The National Peace Council (NPC) said that the death sentence imposed on Sri Lankan citizen Sivarasa Anojan in Saudi Arabia and the removal of the Thileepan statue in Jaffna are very different events that carry the risk of turning into grievances that affect entire communities. The NPC urged the government as well as political parties, civil society and religious leaders to ensure that this does not happen.

The text of the statement: “NPC welcomes the government’s efforts in the Anojan case and the appeals for clemency made by political and religious leaders, including Muslim leaders. We encourage Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and Christian leaders to express solidarity together. This would demonstrate that the life of a Sri Lankan citizen is a concern of all Sri Lankans, and that seeking mercy for him is not against any one religion. In particular, political, civil and religious leaders should reject attempts to turn the case into a source of anti-Muslim sentiment or collective blame. It is in this spirit that NPC joins the appeal for clemency for Anojan.

The Thileepan statue raises a different but related peacebuilding concern. Many Tamils attach deep significance to Thileepan, who died on 26 September 1987 after a twelve-day fast to protest the terms of the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord. The statue erected during this year’s commemoration was removed by police on 27 September. The government has raised legal concerns relating to the commemoration of a person associated with the LTTE, which remains a proscribed organisation. But the depth of Tamil anguish cannot be disregarded. For many Tamils, remembrance of Thileepan is connected to grief, loss and historical memory.

NPC notes that the Office for Reparations Act, No. 34 of 2018 provides for policies on memorialisation within its broader reparations framework. The government needs to engage the Office for Reparations and examine whether an appropriate form of memorialisation can be accommodated within the law. The JVP that now leads the NPP Government was itself once proscribed, later entered democratic politics, and now for many years has publicly commemorated its own fallen. The opportunity to remember those who died, while remaining within the law, should not belong to one community alone.

The cases involving Anojan and Thileepan give Sri Lanka an opportunity to demonstrate that it has learned from its past. Peacebuilding is the capacity to address today’s difficult issues in ways that prevent them from becoming tomorrow’s communal divisions. That is the real test of Sri Lanka’s continuing peace.”