The UNHCR’s H-word: Rajan, GL and Jehan’s Thoughts

I. Rajan Philips: “The Report on Sri Lanka: Horrific vs Ethnic Facts and External vs Internal Hybridity,” in The Island, 19 September 2015

 Philips

 Peiris   Perera 

Two h-adjectives have come into circulation after the release of the UNHRC Report on Sri Lanka, last Wednesday, in Geneva: horrific and hybrid. There is nothing new in the facts stipulated as horrific in Geneva, but stipulating them as horrific does not bridge the ethnic gap in the agreement about those facts. What is new is the recommendation to establish a hybrid court having international jurists collaborating with their local counterparts. But can international hybridity overcome Lanka’s nationally divisive ethnicity? Would it make more sense to promote internal hybridity while privileging external hybridity? Internal hybridity must involve Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim judges and lawyers and other officials professionally working together rather than politically fighting one another. Just as important, transitional justice must involve a more inclusive and reflective process instead of the usual adversarial court room drama. Hybrid or otherwise, an adversarial court process will invariably degenerate into a pettifogging theatre generating mutual recriminations rather than facilitating inter-ethnic reconciliation. In Sri Lanka’s litigious culture there are quite a few legal luminaries itching to argue the case for patriotism with or without a political brief.

Sri Lanka is a “Hybrid Island” as Neluka Silva entitled a 2002 symposium celebrating the island’s historical and cultural hybridity and debunking myths of ethnic purity. Ironically, Dr. Silva’s book, “The Hybrid Island” was published during the peace process launched by Ranil Wickremesinghe during his first stint as ‘elected’ Prime Minister. Before long the optimism of hybridity and of peace was overwhelmed by conflicting ethnic assertions. More than a decade later, and six years after the end of the war, Ranil Wickremesinghe is Prime Minister again but in a wholly different, and hybrid, political context. He is now the partner in a hybrid, or tandem, Executive arrangement with the country’s elected President, Maithripala Sirisena. Together, they preside over a hybrid (UNP-SLFP) national government and a hybrid (with TNA opposition) parliament. In a happy, or unhappy, depending on the eye of the beholder, h-adjectival coincidence, the UNHRC is now recommending a hybrid court to adjudicate on the horrific crimes of the twin agencies, the Rajapaksa government and the LTTE, that rejected peace and hybridity and fought a war for ethnic purity.

What a difference can two elections and a new government make? The patriotic sky would have been brought down by now if the Rajapaksas were still in power. Wimal Weerawansa would have been the national megaphone creating political noise pollution. Now he can hardly hear his own voice in the wilderness. The new government has reportedly provided a “cordial response” to the Geneva Report, noting the report’s emphasis that it was a human-rights, and not a criminal, investigation. The President and the Prime Minister convened a press conference to affirm the government’s commitment to work with the UNHRC and international agencies. The President even went to the extent of claiming that if the Rajapaksas were in power, the tone and strictures of the Geneva report would have been ‘100 or even 1,000 times’ worse for Sri Lanka.

The Prime Minister irately scoffed at the suggestion in some quarters for parliament to pass an “Amnesty Legislation”, which would logically imply presumption not of innocence but of guilt. The government has also indicated that it would create and use new judicatures to investigate not only human rights violations but also corruption during the prosecution of the war. General Sarath Fonseka is all for any inquiry, insisting that nothing untoward happened under his watch. The TNA gave a measured response, welcoming the recommendation for a hybrid court, calling upon the government to implement the recommendations of the report, and asking the Tamil people “to use this moment as a moment of introspection into our own community’s failures and create the right culture and atmosphere in which we can live with dignity and self-respect, as equal citizens of Sri Lanka.”

Complacency and Complexities: To modify Mao’s famous dictum, complacency is the enemy of study, complacency is also the pitfall of political foolishness. Political opinion in Sri Lanka can change faster than a weather vane. President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe are certainly not unmindful of this danger and in their press conference they specifically appealed to the media to play a responsible role in the wake of the Geneva report rather than providing sensational outlets to chauvinistic machinations. Intentionally or otherwise, the hybrid national government, its cabinet obesity notwithstanding, would serve the smart political purpose of neutralizing the traditional partisan opposition to reconciliation initiatives. At the same time, the government should not underestimate the capacity of the UPFA-SLFP rump in parliament to create mischief outside the parliament. While the rump should never be denied its freedom to shout, the government must not hesitate to mobilize its forces to outshout them with a tit for every tat. One would hope that Mr. Sirisena and Mr. Wickremesinghe would have learnt from the mistake of their political inaction between January and July when the Bring-Back-Mahinda movement enjoyed a political free ride to grow from a Nugegoda rally into a national menace. The Colombian and non-Colombian dimension of their political partnership is without precedent in Sri Lanka and they need to use that for more positive purposes than handing out cabinet portfolios in large numbers.

