SL to study SAfrican truth commission model for reconciliation

Sri Lanka today said it would study South Africa's post-apartheid truth commission model for achieving reconciliation with the Tamil minority, ahead of a resolution in the UN rights body over alleged war crimes during the country's military campaign against LTTE rebels.
A high-level delegation today left for South Africa to study the South African model of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and discuss with that nation's government and ruling party African National Congress on the issue, the Foreign Ministry said here.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa's special envoy and minister Nimal Siripala de Silva along with five other officials will study the model to understand the "manner in which that exercise can help in Sri Lanka's own reconciliation process, following the defeat of terrorism".

The US plans to move a resolution against Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council in March. The new resolution at the UNHRC will build on two others passed in 2012 and 2013. The previous resolutions, backed by India, sought commitments from Sri Lanka on reconciliation and rights accountability.
Sri Lanka fears that the new resolution may call for an independent international probe into the alleged war crimes during the final phase of the military battle with the LTTE in 2009. The LTTE was vanquished by the military in 2009 after nearly three decades long ethnic war.
South Africa established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the 1990s after it abolished apartheid. The commission allowed rights offenders of all races to admit their crimes publicly in return for lenient treatment.

The US is also angry over the slow implementation of the recommendations of Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), which was set up by Sri Lanka. The LLRC appointed in 2010 was meant to learn lessons from the ethnic conflict to prevent a repetition.