existing curriculum or open new avenues for discussion, their dissemination depends on resources, language and access to suitable devices and internet connectivity, which are not equally distributed in Sri Lanka. COVID-19 also revealed sharp inequalities: many students lacked the technology necessary to attend classes online during extended periods of lockdown.
GIJTR in Depth
The Truth and Reconciliation Forum (TRF) is a multiethnic and multilingual network established in 2016 by GIJTR, with CSO representation from all 25 districts of Sri Lanka. TRF members conduct documentation initiatives, educate local government officials about the need for transitional justice and work with survivors and victims’ families. Since its establishment, the TRF has had 665 member organizations, held 950 local workshops and conducted 40 documentation initiatives. A key element of GIJTR’s success in Sri Lanka has been overcoming barriers for marginalized people, particularly women, to participate in truth and peacebuilding work. For instance, GIJTR and TRF partners heard from women that they could not take time-consuming leadership positions because of their domestic responsibilities. In response, GIJTR
and local partners adapted their workshop methodology to reduce participants’ travel time and prioritized placing women as desk officers, as these roles have more-flexible schedules. Other barrier-removing efforts include a body-mapping project through which 20 women from different backgrounds told the story of their experiences in war through life-sized drawings of their bodies and an oral history initiative to collect the experiences of rural, poor and illiterate communities. These efforts, coupled with support for other grassroots truth and justice initiatives, have sustained community support for human rights, truth and reconciliation across Sri Lanka even when the overall political climate has made progress difficult.
GIJTR Local Partner in Depth
The “Herstories” online archival project began collecting stories of Sri Lankan mothers affected by the conflict in 2012.[i] Women’s testimonies were recorded through videos, photos and visual expression in the form of trees of life, memory-capture timelines and handwritten letters. These original materials were deposited as a permanent collection in the National Archives of Sri Lanka in 2014, while a curated exhibit of 70 narratives traveled to various locations including Jaffna, Galle and Colombo in Sri Lanka, and to London, India, Canada and Australia. The large exhibitions were shared at various public access halls such as municipal buildings, including Hall de Galle in Galle or the YMCA in Jaffna, after authorities prevented Herstories from displaying at the Jaffna library. In addition, there was a large display in the National Archives rotunda for a several days. The smaller Herstories exhibitions were hung on clothes lines, trees, walls of houses and schools and community centers at the village level.
Recommendations
The international community should provide financial and technical support to community groups establishing archives or engaging in collective acts of remembrance, particularly in the Northern Province.
The ICC should open an investigation into possible crimes committed during the response to the 2022 Aragalaya protests.
In the absence of a formal state curriculum on the history of the war, Sri Lankan CSOs should develop materials for a multiethnic, multilingual audience that can be used to educate Sri Lankan youth and others on the legacy of the war and its ongoing impacts on survivors.
The UNOHCHR and the UN Human Rights Council should continue advocating for a victims-focused transitional justice process that ends impunity for perpetrators of human rights violations.
Notes
Download the notes for this chapter here.