The first general recommendation of the Geneva Report is to set up a High Level Executive Group (HLEG) for the purpose of overseeing the implementation of the recommendations of the new report and all earlier reports, internal and international, including the LLRC recommendations. In my view, the proposed HLEG should not be ignorant of political imperatives and should not be shy of its political obligations. Even if the HLEG were to be supposedly apolitical and professional, there should be a parallel high level political group to look after the political side of implementing the recommendations of various commissions. Such a group should actively involve the JVP, the JHU and the TNA along with the two major governing parties. What is not needed is the all-party charade that President Jayewardene and President Rajapaksa effectively used to justify inaction rather than develop road maps for action. What is needed is a high level political group of like minded people representing Sri Lanka’s ethno-political spectrum. Without specifically focused political hybridity at the highest level, judicial hybridity, internal or international, would be a non-starter.

The fundamental weakness of the Geneva Report, in my view, is its reluctance to openly recognize Sri Lanka’s ethnic fractures and fragmented positions in regard to both ‘facts’ and the methods of dealing with those facts. In a revealing statement, the Report welcomes the new government’s intentions and commitments but is cautious that they are not enough “to convince a very skeptical audience – Sri Lankan and International.” There is no single audience in Sri Lanka, but multiple audiences – hearing, as well as speaking, in different voices, and raising and getting frustrated in, different expectations. Sri Lanka is a living case study of a more universal contradiction in the field of human rights, one that academics characterize as the widening gap “between the promises of the universal human rights regime and the political realities in national contexts.” The gap in the case of Sri Lanka needs to be bridges not so much to prove an academic point or score an international forensic victory, as to bring immediate redress to the thousands of victims. Taking steps to repairing their lives should be the top priority. That would also be the first step in a long and arduous journey.

There is a great deal more to the Geneva Report than the two h-adjectives that I am polemically questioning. The overriding question arising from the Geneva Report is who will do what, when and how? There are no easy or short term answers to any one of this four-part question, and every answer will carry a different consequence for the ‘victims’…………………http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=132052

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II. GL Peiris: “The UNHRC Report: Consequence and Challenges,” in The Island, 20 September 2015, http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=132104

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein holds a press conference on Sri Lanka at the UN Office in Geneva on September 16, 2015. The United Nations detailed horrific abuses committed in Sri Lanka’s civil conflict, including the disappearance of tens of thousands of people, and said the country needed international help to probe war crimes to enable reconciliation. AFP PHOTO / FABRICE COFFRINI

The long awaited Report by the United Nations Human Rights Council on Sri Lanka has now been released. Its contents have grave implications for the destiny of our country, and it is therefore of the utmost importance that the public of Sri Lanka should be fully aware, at an early stage, of the nature and effect of the findings contained in this crucial document.

Since informed public discussion transcending partisan political approaches is an urgent necessity, my purpose is to draw attention to some of the salient features of the Report.

Domestic or International Investigation? The crux of the series of recommendations by the High Commissioner is his emphatic insistence on the establishment of “hybrid special courts, integrating international judges, prosecutors, lawyers and investigators”. The mandate of these courts, it is specifically declared, is “to try war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

This demand by the High Commissioner is predicated on his conviction, explicitly articulated, that “For accountability to be achieved in Sri Lanka, it will require more than a domestic mechanism”. He added: “Victims of past alleged crimes will not find any solace in a purely domestic mechanism”.

It is, therefore, beyond question that what is sought to be established is, by no means, a domestic mechanism but, in every sense of the phrase, an international judicial body. It would be less than candid to pretend otherwise.

On several occasions in Parliament, in recent months, I pointed out the danger inherent in repeated statements in influential foreign capitals that nothing short of an international tribunal would be acceptable. The Government, in reply, insisted that these were not authoritative pronouncements, that the Government of Sri Lanka would under no circumstances agree to an international mechanism, that it was under no duty to do so because Sri Lanka was not a signatory to the Rome Statute, and that the firm policy of the Government was to set up a domestic inquiry which would carry out its work within the framework of our national legal system.

