The worst thing that can happen in Sri Lanka is not a war conducted in compliance with international law. The worst thing that can happen is an all-out violation of those laws. Anyone who doubts this only needs to think back to the late 1980s in the South. All the young men in villages were being rounded up and killed. The JVP was killing families of people in the state security forces while the state security forces killed families of JVP members. Schoolchildren were being slaughtered, and torture and disappearances were rampant. There was an all-pervasive fear of organising to stop all this, or even raising your voice against it, in case you might be the next one to be tortured and killed.

That was not the "ethnic conflict". It was tens of thousands of Sinhalese being killed by Sinhalese: the JVP on one side, the Sri Lankan state on the other, and many innocent people caught in the middle. We must not forget this experience, because it can happen again unless we take immediate steps to prevent it.

If we think back a little further, what was happening in the late 1970s and early 1980s? The Sri Lankan state was behaving in exactly the same way the victims were Tamils. Many Sinhalese people were not aware of what was happening, because it was not reported by the Sinhala press. Others were not bothered, thinking that only Tamils were being killed and Sinhalese were safe. But we know now that they were wrong. Once people in positions of power are allowed to violate human rights with impunity, no one is safe. Democracy cannot survive in such circumstances.

In the mid-1990s, there was an attempt by the PA government to restore democracy and stop the rampant abuse of human rights by the state. To a great extent it was successful, and life returned to normal in the South despite the outbreak of war from time to time and occasional terrorist attacks.

But now the warning signs have started flashing red again. The armed forces have been involved in ugly human rights violations in the north and east, just as they were last time. And instead of punishing the culprits, the government has been covering up for them, just as it did last time. Are we going to let the situation get out of control, as we did last time? We would be foolish indeed to make the same disastrous mistake again! This time, we must stop the situation from getting out of hand before it is too late.

Some people in the government and armed forces seem to think that just because we are in the middle of a war, they can do anything. But this is not true. Even in times of war, certain actions are illegal: for example, targeting or terrorising civilians in any way, rape, torturing and killing prisoners, recruiting children. Political and military leaders who allow or encourage their followers to carry out such activities are characterised as war criminals by international law.

Such war crimes have been committed by Sinhala extremists in the government and state security forces in Trincomalee, Mannar, Muttur and other places. The government claims it is investigating them, but many people are suspicious of these so-called investigations. Supposing a man has killed his neighbour, and his family members say, "Let’s not go to the police, we will investigate this murder ourselves". Will the family of the murdered man, and the other neighbours, trust them to carry out an honest investigation and make an honest report of the results? Aren’t they more likely to say, "You know he’s guilty but don’t want him to be punished, that’s why you don’t want us to go to the police"?

This is exactly how family members of the victims in the north and east, as well as many others in Sri Lanka and abroad, feel about the government’s investigations of human rights violations in the North and East. Members of one arm of the state are guilty of war crimes, and members of that same arm or other arms, all of whom are like family members to the criminals, are supposed to investigate. No wonder there is no faith in these investigations!

Instead, various human rights groups and activistssome who have risked their lives opposing the LTTE—have demanded that a UN-sponsored human rights monitoring mission should come to Sri Lanka to investigate such atrocities and publicise their findings. The government may be resisting this demand because it thinks that its authority will be undermined if it agrees. But the truth is the opposite: its authority will be strengthened.

If an impartial body finds that there are cases where members of the armed forces or their allies have been guilty of human rights violations, and the government punishes them, it will gain legitimacy both within and outside Sri Lanka. On the other hand, if in other cases such a mission says that government forces are innocent, people will accept their verdict because it is seen to be impartial.

War crimes by Sinhala extremists in the government and its security forces not only violate human rights, they also help the Tigers. The LTTE says that Tamils are being oppressed by the state in Sri Lanka, and the only way they can escape from oppression is by having a separate state. Atrocities by Sinhala nationalists can be used to convince Tamils and foreign governments that the Tigers are telling the truth. And so long as that happens, they can never be defeated. However badly they are hammered by the military, they will always come back. There will be more terrorist attacks, and eventually the war will break out again.

The only way to defeat the LTTE and create space for democracy in the north and the east is to convince the majority of Tamils as well as the international community that the safety, security and democratic rights of Tamils are protected in Sri Lanka. This can be done even during the fighting, by ruling out attacks on non-combatants and moving towards democratic devolution. If an impartial international human rights monitoring mission testifies that the government is abiding by international law, that would be a moral victory which would count much more than any military victory.

Such a situation would also give the government the moral authority, if and when negotiations with the LTTE resume, to insist that the Cease-Fire Agreement should be revised to incorporate human rights clauses, and that the LTTE too should be subjected to the same monitoring regime. The fatal flaw in the 2002 CFA is that it has no human rights guarantees. It allowed the LTTE to conscript Tamil children and kill Tamil opponents all along, and it is now allowing government forces to violate human rights as well.