Through history, few countries in the world have had to endure a terrorist movement as protracted, vicious and intense as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) campaigns, which lasted over 33 years and killed, on some estimates, up to 80,000 people, in a tiny country with a present population of under 21 million.
Few countries in the world have secured as clear and demonstrable victory over terrorism as has Sri Lanka, even where extraordinary and indiscriminate violence has been inflicted on large populations, as, for instance, in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where civilian settlements have been repeatedly targeted, and ‘collateral damage’ often overruns any rational proportion to legitimate targets.
And few countries in the world have restored normalcy with the speed and to the extent that Sri Lanka has in under three years. There has not been a single terrorism related fatality in the country since October 3, 2009, to the present, bringing peace to a people who had forgotten its contours over decades. Of the estimated 290,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), resulting from the final phase of the conflict, just 6,647 (roughly 2.3 per cent) had been left to return to their places of origin by the end of 2011. On March 15, 2012, Economic Development Minister Yapa Abeywardana claimed that over 99 per cent of the IDPs had been resettled. More significantly, of the 11,700 LTTE cadres who had surrendered, 10,490 had been freed and reunited with their families, after the completion of their rehabilitation process, as on March 29, 2012. The last remaining group of ex-LTTE cadres is scheduled for release by mid-2012, after completion of a mandatory 12-month rehabilitation and retraining process. The war ravaged North and East have also seen dramatic developmental transformations, with massive infrastructure and rehabilitation investments catalysing a 22 per cent rate of growth for the region, according to official claims, as against eight per cent for the entire country.
Crucially, a remarkable resurrection of democratic processes and structures has been secured across the country, with General, Presidential, Provincial and local body elections conducted across the country.
At the height of the final phase of the counter-terrorism campaign in the North, which eventually brought the LTTE terror to an end in May 2009, Norway and other European interlocutors had repeatedly used the threat of initiative processes for ‘war crimes’ and ‘human rights violations’ against the Sri Lankan state, to force the Colombo to end its increasingly successful operations against the LTTE, even as Velupillai Prabhakaran, the then LTTE Chief, and the besieged terrorist cadres surrounded themselves with a human shield of civilians to thwart Security Force (SF) operations. As President Mahinda Rajapakse declared unambiguously on May 22, 2009, "There are some who tried to stop our military campaign by threatening to haul us before war crimes tribunals. They are still trying to do that, but I am not afraid." This group of minor and frustrated European powers have now roped in the US to push an agenda that they failed to impose through a perverse ‘peace process’, which kept a virulent terrorist movement alive for years, with increasing international sanction and legitimacy.
This is the essence of the gratuitous resolution passed by United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on March 22, 2012, by a vote of 24 in favour, 15 against and eight abstentions. Crucially and disgracefully, at the last moment, India chose to cast its vote in support of a hypocritical, divisive and essentially unproductive resolution that demanded, among other things, that Sri Lanka “present, as expeditiously as possible, a comprehensive action plan detailing the steps that the Government has taken and will take” to implement “the constructive recommendations in the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission” (LLRC).
It is significant that India had dithered almost to the last moment on its vote, and eventually decided to go with the US sponsored resolution because of domestic political considerations – increasing pressures from the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s ally, the Tamil Nadu regional party, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). This has been duly noted by the leadership in Colombo, with Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris, observing,