What has happened, however, is the very opposite of this. Not only is the establishment of an international court proposed as the core recommendation by the Council, but there is the further ominous comment that the international investigation “should draw on the lessons learnt and good practices of other countries that have succeeded with hybrid special courts”.

Is Sri Lanka, then, to be put on a par with situations involving, for instance, the international war crimes tribunal in West Africa called the Special Court for Sierra Leone and similar tribunals which were established in respect of the former Yugoslavia, Liberia and Cambodia? Is this equation to be made, notwithstanding the clearly demonstrable and fundamental differences between these contexts and the Sri Lankan situation? If we are prepared to do this, are we fully mindful of the dire consequences attendant on this course of action for the Armed Forces of Sri Lanka?

The Government of Sri Lanka responded immediately to the Report, inter alia, in the following terms: “The Government recognizes fully that this Report represents a human rights investigation and not a criminal investigation”. Unfortunately, this is not entirely correct. The High Commissioner has been far from reticent about the gravity of the crimes allegedly committed by the Armed Forces and the stark issue of criminal responsibility. He stated at the Press Conference in Geneva: “The severity of the crimes was most astonishing.” He also remarked: “Crimes of a sexual nature made harrowing reading”.

On the subject of genocide – indisputably the most heinous crime known to international law – the High Commissioner, while stating that this is not something they perceived to have occurred in Sri Lanka at this stage, went on to declare: “That is not, however, to say that at a subsequent stage, it is implausible.” The Report specifically says that, if established before the hybrid court that is proposed, “many of these allegations may amount, depending on the circumstances, to war crimes.”

The Gravest of Findings Against Military Personnel: The High Commissioner proclaimed, at a media briefing in Geneva, that the findings are “of a most serious nature”, involving as they do a pattern of systemic and flagrant violations. The Report sets out, in unmistakable terms, the finding that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the gravest offences were committed by Sri Lanka’s Armed Forces.

The following assertions, quoted verbatim from the Report, are amply illustrative of the threshold of criminal liability envisaged and the resulting depth of peril. “There are reasonable grounds to believe the Sri Lankan security forces and paramilitary groups associated with them were implicated in unlawful killings carried out in a widespread manner against civilians.” “OISL documented long-standing patterns of arbitrary arrest and detention by Government security forces, which often reportedly led to enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.” “OISL documented brutal use of torture by the Sri Lankan security forces”. “The information gathered by OISL provides reasonable grounds to believe that rape and other forms of sexual violence by security forces personnel was widespread”. “The security forces, police and intelligence services have enjoyed near total impunity”.

These sweeping statements speak for themselves and leave no room for doubt as to the intended consequences. The extreme seriousness of these prima facie findings, and the consequent potential exposure of military and police personnel to the highest degrees of criminal liability and punishment, is quite apparent.

On What Kind of Evidence?: It is, then, quite legitimate to ask on what basis these far-reaching and gravely prejudicial conclusions have been arrived at.

The purported evidence, on which these critical findings are based, is shrouded in secrecy. The identity of the persons who are said to have testified, is protected from disclosure for extended periods.

Lurking in the shadows and assured of anonymity, they are free to make allegations for political or other purposes, with no inhibition whatever. There is, consequently, a breach of the requirements of fairness and transparency even at the basic level.

Inevitably, this brings into question very sharply the reliability and probative value of this purported evidence. I am constrained to point out, with deep sadness, the wholly fictitious nature of some conclusions which may well presage the most devastating results. The Report finds that hospitals and other civilian facilities were not used by the LTTE for military purposes. This is palpably false. The Report, moreover, accuses the Government and the Armed Forces of “depriving the civilian population in the Vanni of basic foodstuffs and medical supplies essential to survival”. If true, this would constitute a war crime, with all the penalties which that entails.

These are findings rooted at best in opaque testimony proffered by interested parties. By contrast, no less a personage than the Head of the United Nations System in Sri Lanka at that time, Mr. Neil Buhne, has publicly acknowledged the substantial success of the Sri Lankan Government’s efforts in the most challenging circumstances. His observations are on record. Examples are provided by his address at the Sixty-Fifth U.N. Day Celebrations (at which I was Chief Guest) in October 2010, the Press Release by the U.N. Colombo Office on 26 August 2010 and the letter titled “U.N. Support for North Re-Settlement”, addressed by Mr. N. Buhne to the Secretary to the Presidential Task Force for Resettlement, Development and Security in the Northern Province, Mr. S.B. Divaratne, on 8 April 2010.

