AFP/Colombo

A Sri Lankan delegation headed to South Africa yesterday to study the work of a post-apartheid truth commission as pressure mounts on Colombo to address allegations of war crimes against
ethnic Tamils.

Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva was leading a five-member team which would see what lessons it could learn from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up after the demise of the white supremacist regime in South Africa two decades ago, his spokesman said.

“The delegation will spend two days studying the TRC and also keep the South African President (Jacob Zuma) informed about the reconstruction work we have done in the northeast,”  Sri Lankan external affairs ministry spokesman
Viraj Abeysinghe said.

South African President Zuma in his 6th State of the Nation Address last week announced that Cyril Ramphosa, vice president of the ANC, had been appointed as South Africa’s special envoy to Sri Lanka to assist in initiatives for bringing about peace and reconciliation, considering his expertise in conflict resolution and negotiations and that country’s experience in this regard.

“While the context of the conflicts in Sri Lanka and South Africa has several differences, the sharing of experiences and insights is clearly of value,” the Sri Lankan external affairs
ministry said.

“The forthcoming high-level discussions underscore the close and collaborative relationship between the two governments, particularly on the issue of reconciliation. It is in this setting that the government of Sri Lanka has been studying the South African experience in reconciliation, and adapting it to local conditions,” it added.

The visit comes amid a push by UN human rights chief Navi Pillay for an international investigation into claims that Sri Lankan troops killed up to 40,000 civilians in the final stages of a war with separatist rebels.

Most of the fighting during the 37-year conflict with Tamil Tiger rebels was concentrated in the northeast, large parts of which were reduced to rubble by the end of the war in 2009.

Pillay is due to formally ask the UN Human Rights Council next month for the probe while noting that Sri Lanka has failed to honour promises to investigate credible allegations, according to a leaked report published in Colombo at the weekend.

The South African TRC worked on the basis of restorative justice rather than punishing those guilty of gross human rights abuses, a model that Sri Lanka has expressed interest in replicating.

Last week, Russia rejected calls by Western nations for an international probe into alleged war crimes in the final phase of the 26-year Sri Lankan civil war.

Visiting Colombo amid concern about the country’s human rights record, a senior Russian diplomat said attempts to impose an international inquiry into wartime atrocities would be counterproductive.

“Nothing good would come out from an international investigation,” Anatoly Viktorov, the foreign ministry’s director for humanitarian corporation and human rights, told reporters in Colombo at the end of a
two-day visit last week.

“In many occasions, it is extremely difficult to establish who is responsible for what in internal armed conflicts,” he said, adding that Moscow thought seeking such UN resolutions would amount to interference in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs.

Earlier this week, China said it would also oppose what it called interference in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs under the pretext of concern for human rights.

Russia, which is a member of the Human Rights Council until 2016, has backed Sri Lanka against the past two US-backed resolutions to punish military personnel for the atrocities.

At a Commonwealth summit hosted by Colombo in November, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron warned that he would push for an international inquiry into Sri Lanka’s rights record unless President Mahindra Rajapakse’s regime ensured accountability by March 2014.

Rajapakse has already rejected Cameron’s deadline and insists that the army did not kill any civilians while routing the rebels, who had been fighting for an independent homeland for the ethnic minority Tamils.

The army is mainly made up of troops from the Sinhalese ethnic majority.

The United States, which had censured Sri Lanka twice at the UN Human Rights Council in the past two years, has said it will move another resolution next month.

The UN estimates that the Tamil conflict cost at least 100,000 lives between 1972 and 2009.