SRI LANKAN President Maithripala Sirisena is a resourceful politician. He resigned from Mahinda Rajapaksa's Cabinet just before the 2015 elections which he knew would go against the two-time president. Sirisena won the presidency by trying to be everything to everyman. He promised the Tamil minority protection from his own Sinhalese majority and told the latter he would draw a line beyond which Tamils would not be allowed to press their demands. While assuring the Sinhalese that he would not allow "my troops" and "war heroes" to be prosecuted, Sirisena told the United Nations that those who committed war crimes in the final days of the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) would be brought to justice. LTTE or Tamil Tigers were fighting for a separate Tamil state in the north and east of the island where the Tamils are in a majority. LTTE was the most deadly terrorist organization in the world. It is to the credit of Rajapaksa that he brought a 26-year-old insurgency to an end but he failed to carry this victory to its logical conclusion by addressing the genuine grievances of the Tamil minority and granting them meaningful autonomy. Instead, he though the defeat of the Tamil rebels was the end of the Tamil grievances, which brought the LTTE into existence in the first place. Unfortunately, Sirisena too seems to be thinking on the same lines. He should have established a credible investigation into alleged war crimes during the final days of the fighting with the Tamil Tigers. According to a 2011 report by the UN, about 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final weeks of the civil war, mostly as a result of indiscriminate government shelling and bombardment. Army shelled hospitals and facilities where civilians were sheltering. Even those LTTE leaders who surrendered were executed. Tamil women were raped. Both Sirisena and Rajapaksa are against any foreign participation in the inquiry not only because Sirisena was part of the government that crushed the LTTE but the Sinhalese majority does not want to see either the army or members of the previous government prosecuted for war crimes. But how long can Sirisena resist demands from the UN and his international and regional backers? Some recent developments show he can't continue the balancing act indefinitely. First, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) said on Thursday that Sri Lanka must make more progress toward meeting commitments to establishing a credible investigation into alleged war crimes. Second, India, Sri Lanka's close-door neighbor, has expressed anguish and pain over the alleged war crimes against unarmed Tamils in the 2009 war. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj used unusually strong language to convey India's concerns over Sri Lanka's human rights record. Her comments came in the backdrop of the 34th Session of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), where the report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (HCHR) on Sri Lanka was presented. India, it may be noted, has a sizable Tamil population: Some 77,881,463 (concentrated in southern state of Tamil Nadu that shares a maritime border with Sri Lanka) against the latter's 20,810,816. Although Tamil Nadu fully sympathizes with the aspirations of Tamils in Sri Lanka, New Delhi has scrupulously avoided openly identifying with Sri Lankan Tamils. It has never supported a break up of the island to satisfy Tamil demands. At the same time, India can't remain indifferent to the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka. Moreover, AIADMK, the ruling party of Tamil Nadu, is a coalition partner of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP government. So India is likely to mount pressure on Sri Lanka on probe into war crimes and solving conflicting with Tamils. Let us hope that Sri Lankan president would stop balking and take some bold steps over UN demands. Sirisena has been a successful politician. It is time for him to act like a statesman.