There is, as well, another remarkable omission. The Report fails to take into account in any way the significant fact that arrangements for the despatch of food and medical supplies to the Northern Province were overseen at the time by a Committee which included, in its composition, the Ambassador of the United States of America, the Head of Delegation of the European Commission, the Ambassador of Germany, the High Commissioner of the United Kingdom, the Ambassador of Japan and no fewer than eleven Specialized Agencies of the United Nations.

The Snares and Pitfalls of ‘Special’ Courts: My concern, at bottom, is about the intrinsic infirmity of the evidence, by recourse to which the most serious aspersions are sought to be made against Sri Lanka’s political and military authorities.

This is all the more reason to resist, with the utmost vigour, “special” courts to try these persons for the gravest criminal offences. Certainly, the rule of law must be upheld and enforced without discrimination. One may, however, be forgiven for resenting the patronizing reflection made in the Report: “The unfortunate reality is that Sri Lanka’s criminal justice system is not yet ready or equipped to conduct an independent and credible investigation”.

This country is painfully familiar with the total havoc and injustice wrought by “special” courts. The egregious example, perhaps, is the Criminal Justice Commission which deprived the late Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike of her civic rights. It is a matter of serious doubt whether this is the way the public of Sri Lanka would like to go with regard to dubious allegations regarding genocide and war crimes.

A Quantum Leap? Proposal to Subject Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court: There is manifest danger in some of the recommendations made in the Report. For instance, Sri Lanka is required to accede to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. This means that a foreign court, for the first time since the abolition of appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council more than half a century ago, will have the power to exercise criminal jurisdiction over our political and military personnel.

The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka has already held, in no uncertain terms, that this is a brazen infringement of our nation’s Basic Law. Contrary to the Government’s recurring assertions, the international dimension of the proposed investigation – and the envisioned trajectory for the future – are plainly visible. The Conclusions and Recommendations of the Report clearly state that investigation and prosecution should be “notably under universal jurisdiction”. Are we now asked to believe that this is a domestic exercise?

In the meantime, in a recommendation that is extraordinary for its oppressive and altogether unjust impact, the Report recommends to the U.N. System and to Member States that they should “apply stringent vetting procedures to Sri Lankan police and military personnel identified for peacekeeping, military exchanges and training programmes”.

On the most tainted evidence imaginable, then, Sri Lanka’s police and military personnel, simply because they are Sri Lankan, are to be deprived of the opportunity to earn, to gather knowledge and to uplift themselves in life.

Vindication or Capitulation?: What emerges is the spectacle of a potential national calamity arising from a policy, the pivot of which has been the consistent desire to placate, accommodate and acquiesce. The prize aimed at was persuasion of the sponsors of three consecutive Resolutions against Sri Lanka, to settle for a domestic inquiry. Obviously, this has failed.

The tragedy, from a national standpoint, is that, once a policy of admission, repentance and commitment to “non-recurrence” is embarked upon, it cannot realistically be reversed mid-stream. The march of events could well take place with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. The need to be forewarned is, therefore, vital, bearing particularly in mind that the Report calls on Council Members “to sustain their monitoring of developments in Sri Lanka with a view to further actions that may be required at the international level”. The Sword of Damocles is menacing.

What gives rise to profound regret is the realization that none of this was unavoidable. Rather than expose our Armed Forces to the dangers looming before them, we had every opportunity to use well established principles of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, applied with reasonable uniformity in precedents across the globe, to make out a cogent, perhaps even unassailable, case for the protection of our military personnel. A great deal of productive work had already been done on this, with the focus on the excruciatingly difficult hostage situation which had developed as a result of deliberate action by the LTTE in the closing stages of the war. Sadly, we seem to be treading instead a different path fraught with the greatest danger.

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III.  Jehan Perera: “Hybrid Mechanism not a First Option with New Government” … also in Colombo Telegraph, https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/hybrid-mechanism-not-a-first-option-with-new-government/

The long anticipated UN investigation report into alleged war crimes committed during the last phase of Sri Lanka’s war was released last week by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.  The investigation team has made strong indictments against both the government and LTTE forces for war crimes.  The most contentious aspect of the report is likely to be its recommendation that the government should “adopt a specific legislation establishing an ad hoc hybrid special court, integrating international judges, prosecutors, lawyers and investigators, mandated to try war crimes and crimes against humanity, with its own independent investigative and prosecuting organ.”

