Sri Lanka Needs To Walk The Talk To Make Peace With Tamils

Resolution Of Issue Will Help Boost Indian Investment In The Island Nation

- Colonel R Hariharan

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in his first-ever address at the 76th UN general assembly session on September 22 spoke about transitional justice and reconciliation. But his widely reported readiness to have a dialogue with Tamil expatriates to address post-war reconciliation did not find a place in the speech.

This was not an oversight because in March 2021 his government had proscribed a number of Tamil groups such as Global Tamil Forum, British Tamil Forum and Canadian Tamil Congress. The government had also banned a number of individuals based in the UK, Germany, Italy, Malaysia under the UN terrorism designation law. The reason for banning them was their influence on Tamils in Sri Lanka and mould public policy abroad. This was perhaps the reason the ban followed a scathing indictment of the Rajapaksa government by the UN high commissioner for human rights in her report. It had warned against the deterioration of human rights in Sri Lanka and highlighted “intensified surveillance and harassment of civil society organisations, human rights defenders and victims”.

Sri Lanka needs to realise bringing the Tamil ethnic issues to a closure is important for India. Perhaps, India can use its good offices in this respect, provided both the Sri Lanka government and Tamil polity are ready to come to the table. This will remove one ponderable obstacle for Indian investments in Sri Lanka in the war ravaged North and East to provide employment and also trigger the tourism industry in the country. To achieve this, President Rajapaksa will have to walk the talk to achieve economic prosperity, which was the theme of his UN address.