Commission report: Back to square one

When the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) was appointed in 2010 by President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement “Sri Lanka has a long history of establishing ad hoc commissions to deflect international criticism over its poor human rights record and widespread impunity. Since independence in 1948, Sri Lanka has established at least 10 such commissions, none of which have produced any significant results.”

- M.S.M.Ayub

In 2009, Amnesty International published a book titled “Twenty Years of Make-Believe – Sri Lanka’s Commissions of Inquiry” which was highly critical of the incumbent and past governments of the country for their handling of human rights. And as the very title of the book suggests the Amnesty International decried the intention of past governments of Sri Lanka in appointing commissions.

The Law and Society Trust in September 2012 published a book titled “A Legacy to Remember: Sri Lanka’s Commissions of Inquiry - 1963- 2002” and authored by Kishali Pinto Jayawardena with an overview on the circumstances and the recommendations of over ten commissions appointed by various governments since early sixties. Once you read the book the impression you get is that the commissions of inquiry have been a political exercise of successive governments rather than genuine attempts to deter human rights violations or recurrence of ethnic conflicts.

However, the Presidential Commission of inquiry into the terrorist attacks on three luxury hotels in Colombo and three churches belonging to two Christian denominations on April 21, 2019 seems to be somewhat different from these past commissions. Former President Maithripala Sirisena might have appointed the commission on the attack by a group of Muslim terrorists on an Easter Sunday due to the pressure by the Christian community in the country to find out the real culprits and to prove that he as the Defence Minister was not responsible for the carnage. Yet, one cannot say that he or his successor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa did not want to find out what really happened and who really was behind the barbaric attacks.