The Sri Lankan government is reported to have requested the UN and members of the UN Human Rights Council to allow it to carry out a domestic judicial probe rather without setting up a hybrid court with international personnel.  Public opinion in Sri Lanka amongst the Sinhalese majority is decidedly against any international investigation into the past.  The UN investigation is seen as instigated by those who wish to reverse the outcome of Sri Lanka’s three decade old civil war that came to an end with the defeat of the Tamil rebellion by government forces.  Last year, the United States which sponsored the resolution that established the investigation called for an international investigation. The draft resolution that is now being circulated amongst the member countries of the UN Human Rights Council refers to the need “to involve international investigators, prosecutors and judges in Sri Lanka’s justice processes.”

The release of the UN Report on alleged war crimes and human rights violations in Sri Lanka’s war is an important step in the country’s transition to reconciliation as it requires the government and people to give their attention to the unhealed wounds of the past that continue to fester in the body politic.   It is to be noted that even prior to its release, the government had developed a complex and well thought out mechanism to be led by Sri Lankans.  Last week the government announced a mechanism to deal with the past that will be based on a four tier system which will include a Commission for Truth, Justice, Reconciliation, an Office of Missing Persons, a judicial mechanism with special counsel to be set up by statute and an Office of Reparations.

SOBER APPROACH: The initial public reaction to the UN war crimes report has been muted.  When the government asked for a postponement of the release of the report, which was originally scheduled to be released in March of this year, it was because it feared that the political storm it might kick up would be injurious to its electoral prospects at the general elections held in August.  The response within the country to the publication of the predecessor UN report on war crimes published in 2011 (the Darusman Report) was highly nationalist.  It was attacked by the then government and its leaders from the day it appeared.  The former government and media made it appear that the publication of the Darusman report was a national catastrophe and the people needed to unite behind the government to tackle this threat from the international community.

By way of contrast, the media coverage of the latest UN report has been largely factual and without an overt display of nationalist passion that might have been expected.  There has been a description of the contents of the report to inform the general public rather than mobilize them to political action.  Initial comments by government leaders and political commentators indicate that a sense that the report is not as bad or one-sided as was expected.  President Maithripala Sirisena has said that the UN report is a thousand times less damaging than was expected.  He has also claimed the political credit for this saying it is due to the improved international image of the country, and the confidence that the international community has in the government.

Likewise Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has pointed out that the much anticipated naming and shaming of Sri Lanka’s political and military leaders did not happen due to the new government’s effort.  Previously there was a strong rumour that over 48 such persons would be named and shamed.   Instead several LTTE leaders have been named, but most of them are not alive.  Due to the former government’s refusal to permit the UN team to visit Sri Lanka, most of the information they could collect came from outside Sri Lanka, and from the Tamil Diaspora and international organizations.  If the former government had permitted the UN investigative team to visit Sri Lanka, they would have been able to get a more rounded view of what had happened in the country.

TRANSITION PROCESS: The government’s sober approach to the release of the UN report appears to have induced a similar sober approach on the part of the general population to the issue of possible war crimes of the past.  As a result the space has opened up for rational dialogue within the country as to what needs to be done to heal the past wounds and unite to face the challenges of the future.  There is agreement that the past needs to be investigated, and the only question is by whom should it be investigated. There is today a convergence of mind on the part of most people that the truth of the past being ascertained is necessary for the wellbeing of the country.   Accordingly the Sinhalese opposition to the government has been unable to generate immediate resistance to the government’s proposals for the dealing with the past.

However, the Tamil polity in Sri Lanka and in the Diaspora is virtually unanimous that the follow up to the report of the UN investigative team should be an international mechanism.  They have expressed their rejection of a domestic or Sri Lankan mechanism.  Their experience is that the latter mechanisms have never yielded a positive result.  Therefore winning the acceptance of the Tamil polity for the Sri Lankan-led mechanisms envisaged by the government is going to prove to be very difficult.   The need is for the government to discuss its plans with the Tamil people and their representatives and get their consent to it.  The UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon has welcomed the commitment of the Sri Lankan government to consult all stakeholders in designing the mechanisms to address the issues of the past

Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapaksa on behalf of the government has said that the new government has restored the independence of Sri Lanka’s judiciary and changed the method of appointing judges through the 19^th Amendment to ensure their freedom to decide impartially.   It will not be politically possible for the government to accept the recommendation to have international judges, lawyers, prosecutors and investigators involved in a hybrid court to be specially established.  Such a change will need to be approved by Parliament and be ratified by the Supreme Court.  The task of any national government is to ensure that its systems are strong enough to look after governance in the country and not to abdicate its responsibility to the international community.  Getting international personnel to be decision makers within its structures of governance will expose the government to potentially destabilising criticism that it is abdicating its responsibilities.

