15 years after civil war, Sri Lanka's Tamil minorities still await justice

It's been 15 years since the end of Sri Lanka's bloody civil war, during which the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) group fought the government to establish an ethnic minority homeland. After three decades, the LTTE's leadership eventually conceded defeat.

But the war's brutal legacy continues to reverberate across the country.

Sri Lanka's Buddhist Sinhalese-dominated government and LTTE militants killed tens of thousands of civilians in the war. The fighting was marred by widespread instances of extrajudicial killings, indiscriminate attacks and enforced disappearances by government forces.

In the final stages of the war, the government led a campaign of indiscriminate bombing, hoping to quickly dismantle the last LTTE stronghold. Military forces shelled scores of Tamil civilians in a declared "no-fire" zone, and justified the campaign as a counter-terrorism imperative.

The offensive killed at least 40,000 civilians and sent scores of Tamils missing, fueling grievances and creating collective memory of grave injustice in the eyes of the Tamils.

This violent past demands a firm reckoning, not a repetition of past mistakes.

After the war ended, scores of rebels were either killed or disappeared as they tried to surrender to government forces. About 250,000 civilians were also separated from suspected combatants.

Though the LTTE claimed to be the sole voice of Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, many community members did not endorse this representation. But the government failed to distinguish between rebels who were hostile to the state, and Tamil civilians with little or no link to LTTE's violent resistance.

The government's final military offensive in 2009 was marked by significant disregard for civilian lives, and its refusal to account for forced disappearances undermines credibility. Thus, a thorough investigation into these disappearances is critical to restoring trust in Sri Lanka's justice system and limiting the risk of ethnic unrest.

Many of the war victims and survivors had little to do with the conflict itself, and should be seen as allies in Sri Lanka's push for post-war stability.

Alienation and accountability

But the government is at odds with itself as it targets Tamil minorities seeking justice for forced disappearances. According to a new report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, many women seeking accountability face "violations, including harassment, intimidation, surveillance, arbitrary detention, beatings and torture at the hands of army and police," raising questions about the state's determination and capacity to uphold citizen rights without exception.

It is this growing sense of alienation that post-war Sri Lanka was supposed to address. For years, the LTTE capitalised on a narrative of violent prosecution and discriminatory government policies to position itself as one of the most ruthless militant groups in modern memory.

This makes it imperative for the government to address post-war grievances and create conditions for future reconciliation. Long-overdue accountability on forced disappearances could provide an important opportunity to further that objective.

And yet, lack of political will keeps such an outcome out of reach. Consider the government-established Office on Missing Persons (OMP). It was created in 2016 to probe cases and dispense justice for the aggrieved, but has struggled to fulfil this mandate, failing to prioritise evidence or detail the whereabouts of those who disappeared.

Dearth of action could empower the Tamil diaspora to campaign for rights accountability. Many community members flew former war zones, formed human rights organisations, and backed calls for international investigations into forced disappearances. The government views such activism as a threat, and has labelled these organisations as “terrorist” groups in the past.

But that hasn’t stopped the diaspora from backing war memorials in defiance of government pressure, and attracting increased international support. Amnesty International’s global chief Agnes Callamard became the senior most foreign dignitary this month to attend a civil war memorial in the country, and called out Sri Lankan authorities for their “collective failure” to deliver justice for war victims.

Government crackdowns and heightened surveillance in Colombo, Jaffna and former war zones are thus likely to fuel overseas activism. This puts a harsh spotlight on Sri Lanka's war crimes and will draw additional calls for justice and accountability from rights watchdogs and the United Nations.

In a report this month, Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said, "The Sri Lankan government is in denial about atrocities its forces committed during the civil war, so it tries to silence victims and their communities instead of providing truth, justice, and reparations."

Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism

Long overdue justice for war crimes could also empower hardline Buddhist nationalists in Sri Lanka. Government agencies have long used security zones as a cover to seize land from Tamil and Muslim communities, for the Sinhala Buddhist majority to settle upon.

Many of these attempts stand to benefit Sri Lanka's hardline Sinhala Buddhist monks, who are laying claim to more religious sites and enlisting government support to build Buddhist monuments on occupied land.

Extremist outfits such as the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) have a history of campaigning for Sinhalese-Buddhist supremacy, and may use occupation of Tamil lands to advance their campaign of hate. In the years following the war, BBS contributed to a surge in anti-Muslim rhetoric and faces little resistance for the anti-Muslim pogroms of June 2014 and March 2018.

Growing convergence between government authorities and Buddhist nationalist groups could easily inflame ethnic tensions and harden minority attitudes towards the government.

Rather than limit the risk of communal violence altogether, Sri Lankan authorities appear to ignore major lessons from its 26-year civil war.

Government authorities continue to use draconian "anti-terrorist" legislation to block out peaceful protests by Tamil families seeking justice for the disappeared. These laws are counterproductive to reconciliation because they target communities that are sympathetic to war victims. Moreover, the conditions that triggered Sri Lanka's civil war advise against such a trajectory.

Look no further than the 1983 anti-Tamil riots, also known as "Black July."

They traced their roots to a government policy of open discrimination against Tamils, which ultimately empowered Sinhalese mobs to take violence to the streets, and create conditions for a brutal, decades-long reaction. About 16,000 families in Sri Lanka's northern and eastern provinces are still searching for their loved ones, while successive governments shield figures that are implicated in serious rights abuses.

The Sri Lankan government could pursue course correction on several levels. First, it could establish an autonomous prosecutorial authority that is able to process thousands of enforced disappearances cases without government pressure.

This could serve as a confidence-building measure for Tamil community members and UN authorities alike, and overcome criticism of the government-backed OMP and its ability to dispense justice.

The government could also establish a truth-seeking mechanism under a broader, UN-backed transitional justice strategy that involves consultations with war victims’ families. This is an important step towards reconciliation, and offers more than just reparations to aggrieved families.

Thus, as long as Sri Lanka refuses to promote justice and accountability from within, it will fuel deep-seated grievances, empower hardline nationalist groups, and miss out on hard-won peace, even after decades of violence and terror.