COLOMBO: The Chief Minister of Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority Northern Province, C.V.Wigneswaran, said on Wednesday, that the Tamils cannot sacrifice their demand for accountability for war crimes whether for the sake of reconciliation with the Sinhalese or for devolution of power.
Speaking to 1500 people at a solemn function to commemorate the dead at Mulliwaikkal, the scene of an alleged massacre during the 2006-2009 Eelam War IV, Wigneswaran said that reconciliation between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils cannot come about without first establishing accountability for war crimes.
If accountability is not established, the victims of war crimes will have no assurance that the armed forces will not repeat their actions, and in the absence of such an assurance, there can be no lasting reconciliation, he reasoned.
It is imperative that a Truth Seeking Mechanism and an internationally-led Judicial Mechanism are set up to correctly pinpoint the perpetrators and punish them, Wigneswaran said.
He recalled that most Sinhalese, and even some Tamils, had suggested to him that the Tamils sacrifice the demand for accountability for war crimes for the sake of reconciliation, arguing that that raking up the unpleasant past or seeking revenge would only put the Sinhalese off and prevent them from seeking reconciliation.
SWIPE AT INDIA
The Chief Minister also criticized “some powers” for offering to secure devolution of power if the Tamils drop the insistence on accountability for war-time actions. The allusion was clearly to India, the proponent of devolution as the panacea for the Tamils’ problems.
Wigneswaran appreciated the Sirisena government for allowing the Tamils to mourn the war dead collectively, something they could not do during the Rajapaksa regime. But he regretted that the government is still to set up the accountability mechanism which it promised at the UN Human Rights Council last September.
He also regretted that even seven years after the end of the war, it has not been possible to establish the number of deaths and the causes of the deaths, in the light of Mannar Bishop Royappu Joseph’s estimate that 140,000, and not 40,000, had died in the war.