WAY OUT: The hybrid mechanism urged by the UN gives an appearance of imposition that can generate resistance on the grounds that it is externally imposed.  Another danger of the hybrid mechanism is that the international judges will be seen by the international community as being the truly impartial decisionmakers and therefore they may take over the leadership of the judicial process.  Such a situation will not be seen as credible by the Sinhalese, even if it is seen as credible by others.  The government will get undermined in the eyes of all the people, as it will be seen as having failed institutions and dependent on the international community.  Therefore, as a first step the UN and international community could seek to strengthen the capacity of the Sri Lankan government’s proposed domestic mechanism by providing it with the necessary international support and advice rather than by insisting on a hybrid mechanism.

For its part, to gain the confidence of the Tamil people, the government can seek to appoint the members of its proposed domestic mechanism via the multi-partisan Constitutional Council.  This high level body includes the Leader of the Opposition R Sampanthan, who is also the leader of the main Tamil political party in Parliament.  The Constitutional Council will also have three eminent civil society representatives–former UN special rapporteur Dr Radhika Coomaraswamy, former Attorney General Shibley Azeez, and Sarvodaya leader Dr A T Ariyaratne.  In addition, the selection of the judges and investigators could be consensual, so that the Tamil representatives are satisfied about the choices made.   There could also be a public vetting process in parliament, where those selected are subjected to examination by Tamil parliamentarians among others.

The previous decade saw the power of ethnic nationalism demonstrated time and again at elections. Now that it is on the wane, it would be politically unwise to permit the defeated ethno-populist politicians to stage a comeback using the UN report and its threat to national sovereignty.  The government should be given the opportunity to prove its commitment to addressing the issues of the past.  The change of government needs to be protected by the people of Sri Lanka and by the international community by strengthening the capacity of the government to perform its tasks of ensuring truth, justice and accountability to the required standards and, in the longer term, to work towards a political solution in which the ethnic minorities see themselves as equal and empowered citizens of a united country.

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ALSO NOTE one set of views from an ardent overzealous pro-Sri Lanka cybernet network which reached my email address

Sri Lankans must rise against Hybrid Courts-Support all ministers who oppose the Hybrid Court – irrespective of political affiliation.

Sri Lankans must rise against Hybrid Courts.

It is not appropriate for Sri Lanka. We are not trying terrorists. This court is being set up to try our own military!!!!

It is happening under our very nose. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/khmer-rouge-leaders-begin/1956078.html

Some governments agree to hybrid courts “as a means to attract international aid and a stamp of legitimacy”

Why is the Sirisena administration agreeing to this?

Mangala Samaraweera and Ranil Wickremasinghe should step back and step down if this is their aim. We will not allow a legitimate government that was voted in 2005 and 2010 and a military that defeated terrorism to be tried in a hybrid court. Was this the aim of John Kerry’s visit to Sri Lanka?

John Kerry is the primary proposer of Hybrid Courts and it is to prosecute governments. Is this what he did in Sri Lanka? “John Kerry of the US has called for the formation of Hybrid Court to trial Political perpetrators who have committed gross crime against humanity in South Sudan.” http://www.ngokland.com/kerry-reiterate-formation-of-hybrid-court-on-south-sudan/

Support all ministers who oppose the Hybrid Court – irrespective of political affiliation.

https://srilankaopinion.wordpress.com/2015/09/20/sri-lankans-must-rise-against-hybrid-courts-support-all-ministers-who-oppose-the-hybrid-court-irrespective-of-political-affiliation/

ALSO LISTEN TO Dayan Jayatilleka’s Chat with Michael Gregson on the issues arising from this resolution at https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F224452467&amp%3Bauto_play=true&amp%3Bhide_related=false&amp%3Bshow_comments=true&amp%3Bshow_user=true&amp%3Bshow_reposts=false&amp%3Bvisual=true