DailyMirror
Former Attorney General CR de Silva has been appointed Chairman of the eight-member ‘Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation’ Commission set up to probe what happened between February 2002 and May 2009 and to recommend measures to ensure there will be no recurrence of such a situation.
The other members of the commission are — Foreign Affairs Ministry Legal Adviser Rohan Perera PC; Nevada University Criminal Justice Professor Karunaratne Hangawatte; United Nation’s former Permanent Representative HMGS Palihakkara, University Grants Commission Vice Chairman MTM Jiffry; a former member of the Monetary Board and former Treasury Secretary C. Chanmugam; Deputy Legal Draughtsman Mano Ramanathan, and former High Court Judge Maxwell Paranagama.
The Commission set up by President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Saturday has been asked to report whether any persons, groups or institutions directly or indirectly were responsible for what happened during this period and to recommend measures to be adopted to prevent the recurrence of such incidents and to promote unity and reconciliation among all communities.
The Commission has been asked to report back to the President within six months.
The Cabinet paper submitted by President Mahinda Rajapaksa stated that the brutality and long duration of the conflict perpetrated against Sri Lanka would have caused great hurt and anguish to people and required endeavours for rehabilitation and the restoration of democratic governance together with measures for reconciliation.
The President said he had requested Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative in the United Nations to mention at the UN Security Council Interactive Briefing on June 5 last year that the government was initiating a domestic mechanism for fact finding and reconciliation.
Presidential website said this stemmed from the Government’s commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights, as consistently articulated and affirmed by Sri Lanka at Human Rights Council Sessions.
The President told the cabinet that to accomplish this task it had become necessary to set in motion a mechanism which would provide a historic bridge between a society’s past characterized by inflicted strife and a society’s future founded on the continued recognition of democracy, peaceful co-existence and the affording of equal opportunities for all Sri Lankans as guaranteed by the Constitution.
The President said the Commission on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation has been influenced in part by the South African experience and the British inquiry on Iraq. (Presidential website)