federalidea.com

by Minna Thaheer

The following thoughts are inspired by a discussion the author had with Derek Poole, from Northern Ireland, who is involved in peace-building work for 25 years. He spoke to some community-level peace builders invited by the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA). Poole has been developing many local bridge-building programmes designed to help communities, political and paramilitary leaders, to explore the common goal of peace and reconciliation, and alternative ways of building peace.

The message from this peace negotiator, who believes Sri Lanka today is where Northern Ireland was 15 years ago in their 400 something year old conflict is that peace negotiations and talks are vital to arrive at a settlement; and there cannot be forced military solutions that are viable and lasting; but, devolution, on the other hand, will. Having collectively transformed from an earlier traditional, cultural and ethnic majority mould that believed “if you are mistaken theologically, you have no place socially, we are now heading to shape a political structure of justice,” Poole said. The war and violence must cease allowing us transform into a state of reconciliation. Many a solution to our problems lies here and communities must collectively allow it to happen. There is no blueprint for such reconciliation process, but he reiterated that justice will not be compromised in seeking reconciliation.

Northern Ireland has arrived at a post-conflict stage, where forgiveness and reconciliation seem to be a piece of realpolitik, in a cynic’s viewpoint, if not an absolute value to nurture. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was set up as a compromise between those who wanted a general amnesty before relinquishing power, and those who wanted people to stand trial for their wrongful acts. Such reconciliation methods are useful compared to some of the ghastly examples of alternatives the world has seen. The experiences of Pinochet and Chile opting for general amnesty are good examples. The past has an uncanny nature to return and haunt one. Pinochet thought he had sorted out issues with his imprimatur. But it wasn’t so. One of the loudest sentiments of the Germans observing 50 years after Nuremburg was resentment and shame about what they called ‘Victors’ Justice.’ What is now happening in the Middle East, in Israel and Palestine, is an absence of forgiveness and reconciliation. Where one side clobbers the other, the response is clobber back. It is a cruel game. This is the alternative to saying ‘Sorry’.

The peace lovers of this country immensely praise and congratulate the most magnanimous gesture of the Sri Lankan Govt when it took the responsibility and expressed its regret for ousting Tamils from the North and East lodging in Colombo. It must be stated that peace workers in NGOs, INGOS, humanitarian, multilateral and development sectors are not habitual, chronic critics of the government; but they are also willing to seize opportunities such as these to commend it, in its attempts towards peace, and give a shoulder of support to those in office, in their efforts to transform the current violent phase into one of a de-escalation of violence leading to reconciliation. To say ’sorry,’ it only takes a pluck of conscience. It is a fundamental of any relationship that unless one admits that he or she has made a mistake, there is no future to that relationship.

Having first ceased violence, the Northern Ireland peace process started taking shape long before attempting to address the root causes for the conflict. Transformations were allowed to set in later. This is known as a ‘positive peace’ stage where state reforms, socio- economic and political reconciliations, rehabilitation, democratization, demilitarization and reconstruction processes start addressing root causes. First, stopping the violence helped them to live almost a 15 year `peace process’ period, since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, that brought considerable optimism that conflict would simply give way to peace, and where political violence almost totally ceased.

Even today, in Northern Ireland there is politico-economic and social strife despite the Agreement. But, if it were not for the political consensus that helped arrive at the Agreement, it is likely that these problems would have been even worse. So is the case in South Africa. The Ceasefire Agreement of February 2002 in Sri Lanka attempted to yield such a transformation; but it was reversed prematurely in the face of escalating violence with little or no will to continue the peace process or to even attempt to take a step in that direction to resolve the conflict.

“Addressing the language of the past is imperative for peace and reconciliation,” says Poole. Levels of ignorance of each other is a huge challenge to overcome. The language of ethnicity and language of division combine to create something monstrous. They knew each other as people and what we need here is to facilitate confidence building measures and reconciliation,” Poole emphasized.

He hastens to add that “there is no blueprint in any model for replication. For instance the South African TRC model will not work in Northern Ireland, as the two cases are very different.” The TRC model also had its own flaws in delays of carrying out recommended reparations for victims. The kind of reconciliations and its inner dynamics were also challenged and could not boast of a process of resounding success. However, it did bring about a tidal wave that engulfed South Africans into a transformation where there could not be a reversal to earlier violence; and for this there is the political will from the top level.

