By Ian Shelton | The Vancouver Sun
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International human rights organizations working in Sri Lanka said that 15 months after the government's defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, disappearances, security force abuses and even ethnic colonization define life in the country's north.
"It's still very battered by conflict, still heavily militarized, very much under the thumb of the Sri Lankan military," said Bob Templer, Asian program director with the International Crisis Group, reached in New York.
The Sri Lankan government has maintained that it is committed to reconciliation and development, announcing last month that the heavily Tamil north would get the largest share of regional development money.
The government's Commission on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation also began meeting this week. The commission is tasked with investigating the final years of the conflict.
However, critics charge it is simply meant to deflect calls for an independent international inquiry into alleged war crimes on both sides.
"The whole commission is eye wash as it is appointed by the president and is made up of his own favourites," said Kusal Perera, a political analyst at the Center for Social Democracy in Colombo.
Templer, who first visited Sri Lanka as a journalist in 1991, said while many in the heavily Tamil north were happy to see the backs of the Tigers, the end of the war has seen the return of policies that helped spark it almost 30 years ago.
The International Crisis Group has repeatedly warned of suspected "Sinhalization" policies aimed at reconfiguring the population in traditionally Tamil areas of eastern Sir Lanka.
Sri Lankan governments going back to the 1950s have supported settlement programs that introduced majority-Sinhalese communities into formerly Tamil areas.
Those programs combined with other pro-Sinhalese policies, like the 1956 "Sinhala Only" language laws, in emphasizing ethnic divides in the country.
Templer said the policies feed distrust today, as they did in the past.
"It's in some ways worse, because you now have such a long history of conflict, and there's been relatively little effort at reconciliation," he said.
The situation will be exacerbated if development planning continues to be centralized in the Colombo government, he added.
"What I think there will be is an increasing accumulation of grievance and despair, which may ultimately lead to a return to violence."
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