Former president Chandrika Kumaratunga said the causes behind the war and what happened during the war need to be discussed to move forward on reconciliation.
Ms Kumaratunga, who heads the Office of National Unity and Reconciliation, was speaking at an event organised by the CPA to mark the International Right to Truth Day.
“The truth is essential for coping with loss and the pain that accompanies such loss. Some political elements try to prevent the people from learning the truth, especially with regard to the Tamil people during the conflict and the end of the war. They try to create division in the society,” she said.
“We have to discuss all of this and accept the right of all these people to know the truth. Discussing the issues is essential to coming to terms with what happened. The new regime has accepted this and has put various mechanisms into places to seek the truth.”
Ms Kumaratunga remains a controversial figure amongst Tamils due to atrocities committed by state forces while she was in power. See more below.
President of Sri Lanka from 1994 till 2005, she faced extensive criticism by international human rights group for impunity and injustice over numerous incidents killings of Tamils by state forces during her long term in office.
Despite setting up three zonal Commissions of Inquiry - All Island Commission of Inquiry into Involuntary Removals and Disappearances of Certain Persons (1998); Commission of Inquiry into the Establishment and Maintenance of Places of Unlawful Detention and Torture at the Batalanda Housing Scheme (1995); Commission of Inquiry into the incidents that took place at Bindunuwewa Rehabilitation Centre on 25 October 2000 (2001) - as well as the Presidential Truth Commission on Ethnic Violence 1981-1984 (2001), only handful of perpetrators were ever prosecuted and many of the commissions' reports were not made public.
Limitations to the commissions' mandate raised concerns about the lack of political will, noted The Law and Society Trust, in its report, 'A Legacy to Remember: Sri Lanka's Commissions of Inquiry 1963-2002'.
"A fundamental flaw underpinning the creation and functioning of the Commissions, was the absence of unequivocal political will to systematically address the structures, policies and practices that gave rise to the gross and persistent violations of human rights during that time. This was further evidenced by the lack of process in the creation of the Commissions.
The government did not avail itself of the experience or support of local and international actors who could have contributed substantially to the elaboration of the mandate and procedures of the Commission(s) to ensure that they conformed to international standards and that they resulted in a rigorous and systematic process and concrete results. Instead, process, standards and results were undermined by a problematic mandate and defective institutional arrangements."
In 2005, the Asian Centre for Human Rights, called on Ms Kumaratunga to make public the report on the massacre of 28 Tamils whilst in custody in Sri Lanka in Bindunuwewa public, calling the national commission's report into the incident an "operation whitewash". All those accused in the trial were aquitted.
In a report entitled "The Bindunuwewa Massacre in Sri Lanka: A cry for Justice", released on the 5 year anniversary of the massacre, the ACHR said:
"In the face of increasing international criticism for the custodial massacre of 28 Tamil youth between the ages of 14-23 years and injury of 14 other Tamil youth, on 8 March 2001 President Chandrika Kumaratunga set up the Presidential Commission of Inquiry. The report was reportedly submitted in early 2002 but President Chandrika Kumaratunga failed to make the report public. In the meanwhile, all accused of the massacre have been acquitted by the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka on 21 May 2005.
Although Justice PHK Kulatilaka Presidential Commission of Inquiry was mandated to inquire extraneous issues and not to find the truth and prosecute the culprits, its report is important in more than one way. No other massacre so devastatingly illustrates the collective failure of the institutions of the Sri Lankan state to provide justice to the Tamil minorities."
See more here.
Amnesty International in its 2012 report, 'Twenty Years of Make Believe: Sri Lanka's Commissions of Inquiry', highlighted the mass graves of Tamils at Chemmani, exhumed in 1998, and the bodies of Tamils found floating in Bolgoda Lake in 1995 as prominent examples of where "the Sri Lanka State has been manipulating evidence to exculpate the security forces personnel from blame."
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