Fortunately, Minister Weerawansa’s fate was unlike that of Bobby Sands in Northern Ireland who was elected an MP.  Instead of attending the British Parliament which he was entitled to do and enjoying the perquisites of high office, he fasted for a hundred days till he died to protest against British rule.  When it became evident that the UN Secretary General was not going to disband his advisory panel at the behest of the Minister, President Mahinda Rajapaksa himself knelt on the platform on which the Minister lay and offered him a glass of water, which was taken.  President Rajapaksa’s appearance on Friday at the site of the Minister’s fast, and the offer of a glass of water, was a facing saving way for him to come out of his predicament.
 
In a similar manner it is now within President Rajapaksa’s capacity to provide UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with a face saving way that he too could end his controversial human rights initiative in Sri Lanka.  This could happen if the Sri Lankan government would itself investigate what happened in the past in a credible manner, and also takes concrete steps to address the roots of the ethnic conflict that gave rise to the war through political reforms.  Both these would, of course, require a considerable shift in attitude on the part of the government that has been acting as if the past can be blithely wiped out and forgotten and the present system of governance is the best there is.
 
 
ENABLING ENVIRONMENT
 
At the present time it needs to be recognized that the issue of the UN advisory panel on human rights has provided more fuel to the campaign of nationalist sections of the polity who reject the notion of political reform to do justice by the ethnic minorities.  It is therefore also likely that the UN Secretary General now realizes better than he did before how his notion of promoting accountability and reconciliation in Sri Lanka so soon after the end of the war, and when the wounds are still fresh, has further dimmed these prospects. The issue of inconsistent application of standards between big and small countries has also come to the fore.
 
The perception that the Western countries in particular have turned hostile to Sri Lanka, or at least to its government, has been used by both the government and nationalist sections of the polity to persuade the general public to be willing to make sacrifices for the country.  During the period of the war the government was able to induce the people to tolerate high death rates on the military battlefield and high rates of inflation in order to achieve military victory over the LTTE.  In the post-war period when the LTTE is no more a threat, the attention of people has been diverted to those actions of the international community which are aimed at pressuring the government to go in a direction it is not prepared to go.
 
It is on this ground of inconsistent and unfair targeting of Sri Lanka that the government has been able to mobilize the sentiments of the general population against the UN and international human rights organizations.  Even that considerable section of the population who would believe that the government made a big mistake in permitting the incidents at the UN office complex would hold the view that Sri Lanka’s leaders are being unfairly singled out for punitive action by the Western countries and now by the UN itself.  If the UN Secretary General is primarily motivated by the desire to bring a genuine accounting for the past and reconciliation based on it, he will be receptive to any positive initiatives by the Sri Lankan government in that direction.
 
An improvement in the human rights condition of a country can best come about when the majority of people and the government of a country are able to deal with those issues themselves.  Peace in a situation of conflict can only come about through negotiations when the parties to the conflict are prepared for it and want it, as in the case of the Northern Ireland peace accord.  The same holds true for human rights.  There has to be internal agreement and willingness of the people of the country, and their government, to accept the applicability of international human rights principles in governance.  To the extent that the government can provide an enabling environment for the protection and upholding of international human rights, the UN and the international community will have no need to keep on intervening in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs.