Sri Lanka's reconciliation commission ready with report before deadline

The reconciliation commission appointed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to study Sri Lanka's three-decade long war is getting ready to present its final report to the President during the second week of November.



The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) was initially scheduled to hand over its report to the President on November 15th.

"We are making arrangements for it to be presented to the President. Although we have no definite date, it is likely to be presented in the second week of November," LLRC Spokesperson Lakshman Wickremasinghe said.

The official said the decision to publicize the report was the prerogative of the President.

"Our mandate limits us to handing it over to the President. Making it public or otherwise will be entirely in the President's hands," Wickremasinghe said.

The eight-member Commission, appointed by the President in May 2010 to probe the events during the last seven years of war, commenced its sessions last year and has recorded thousands of oral and written submissions from a cross section of society on the period between 2002 and 2009.

The LLRC held its first sittings on August 11, 2010. In November 2010, the President extended its mandate till May 15, 2011.

According to the spokesman the Commission, chaired by the former Attorney General Chitta Ranjan de Silva, has received over 1,000 oral submissions and over 5,000 written submissions.

The government appointed an Inter-Agency Committee headed by the Attorney General of Sri Lanka to facilitate the implementation of the recommendations made by the LLRC during its inquiry.

The LLRC had made recommendations to be taken with regard to detention of suspects, land issues, law and order, administrative and language issues and the socio-economic and livelihood issues.

International human rights organizations Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch have questioned the credibility of the Commission saying that Sri Lankan government's inquiry into the country's civil war is fundamentally flawed and provides no accountability for atrocities.

The LLRC has invited the AI and the other human right watchdogs, the International Crisis Group (ICG) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) to come before it but they turned down the invitation.