The 10-day Kandy Dalada Perahara is an event of religious and cultural significance to all Sri Lankans. The Perahara is viewed by thousands of people including foreigners who come to Sri Lanka for especially the event.
News
“Tell me anything but don’t tell me he’s dead,” were the words Kanmani muttered as she took out a letter from her bag, tears rolling from her eyes. “My son went missing in Mannar in 2007 and there is no place in this country I haven’t gone to find him, to see him one last time. I’ve been to every police station, army camp, government office and commission,” she says.
In 2014, Kanmani was informed about the Presidential Commission to Investigate into Complaints Regarding Missing Persons. She was one of the first people in her village to go before the Commission. “I will not lose hope, I know my son is alive somewhere,” she says.
She told the Commission everything she knew in her native tongue and the Commission contacted her twice via letters in Tamil. However on February 16, Kanmani received her final letter from the Commission in a language she did not understand; English. Living in a secluded village in Vavuniya, Kanmani knew no one who read or understood English. “I was helpless, I didn’t know where to go or whom to ask,” she recalls.
Kanmani is one of the many women NPC has been able to reach out to through its project Post Conflict Healing: A Women’s Manifesto supported by FOKUS Women. It was during an exchange visit to connect the North with the South that Kanmani told her story, only to find that many others had also received letters in English from the same Commission.
The women’s networks that NPC had established started a signature campaign to address this breach of the national language policy and to ensure that the government did not repeat the mistake.
The women’s groups collected over 1,400 signatures from across the country. On September 29, the first copy of the petition was submitted to Mr. Mano Tittawella, the Secretary General of the Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms (SCRM) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Mr. Tittawella promised he would ensure that such errors would not be made in future Transitional Justice mechanisms. He noted that letters needed to show empathy when giving details about investigations or information found about the missing person. He recommended that victims should be informed personally with psychosocial support instead through an impersonal letter that they did not even understand.
After the meeting at the Foreign Ministry Kanmani says she feels more secure about Transitional Justice mechanisms in the country and hopes that they will help her to find her missing son.
The women’s networks will raise the issue with other government authorities such as the Ministry of National Co-existence, Dialogue and Official Languages, Office Of National Unity and Reconciliation and Ministry of National Integration and Reconciliation.
Under NPC’s Initiating Multi-level Partnership for Conflict Transformation (IMPACT), a series of workshops were conducted highlighting the theme of early warning for members of District Inter Religious Committees (DIRCs) in Badulla, Kurunegala, Polonnaruwa, Ratnapura and Hambantota.
Under NPC’s project Reconciling Inter Ethnic and Inter Religious Difference (RIID) a meeting of the Kandy DIRC identified three issues relevant to reconciliation that needed to be addressed in the district.
The Zonal Task Force for the Western Province, which invited submissions from civil society organisations and members of the public, received submissions from NPC members on August 15. An NPC team obtained a meeting with the Task Force at the Divisional Secretariat Office in Colombo. The idea of a Compassionate Council consisting of religious clergy that was mooted by the government delegation to the UN Human Rights Council in September 2015, as a part of the Truth Commission, was supported by the NPC members.
Through its work at the grass roots level, NPC was able to gather opinions from religious and community leaders, civil society and the public on what sort of transitional justice mechanisms they felt would be best for Sri Lanka to adopt in its quest for reconciliation and a lasting peace.
Sri Lanka submitted a State report and a shadow report to the committee of the Convention on the Elimination on all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The 66th Pre-Sessional Working Group committee (PSWG) meeting for the CEDAW was held in July at the United Nations in Geneva.
The third phase of the Reconciling Inter Religious Differences project (RIID), supported by USAID, was introduced to members of the District Inter Religious Committees (DIRCS) of Batticaloa, Ampara, Kandy and Mannar.
The third phase of Write to Reconcile, inaugurated in 2012 by international award winning author ShyamSelvadurai, commenced with a residential training programme in Anuradhupura.
Two orientation and TJ awareness meetings were held in Jaffna and one each in Ratnapura, Galle and Matara under NPC’s Reconciling Inter Religious and Inter Ethnic Differences (RIID) project Phase II.
Under NPC’s Reconciling Inter Religious and Inter Ethnic Differences (RIID) project Phase II, an orientation meeting was conducted at NPC for its partners and District Inter Religious Committee (DIRC) leaders.
The Citizens Peace Award for 2015 was posthumously granted to the Ven. Maduluwawe Sobitha Thero for his fearless approach to minority rights and inter religious coexistence, and for providing skillful leadership in promoting humane values and democratic governance.
Fifty war affected women from five districts got together in Matara for two days to share experiences, exchange ideas and understand the process of healing under NPC’s project Post Conflict Healing: A Women's Manifesto, funded by FOKUS.
NPC and its partners visited Timor Leste to learn from the experiments of Transitional Justice (TJ) there. Timor Leste, then known as East Timor, was invaded by the Indonesian army who ruled from 1975 to 1999.
An introductory meeting was held in Polonnaruwa for the establishment of a new District Inter Religious Committee (DIRC) under the Initiating Multi-level Partnership Action for Conflict Transformation (IMPACT) project supported by Misereor.
As part of its project Promoting Accountability and Preventing Torture by Strengthening Survivors of Torture in Asia, NPC and its partners Right to Life (R2L), Committee for Investigation of Disappeared (CID) and Human Rights Office Kandy (HRO Kandy) participated in a workshop, regional conference and exchange visit in Indonesia.