By Uditha Devapriya
On Friday, November 24, the Mullaitivu Magistrate’s Court issued an order prohibiting events dedicated to the commemoration of LTTE soldiers on Maaveerar Naal or Hero’s Day, which falls today, November 27. The order had been prompted by complaints from the Mullaitivu police. Meanwhile, some websites report that the headstones of fallen LTTE cadres have been demolished and activists involved with their commemoration have been harassed, with one activist taken away by police while attending an event honoring their families. At the same time, the Mallakalam Magistrate’s Court has rejected petitions by the Manipay, Palaly, Thellipalai, and Achuveli police to ban such events.
The Manipay police argue that these events glorify terrorism, more or less conflating the commemoration of dead LTTE soldiers with the celebration of the outfit to which they belonged. Such arguments have made it possible for the government to deny any space for remembering the fallen from “the other side” of the conflict. Intertwined with this are concerns that such remembrance may legitimize separatist demands and terrorist outfits. Yet lost in all that is the question of whether a State can deny the community the right to memorialize its dead and to commemorate the past.
In Sri Lanka, the right to memorialize remains contentious, especially given the lack of any tangible progress on postwar reconciliation. Mourning the dead, particularly fallen soldiers, has become a political act for both sides. What has complicated this are the narratives that each side has built up regarding not just the ethnic conflict but also the politics, society, and history of the country. The State’s narrative is triumphalist and demonizes those who differ from its view, while the Tamil community, victimized for so long, sees the end of the war as the victory of a powerful military over a minority community. It is in light of these issues that one must evaluate the petitions against Maaveerar Naal.
Though not explicitly enshrined in the United Nations Charter or Declaration of Human Rights, the right to memorialize forms an important part of international humanitarian law, transitional justice, and post-conflict reconciliation.
In 2005 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 60/147, the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law. Guided by the UN Charter, Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenants on Human Rights, “and other human rights instruments”, the document focuses on remedies and reparations for victims of war crimes and violations of international human rights law. These include not just reparations and damages but also access to information, public apologies, and commemorations. The Resolution, in that regard, goes beyond a restrictive and financial interpretation of remedies, and emphasizes restorative justice.
Restorative justice, in fact, is a cornerstone of international humanitarian law. Its objective is to avoid pitting former warring parties against each other and instead reach a consensus or common ground on the way forward after a conflict has ended. This is not as easy as it may sound, for reasons that will be outlined later. But international law is rooted in restorative justice, and one of the ways of achieving such justice is enabling all parties to a conflict to mourn their dead and, in mourning for them, to facilitate discussions about what happened during a war and how society can prevent a relapse into war. This is why memorialization is an important toolkit of transitional justice, and why it must be viewed in tandem with other processes, including truth and reconciliation commissions.
In that respect memorialization serves several functions. It promotes reconciliation, national identity, healing, truth-telling, and civic engagement. It also provides an opportunity to revisit the past, painful as it may seem, and engage with and confront dominant historical narratives. While government initiatives like truth and reconciliation commissions take time and are seen as imposed from above, commemorations and tributes are more grassroots and bring communities together. “Memory initiatives” and “sites of conscience” empower communities to view a traumatic event like a war or a genocide from a different angle, and reflect on how it impacted its victims. In their most basic sense, these processes also help remind us that such events occurred, and that the aim is not so much finding out why they happened as ensuring they never happen again.
As historian Shamara Wettimuny has aptly pointed out, we should be willing to look at uncomfortable histories. This is true of memorialization as well, with the caveat that such uncomfortable histories should provoke us into questioning dominant narratives. However, there are certain problems here. Memorials can themselves become politicized, encouraging dissension rather than discussion. As one report observes, memorial sites in Sri Lanka that commemorate victims of terrorism can defeat the very purpose for which such sites are built in the first place. They can also reinforce certain narratives about wars and conflicts, thus undermining their progressive potential. This is as true of State-led and funded memorials as memorials built by and belonging to “the other side.”
One solution to this would be to distinguish between combatants and civilians and identify those for whom memorial sites have been built with the latter group. In the case of both Maaveerar Naal (the LTTE) and Victory Day (the Sri Lankan military), however, this is more difficult than may first seem. Memorial sites and commemorative events in Sri Lanka lack inclusivity, which is what has enabled polarization and has fed into the great postwar divide between a triumphant South and a defeated North. Against this backdrop it makes little to no sense to raze down memorials and issue petitions against remembrance events in the north and east. A more constructive approach would be to emphasize the identity of those being remembered: not as members of a terrorist outfit, but civilians who, in the course of a struggle they thought as just and justifiable, took up arms.
The issue, however, is that narratives breed counternarratives, and these tend to be used in the service of political ends as well. In the north, for instance, the remembrance of fallen LTTE soldiers has been conflated, rather unfairly, with celebration of separatist and terrorist sentiments. Yet recent episodes, such as the cancellation of a lecture by a Tamil human rights activist at the University of Jaffna on grounds of her reference to the LTTE as a fascist organization, can provide a pretext for political forces to reinforce this conflation, to use memorialization for less than benign political ends. Fortunately, the academic culture in the region appears to be progressive on these fronts, as the response of the University of Jaffna Teachers’ Association to the lecture cancellation episode makes clear.
On the other hand, geopolitics plays a part in memorialization as well. During its 30-year history the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict became internalized in other countries, prominently India. In 2010, a year after the end of the war, the Sri Lankan government built a memorial for the 1,200 Indian Peacekeeping Force soldiers who lost their lives during their mission in Sri Lanka. This, and the 10 Para Memorial in Palaly, are the only such memorials dedicated to these soldiers; the Indian government has not built a similar monument. On the other hand, the Mullivaikal Muttram, built in Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu in November 2013, reflects on the lives of Tamil civilians lost during the final phase of Eelam War IV. Sponsored by the World Tamil Confederation, its opening ceremony saw the participation of diverse political parties, including the Communist Party of India and the BJP. Similar sites have been or are being built elsewhere, including one in Brampton, Toronto.
In this regard, the purpose of memorial sites and remembrance events should be not merely to prevent wars from repeating, but to bring communities together. For this, such initiatives have to be cognizant of local realities. There are enough and more examples of memorial sites and memory initiatives that were forgotten not long after they were built, because they were seen as either imposed from above or excluding certain groups. They should also be linked to other mechanisms which aim at bridging different communities, such as truth and reconciliation commissions but also, more importantly, education reforms, including history syllabus reforms. Without such mechanisms, memorialization will not achieve its objectives. Historically, the Sri Lankan State, regardless of the party in power, has not been sensitive to the need for memorialization. This needs urgent redressing, especially since the government has built up a reputation for bulldozing rather than building memorial sites.
Uditha Devapriya is the Chief Analyst – International Relations at Factum and can be reached at uditha@factum.lk.
Factum is an Asia Pacific-focused think tank on International Relations, Tech Cooperation, and Strategic Communications accessible via www.factum.lk.
The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the organization’s.