By Dinesh D. Dodamgoda
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.The Buckingham palace has announced that ‘Her Majesty the Queen’ will not be attending this year’s Commonwealth summit, scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka, as the palace reviews her long-haul travel. However, when questioned by Alex Thompson, Chief Correspondent of ‘Channel 4’, a palace spokesperson said that “no single long-haul flight is under reconsideration apart from the Sri Lankan one”, giving a different discourse to the official explanation of Queen’s non-attendance.
Does the palace spokesperson’s answers imply on anything to the effect that Sri Lanka is losing legitimacy?
As Henry Kissinger (1964) wrote, a ‘legitimate international order’ implies that all the major powers have accepted established conventions of dealing with one another and agree on the parameters of foreign policy aims and methods. Legitimacy is about collective consensus initiated by all the major powers, therefore, Kissinger implies, that any country in the international system should exist in accord with established conventions and agree on the foreign policy aims and methods.
Has the Sri Lankan Government failed to adhere to legitimate international order?
Although the war against the LTTE was a domestic issue, it warranted the Sri Lankan government to interact with international powers and players, because the increasing process of globalisation has changed the character of domestic warfare from a pure domestic issue to an issue that has an international dimension. This was in addition to the international conventions that Sri Lanka ratified with regard to war related matters. Hence, the context brought new non-traditional actors which include external state actors, international media, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and inter-governmental organisations (IGOs) into the war theatre in Sri Lanka’s North.
The inevitable result of this international involvement broke the traditional boundaries of the state sovereignty. However, ignoring international reality, the Sri Lankan government always used the traditional concept of sovereignty as a protecting shield to argue, using phrases like “international conspiracy” against any international involvement that alleged SL government for violating International Laws and Humanitarian Laws. The situation demanded international players to pay close attention to the war theatre in Sri Lanka.
In the aftermath of the war in May 2009, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Sri Lanka and raised three key issues to lay out a post-conflict framework for Sri Lanka. They are: humane treatment and speedy resettlement of the internally displaced persons, adoption of policies to achieve political reconciliation, and accountability for war-time atrocities. In addition to that, during early 2010, a communiqué (10COLOMBO50 / 2010-01-22) between US Ambassador Patricia A. Butenis and the US Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs also referred to a framework built on four key issues to assess the progress in Sri Lanka: treatment of IDPs, human rights, political reconciliation, and accountability for alleged war crimes. Moreover, India, too, pushed the SL government to find an immediate political solution for the ethnic problem based on a 13+ power devolution proposal. Interestingly, the Sri Lankan government implicitly or explicitly had agreed to all of these internationally imposed frameworks and proposals, giving international actors a leverage to control Sri Lanka’s post-conflict affairs.
This naive approach adopted by the SL government could not even see that they had an opportunity to push post-conflict reconciliation issues forward against any international attempt that would seek to push an immediate war crime inquiry. For an example, the US Ambassador Patricia A. Butenis in early 2010 stated in a communiqué that “There is an obvious split, however, between the Tamil Diaspora and Tamils in Sri Lanka on how and when to address the [war-crime accountability] issue. While we understand the former [Tamil Diaspora] would like to see the issue as an immediate top-priority issue, most Tamils in Sri Lanka appear to think it is both unrealistic and counter-productive to push the issue too aggressively now.”
It is a pity that the Sri Lankan government did not exploit this golden opportunity to push international community in supporting a serious reconciliation phase whilst discouraging immediate war crime inquiry. The Sri Lankan government could argue that the reconciliation task conflicts with war-crime accountability creating a paradox that can generate adverse effects on a sincere “reconciliation” process. Therefore, pressuring the government on the war-crime accountability issue could draw the anger of the patriots who hail the military victory over the LTTE and respect the contributors to that victory as “heroes”, regardless of international concerns. Nonetheless, the Sri Lankan government had failed miserably in bringing those lines of arguments as their focus was different.
Apart from the progress the government made on IDP re-settlement and rehabilitation issues, the Sri Lankan government had adopted a lethargic approach in fulfilling an international impose where the government agreed on post-conflict obligations. The rest of the issues, reconciliation, war-crime accountability, human rights and introducing a political solution based on 13+ proposal yet to be fulfilled. The situation seriously has degraded the Sri Lankan government’s credibility. Making the situation worse, the war brought new international allies to the Sri Lankan government, which include China, Pakistan, Libya, Iran and Venezuela. These new alliances sent wrong messages especially to the US and India in a context where both countries compete with China for the Indian Ocean’s supremacy. The accumulated result of all these actions challenged the Sri Lankan government’s level of legitimacy in the international order and even generated negative impacts on the country’s economy as evident in the European Commission’s decision on February 2010 to suspend the GSP+ trade facility to Sri Lanka following investigation by the European Commission who said that the country fell short in implementing three UN human rights conventions relevant for benefits under the scheme.
Whilst the Sri Lankan government’s naive actions contributed to losing legitimacy in the international order, the Tamil Diaspora led by the Global Tamil Forum (GTF) started carrying out a de-legitimisation campaign against the SL government figuring war-crime accountability issue prominently almost all over the world. They went to UN Human Rights Commission, European Parliament, US Congress, House of Commons, India (Ghandi Family), Canada and Australia as well. By successfully lobbying against the Sri Lankan government, the GTF and Tamil Diaspora managed to convince international players either through evidence or half-truth propaganda materials that the war-crime accountability issue should be given priority over other post-conflict issues in Sri Lanka. They insisted that the war-crime issue is the ‘key’ that may open the door to other important issues such as human rights, IDPs and reconciliation.
However, the Sri Lankan government could not challenge the information or misinformation campaign of the Tamil Diaspora, which could be due to the incapability of the ministry of external affairs.
The gradual loss of Sri Lanka’s legitimacy in the international order is clearly somewhat evident in votes Sri Lanka attracted in three UN Human Rights Council resolutions moved in May 2009, March 2012 and March 2013.
The decline in votes for Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council from 29 in 2009 to 15 in 2012 March and 13 in 2013 March shows how Sri Lanka gradually lost international support, raising questions on “Sri Lanka losing legitimacy”.
The votes against Sri Lanka have increased from 12 in 2009 to 24 in 2012 March and 25 in 2013 March.
Against this international backdrop, a campaign was raised by the GTF and Tamil Diaspora, to ask the Commonwealth Heads of Governments and Secretary General to “call for the venue of CHOGM 2013, proposing the Sri Lankan city of Hambantota, to be moved elsewhere until the Government of Sri Lanka agrees to allow an international, independent investigation into the credible allegations of war crimes.” The Canadian Prime Minister had already openly spoken in favour of moving the venue and some other Heads of Governments also raised their concerned over a credible investigation.
The question this article begins with, “Does the palace spokesperson’s answers imply on anything to the effect that Sri Lanka is losing legitimacy?” should therefore be, assed against the above elaborated international backdrop. For me, it is obvious that the official explanation provided by the Buckingham Palace, “The Majesty Her Queen will not attend this year’s Commonwealth summit, scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka, as the palace reviews her long-haul travel”, is nothing but a manifestation of Royal Diplomatic decency. In my opinion, the Sri Lankan External Affairs Ministry should take this situation very seriously and start fighting a battle for re-gaining Sri Lanka’s almost lost legitimacy.
(The writer is a lawyer in profession and has obtained a M.Sc. from the British Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham (Cranfield University) on Defence Management and Global Security.

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