The School of Public Policy cordially invites you to the inaugural
George Soros Visiting Chair Lecture
A conversation with Yasmin Sooka
George Soros Visiting Chair
Executive Director, Foundation for Human Rights in South Africa
Introduction by CEU President and Rector John Shattuck
Moderated by Bob Templer, Professor of Practice, SPP
Better known for its palm fringed holiday beaches, cricket, and tea plantations, Sri Lanka is now a test case for the world's willingness to address mass atrocities. Hundreds of thousands of minority Tamil civilians dug bunkers on those white sand beaches in 2009 as they came under incessant fire from the government's heavy weapons and supersonic jets. As many as 70,000 civilians may have been killed in five months, and the world hardly blinked.
In 2009 the guns went silent but the torture, gang rape, and executions in detention continue to this day – the survivors are threatened not to talk about what they endured. In 2011 a panel established by the UN Secretary General advised that the allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity were credible. A year later the UN's own internal inquiry into its conduct in Sri Lanka during the final phase of the civil war found there were grave failings and that the lessons of Rwanda had not been learned. Finally in 2014 the Human Rights Council mandated the UN to investigate Sri Lanka. While that investigation was ongoing the government in Sri Lanka changed.
The investigation by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights contained harrowing testimony from survivors of war, sexual violence, and torture at the hands of government forces and accounts of child recruitment by the LTTE. The High Commissioner spoke of system crimes that require far reaching structural changes in Sri Lanka to tackle decades of impunity. Under intense international pressure, the new government in Sri Lanka has promised to set up a truth commission and a special court. But the reprisals, abductions, and torture continue even under the new government, making it hard for witnesses to imagine testifying against the security forces.
This lecture will focus on the violations perpetrated against civilians during the final phase of the conflict as well as the post-war period, taking into account the current government's discourse on asymmetrical conflict. Transitional Justice provides Sri Lanka with an opportunity to focus on truth seeking, criminal justice and accountability, reparations for victims, and answers for the families of the Disappeared. But rebuilding trust in Sri Lanka is going to be a huge challenge; what must the government do to convince the victims that it is credible?
Yasmin Sooka, the inaugural George Soros Visiting Chair, is a leading human rights lawyer and the Executive Director of the Foundation for Human Rights in South Africa. An international expert in the field of Transitional Justice, Sooka served on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and chaired the committee responsible for the final report from 2001-03. Sooka has been part of many advisory missions on Transitional Justice for the United Nations and has also assisted many governments in setting up transitional bodies such as Truth Commissions and has advised on reparation programs. At SPP Yasmin Sooka teaches a course on "Transitional Justice" in the Fall Term 2015.