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The JVP's advocacy and use of violence was utilised and manipulated shrewdly by this regime and over 30,000 young people in the south were forcibly disappeared during this time. These disappearances, carried out by state agencies, resulted in the collapse of discipline within the law enforcement agencies. Since that time these agencies have degenerated further and lawlessness has become a part of Sri Lankan society.
The call for the JVP to re-evaluate this unfortunate period could usher in a period of internal review by political parties and the state about their own responsibilities for the state of affairs now prevailing in Sri Lanka. Remorse over the misdeeds of one's own political group is currently alien to the country's political culture. Always, the problems have been the creation of others. The question of the parties' contributions to violence has never been raised or pursued within the political groups.
All major political parties in Sri Lanka have murderous pasts; they all have to answer for bloodletting on a large scale. They have all contributed in one way or another to the collapse of the institutions of law and order and democracy. Collectively, everybody admits this. That all political parties have failed the country is well known. However, there have been no internal attempts to honestly evaluate the past, to articulate lessons to be learned and to express regrets over historical mistakes that have contributed to the suffering of the people.
All great movements in recent history have begun with internal criticism that helped develop more enlightened perspectives for the future. The bitter period of Russia under the Stalinist regime gave rise to the famous speech by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956, and the trend of self-criticism that started then continued in the decades to follow. The Russian enlightenment achieved through this discourse continues to date and has lead to various political changes.
The process of self-criticism in Russia demonstrates that this can give rise to new energies and continue to inform the thoughts and actions of a nation for a long time to come. Soviet self-criticism also had an impact on its opponents, who were determined to destroy Soviet Russia through nuclear warfare. A process of thought and action prevented another world war, which would have been far more destructive than the earlier ones. The process of self-criticism, generated initially by a few courageous persons, has become part of the common political process in the country to which different political groups and individuals now contribute.
Another process of internal self-criticism took place in South Africa, followed by the victory of the blacks over forces representing apartheid among the whites. The country's political leadership wisely decided to end a chain of revenge and transform it into a process of self-understanding for both groups about the factors that gave rise to past conflicts.
The bitterness generated by senseless violence by advocates of apartheid could have justified similar actions by those who suffered such violence. However, such "justification" would have been self-destructive for the nation. This nation dealt with its own past in a mature way, through self-evaluation, unleashing the energies of the people to be forgiving and allowing them to build new alliances with their former enemies.
Citizens that for whatever reason take up arms against their fellows and engage in violence are not permanent enemies. The people's common sense and the political sense of their leaders are measured by their ability to disarm the enemy and usher in a process of reconciliation. This requires serious re-evaluation of each other's conduct to demonstrate genuine political will on both sides and reestablish their fellowship as members of a single nation.
There are many more examples from around the world where common sense and popular wisdom have forced political leaders to admit mistakes, and even deliberate villainy, ushering in a period of free speech about the past. Such free discussion saves people from their pretended pasts. If political parties merely engage in trying to defend the indefensible in their past, any political discussion would be hypocritical.
Unfortunately, in Sri Lanka that is what political groups -- including the ruling regime, the opposition United National Party, various Tamil militant groups including the LTTE and the JVP itself -- are engaged in at the moment. Victims of violence are treated by each group as heroes. But in reality, the suffering of the families of hundreds of thousands of people -- be they dead soldiers, members of Tamil militant groups, or ordinary folk -- is due to senseless violence.
A vigorous debate on the political follies of the past is much needed in the country. If this group from the JVP is able to bring that about, they will be ushering in a movement of historical importance. Perhaps only a group from within the JVP could do that, considering the party's origins. Its first members came from the most oppressed sections of society, including those who had suffered from caste oppression, making them more aware of the country's flaws than most people in other parties. They also represent educated people from those oppressed sections of society; therefore they have the capacity to articulate these problems eloquently.
The period of Sri Lankan history ushered in by the Donoughmore Constitution of 1931-1947 has lost much of its meaning due to the pride and arrogance of political leaders who have never made any serious public attempt to examine their own political follies. This new group in the JVP, if it stands by its commitment to press for internal self-evaluation, will make a contribution not just to the party but to the whole nation.
A genuine Peace Secretariat in Sri Lanka would have encouraged a policy of self-evaluation for all political parties, thereby creating the climate to usher in a period of political enlightenment. Alas, we do not have the political insight of persons such as Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu. Sri Lanka's Peace Secretariat is war-mongering; it has contributed nothing to the critical self-evaluation by all segments of the political establishment concerning their responsibility for the climate of violence that prevails in the country. Unfortunately, Sri Lanka's Peace Secretariat contributes to that violence.
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(Basil Fernando is director of the Asian Human Rights Commission based in Hong Kong. He is a Sri Lankan lawyer who has also been a senior U.N. human rights officer in Cambodia. He has published several books and written extensively on human rights issues in Asia. His blog can be read at http://srilanka-lawlessness.com.)
