Peace in Sri Lanka

The Peace Secretariat is surprised by attempts to portray its desire for truth and justice as tantamount to a charge of claiming ACF was directly responsible for the deaths of its own workers. This canard, first enunciated by the European Union's Commissioner for Human Rights to the Sri Lankan Embassy in Belgium, has been repeated by a former Aid Worker, using the word murder in an article in an online version of the Guardian, which has received wide publicity. The Peace Secretariat draws attention to a recent article by Peter Apps which, whilst referring to shortcomings in the investigation, highlights issues that ACF and the international community should have taken more seriously from the start. The relevant portions of the Apps article are as follows:

“The angry allegations aimed at ACF do echo some of those I heard from the families of the victims outside the morgue in Trincomalee a year ago. Some were already accusing security forces of carrying out the killings. But they were also angry at ACF for sending their loved ones into the town in the first place. The 17 staff had been sent across by ferry from Trincomalee to Muttur only to be trapped there when a naval battle erupted in the harbour. They stayed in their compound for days as the government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) both fought through and shelled the town. When the civilian population fled south on foot and by vehicle through the battle, they stayed put. Then they were killed.

Most relief agencies had cut back or stopped sending staff into the front-line town after a couple of grenade attacks weeks earlier. There were soon mutterings among aid workers in Trincomalee that the ACF team had been left dangerously exposed.

Almost all of the dead were ethnic Tamils, stranded in a predominantly Muslim town between the rebels - also Tamils - and security forces mainly from the majority Sinhalese population. There had long been accusations in the local area that aid groups were favouring Tamils and that their operations in rebel-held areas were effectively helping the LTTE.

ACF says their internal investigation after the massacre suggested no one could have known that going to Muttur that day would be so dangerous. They say other aid groups would have made the same decision to order their staff to stay in the compound after fighting began.

"We couldn't know that it was a mistake," ACF spokeswoman Lucille Grosjean told AlertNet from Colombo. After the incident, ACF cut back and has now ceased its humanitarian operations in Sri Lanka, although it remains on the island to monitor the progress of the investigation. It has also imposed much more rigorous security procedures, limiting the movement of local staff without an expatriate to escort them.

Whilst the Peace Secretariat believes the inquiry should be expedited, and has indeed previously drawn attention to the urgent need for a Witness Protection and Assistance Act, it feels that a more objective approach would have been more appropriate for the sake of our Sri Lankan dead, who have become playthings in a number crunching exercise that continues.

The Secretary General of the Peace Secretariat pointed out to Sir John Holmes, who explained that some UN material was based on a simple need to convey who and where and what. It is also essential to think of why. Not only must justice be done in such situations, we also need to ensure that there is no repetition of such tragedies, and for this, constant vigilance and care is necessary by all stakeholders.

The Peace Secretariat is pleased that ACF also feels an inquiry is desirable, and wishes to make it clear that its initial requirement of truth is not intended to point fingers at the organization. However, as the measures ACF now takes indicate, there have been lapses in the past and the reasons for this must also be explored for the sake of the victims and their families. If there was carelessness, if there was an inexplicable determination to send in an unprecedented large number of workers in a context where, as Mr. Apps reports, others were cutting back, the reasons for this must be clarified.

Though lives cannot be quantified in financial terms, since compensation is at least an appropriate token of grief and contrition, it may be appropriate for ACF in the light of such an inquiry to pay amounts more in keeping with what would have been paid for Europeans who were victims in similar circumstances, if this is conceivable in an increasingly unbalanced world.