Sri Lanka announced recently that it would launch a domestic probe to investigate war time mass atrocities in time for the release of the UN mandated investigation due in September. The announcement, made in the wake of a high profile visit to the island by the US Secretary of State John Kerry late last month, suggests that Sri Lanka is responding to international demands. However, it is not clear that this new international engagement necessarily translates to real changes on the ground. The government’s behaviour is notably contradictory. While it reassures international audiences that it is taking accountability seriously and is committed to reform and reconciliation, it says quite another to domestic Sinhala Buddhist constituencies. This duplicity is worrying and suggests that the government is intent on continuing with business as normal rather than committing to the deep changes in governance that are needed to secure a just and lasting peace.

Jared Genser is an associate of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. This article was first published in the Washington Post on April 24, 2015.

Three years ago, President Obama created the Atrocities Prevention Board to help fulfill his important recognition that the prevention of mass atrocities is a “core national security interest and core moral responsibility.” With ethnic conflict boiling in Burma, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among other places, such a mechanism has never been more important. Although the board’s operations have been classified, there have been some visible successes. But much remains to be done.

"Occasionally I would see the Sinhalese tour buses parked along the roadside, or Sinhalese families picnicking in the shade of a tree. In Kilinochchi, the Tigers' former capital, several buses were stopped next to what looked like a giant funnel tipped onto its side.

It was a water tank that had been toppled during the fighting, the steel rebar reaching out from the concrete husk like tentacles. The government had turned it into a war memorial, planting a tidy garden with flowers and a large stone tablet declaring that the damage had been done by rebel "terrorists in the face of valiant troops."

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Writing in the Tamil Guardian today, British Prime Minister David Cameron reiterated his commitment to ensuring those responsible for war crimes in Sri Lanka are held accountable and said he would press the country's new president, Maithripala Sirisena, to deliver on his commitments, during a bilateral discussion at Downing Street this afternoon.

 

Sixteen months ago I welcomed Tamil representatives from communities here in Britain to Downing St to discuss how we could work together to address the issues of Sri Lanka’s past and put the country on the path to a brighter, peaceful and prosperous future.
 
Since then, a UN led investigation into alleged war crimes by all sides in the conflict has got underway. And the people of Sri Lanka have elected a new President who has made clear that he is fully committed to reconciliation and reform.
 
Ever since my visit to Sri Lanka in 2013 one thing has remained constant - my unwavering commitment to stand up for all those affected by what happened. I remain determined to ensure that there is accountability for the past and respect for human rights today. And that will be my message to President Sirisena when I meet with him in Downing Street today.
 

“Sirisena was an integral part of the Rajapaksa regime that unleashed a horrendous war, a war that was waged not just against the LTTE, but also against the Tamil citizens of Sri Lanka. He was a part of the Rajapaksa regime that not so long ago used the military to take over vast amounts of private land belonging to the Tamils in the regions dominated by them.The regime initiated a rapid process of demographic change in the northeast in favour of the Sinhalese, and endorsed the maltreatment of ex-LTTE cadres.”

“Neither presidential nor parliamentary forms of government — invariably dominated by the Sinhalese, who make up roughly 74 percent of the country’s 21 million people — is satisfactory to the Tamils and Muslims. Instead, they demand greater autonomy in the north and the east. But Sirisena’s election manifesto is completely silent on the matter.”

Sri Lanka's new president Maithripala Sirisena will do "everything he can" to stop former president Mahinda Rajapaksa to be taken to the Hague and face charges of war crimes said Trevor Grant, author and convenor of the Tamil Refugee Council (TRC).

In an opinion piece written in the wake of Sri Lanka's presidential election, Grant says "as acting minister of defence, including during the closing weeks of the war, [Sirisena] sat high in the command structure, and thus in culpability for war crimes and crimes against humanity."

“[Rajapaksa's] message to the Sinhala majority is designed to reinforce their conviction that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala nation, indivisible - and that the Tamils of the north and east must accept that, or have that forced upon them.”