In Northern Ireland, despite the public disorder and sectarian tension today, the transformation remains steadfastly protected and non-reversed, with the political will undeterred.

“There were times when the State and the paramilitary felt morally justified in committing equal and opposite terror in communities. When there is a decline in the trajectory of violence, that opportunity must be seized to engage all stake holders, the communities, clergy, political leaders, and the paramilitary,” Poole asserts.

He further reiterated that major decisions can be easy to arrive at when there are strong supportive networks within the community, almost akin to a cob web, where the spider’s strength lies in the little strands it weaves to survive in the face of the wind. “We need to weave certain strands, and build one-on-one relationships with key people. I believe this is vital for peace-building” he said.

For Poole, reconciliation is a phenomenal amount of work, where at times it may seem like you are not getting justice. “Reconciliation is a price a society has to collectively pay for peace. A part of this process involves devolution of power, the perpetrators, the paramilitaries, had to go to prison, brought out and fitted in to new roles, device mechanisms to deal with anti social behaviours of those linked to paramilitary in city areas, where they became used to methods of abductions, extortions, deportations, maimings and killings. Paramilitaries themselves had become more open to taking on alternatives to violence” he added.

In Sri Lanka, are we going to deal with the atrocities that happened? Or are we going to cover up as if they did not happen and leave a festering wound? Shouldn’t elected governments be accountable and different to that of guerilla groups? “If we try to cover up, there are many who will not forgive saying we remember being subject to such and such direct and indirect violence and treated in such a fashion by this group or the other. Unless all of this is dealt with, it will seriously imperil our future,” says Poole. Then there are questions of justice in reconciliation. When someone has been abducted, killed and buried, the family is not going to simply effect closure. They may want to know who gave the orders? What do you do with those who regard themselves victims? The truth hurts but it can certainly heal.

Aren’t concepts of peace and reconciliation inherently incompatible with that of justice? Aren’t there paradoxical tensions between them? Can justice be subordinated in the interests of reconciliation and peace? “We are attuned to think of retributive justice that will contradict reconciliation efforts. We believed restorative justice was what we could reconcile with, as retributive justice is punitive often associated with harsh punishment,” says Poole. As in the South African experience, the Northern Ireland experience too was also more favourable towards restorative justice where victims, offenders and communities together decide on a response to a particular crime by encouraging offenders to face up to their actions. In a sense, here too there is retributive justice, where the purpose is punitive to punish the miscreant, when public hearing of a crime brings shame upon the miscreant. It is not a soft option as many offenders find it extremely difficult to face up to the impact of their crimes and say in open courts “I unleashed the kind of thing I did” Imagine what it would be like for a member of the death squad to say this.

Restorative justice is a philosophical approach to responding to crime aimed at repairing the harm caused by a criminal act, and restoring the balance in the community affected by the crime. The victim plays a major role in the process and receives some type of restitution from the offender.

It gives victims a greater voice in the criminal justice system, allows victims to receive an explanation and more meaningful reparation from offenders, makes offenders accountable by allowing them to take responsibility for their actions and builds community confidence that offenders are making amends for their wrong-doing.

Many studies have also indicated that such approaches can reduce post-traumatic stress disorder.

Far from reconciliation, in the violence and counter-violence phase we in Sri Lanka are in now, the realization that this is not the path to peace must set in. The direct, structural and cultural violence that bleeds our country today is daringly internalized with few exceptions. Across the board politicians, professionals, doctors, lawyers, private sector magnates, executives, bankers, business community, academia, think tanks, especially the clergy and the civil society at large are answerable to the bloodshed and gloom that the country is plunged into, with few being seriously concerned. Innocent women, men and children suffer the most in a violent conflict and die or lead traumatic lives witnessing killings and violence to themselves and to their loved ones enduring direct violence according to Johan Galtung. There is structural violence when people perish in poverty owing to the war, being denied of basic necessities of food, health, education and shelter. Having to live through such hardships is a sort of cultural violence where those of us mentioned above have grievously and shamelessly helped internalize such violent culture at all levels of the society, unquestioned by also perpetuating the same. Still worse are those who nonchalantly work around a conflict regardless of the bloodshed and deep wounds that people of our country will take generations to heal and pay for.

Can Sri Lankans say that we have attempted all kinds of non-violent ways to bring about change, (talked about meaningful decentralising of power, to begin with), true to the religions that we belong to? Can we say that force has been resorted to as a very very last resort and call for a reversing of the violent path dramatically?