We have a country in which 47 members of the existing presidential family hold positions of authority in judicial, corporate, central banking, transportation, and other critical parts of infrastructure. That contributes to the culture of impunity very directly.
We have a country now in which the independence of the judiciary has been dismissed as essentially a joke. The notion that people have a right to access a balanced assessment in open court is no longer deemed to be a reality. We have a country in which, according to a very recent BBC documentary account, we are seeing rapes and torture taking place this year. In fact family members of some of the translators who helped the BBC with that documentary are being threatened in Sri Lanka as we speak.
You have the official government, the armed forces, and the police, and then you have this “thugocracy”, which is operating in ways to intimidate decent people who are trying to get a measure of justice in the process. I would argue that under the RtoP principle—and sadly the Sri Lankans are not signatories to the treaty on the ICC—what needs to be considered, and I would hope the Commonwealth would be among those that would consider this, is a focused program of sanctions so that there is no impunity. When you say that leaders in Sri Lanka are going to have constraints upon their banking activity and that the 47 members of the family can't travel freely around the world, then you begin to get some attention.
Whether that is best done through the United Nations or in other ways or by a coalition of the willing in the region, I defer to your judgment on that. It will be much more profound than mine and much more experienced. I think without that transpiring, there will be very few ways to deal with the culture of impunity that is now, I think, getting in the way of democratic development and genuine reconciliation in that country.