“Reconstruction and reconciliation require finances and physical structure, but the families of the victims of the conflict first and foremost need their integrity protected. Physical and financial compensation mean little without justice,” wrote Suman Adhikari nearly 11 years ago, during a ceasefire in Nepal’s Maoist insurgency.

The conflict ended later that year, leaving 17,000 dead over a decade, including Adhikari’s father. A teacher and headmaster in Lamjung district, he and his fellow teachers in January 2002 refused Maoist demands to hand over 25 percent of their salaries. Days later, cadres seized him as he was teaching a Grade 10 class, bound his hands and legs, and dragged the man out of the school to a forest, where he was stabbed in the stomach and shot in the head. His body was left tied to a tree.“Many victims have been unable to get on with their lives. They are frustrated and suffer from psychological trauma." --Suman Adhikari

Soon after, Suman returned to the capital Kathmandu, where he began talking to other conflict victims about their own horrible experiences. They met with civil society organisations and political leaders, created an organisation and submitted their demands to political leaders then crafting the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

Today, as chairperson of the Conflict Victims Common Platform, Suman finds himself repeating many of the same requests.

One of the Common Platform’s main demands is that the government provide needs-based compensation to victims. The state has paid most of them Rs 500,000 (4,834 US dollars) as interim relief since the conflict ended but Adhikari says one-off payments can’t replace many of the breadwinners who families lost; without them, many are still struggling to find sufficient work or pay school fees.

“Many victims have been unable to get on with their lives. They are frustrated and suffer from psychological trauma,” he says.

Suman Adhikari, chairperson of Nepal’s Conflict Victims Common Platform, holding a photo of his father. Credit: Marty Logan/IPS

While society moves on, with, for example, the political leader who was prime minister three times during the insurgency taking over as PM again last week from former Maoist supremo Prachanda, victims are being forgotten, Suman says. “They still haven’t had the chance to speak of their pain properly, from the heart.”

A recent report found that victims have diverse demands for ‘truth’. Prepared by the Nepal office of the International Centre for Transitional Justice and local think-tank Martin Chautari from recent interviews with victims, it noted that many people needed closure and an end to their ambiguous losses. “Our people will come home today or tomorrow. We watch the roads,” said one woman in Bardiya, the district that had the most disappearances during the conflict.

Recognition is also a common wish, Aileen Thomson, head of ICTJ Nepal, told IPS. “They feel that the violation happened because of their membership in certain communities … a lot of times violations perpetrated by the State were because of perceived associations with the Maoists, which was really tied to identity and community and where you lived.”

The survivors want society to know that their kin were innocent victims, caught in the crossfire, adds the report.

Just as victims’ demands varied, civil society also had different ideas about what transitional justice should achieve, says Mandira Sharma, co-founder of Advocacy Forum, an NGO that filed numerous court cases for conflict-era crimes. But those theoretical discussions were shelved when it became apparent that political leaders from both sides were hoping to use the process to avoid prosecutions, adds Sharma, who is now doing a PhD in human rights and law.

“We went to see the prime minister at that time, Girija Prasad Koirala, and he was very open and honest. He said ‘Look, I had concerns raised by the military, I had concerns raised by the Maoists, and I have assured them that nothing will happen to them… We have to turn now to development, and we have to forget what happened’.”

Instead, Advocacy Forum and other groups continued to take cases to court. After victims received their interim relief, “You could have closed the chapter forcing victims to be quiet with that, but that would have been temporary: this deep sense of injustice would have remained,” Sharma says.

“In that past that’s what we did (using commissions formed after earlier political milestones like Nepal’s return to democracy in 1990). That hasn’t helped us to heal, that hasn’t helped us to improve the justice system, to correct the sense that certain people are always above the law. And there’s a very deep sense of inequality in our system because of this. We identified this as something we had to fix.”

Today though, transitional justice appears at a near standstill. The government created truth and disappearances commissions in 2014, but the legislation was severely criticised on several fronts. The Supreme Court later struck down a provision that grants amnesty for serious human rights violations.

Human Rights lawyer Raju Chapagain says that while the laws creating the bodies must be amended, the truth commission could be making efforts to advance transitional justice, which would also help to diminish a strong sense of scepticism about the body. “Nothing is preventing them inquiring into human rights violations. Commissions have powers equivalent to courts; they have adequate powers in terms of inquiries,” he says.

By taking action the commission could overcome its “credibility gap,” Chapagain adds, but it has failed to date, in part because it hasn’t engaged with victims.

The truth commission opened its office in Pokhara, west of Kathmandu, this week, one of seven regional centres, but Adhikari says the body still refuses to engage with victims. “The commissions are not good, the appointments are political, the commissioners are new to this: they should at least have a willingness to learn and to collaborate – but they don’t listen to us.”

Worshippers pray inside the Meera Mosque in Katankuddi, in front of the bullet-riddled wall dating back to an attack that killed over 100 people 25 years ago. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
KATANKUDDI, Nov 7 2016 (IPS)

It is a Tuesday afternoon and only a handful of devotees have flocked to the Meera Grand Mosque in Katankuddi, about 300 kms east of the capital Colombo.

As they prostrate in prayer, the wall in front of them is anything but pious. It is pock-marked with hundreds of holes bored into it when attackers opened fire using automatic weapons on Aug. 3, 1990. Suspected Tamil Tiger separatists attacked the Meera Mosque and another smaller prayer center Husainiya Mosque close by. By the time the attackers fled, 103 people were dead.“During the war, we had less people here. Now there are more people, more cattle and more elephants fighting for the same water and the same land.” -- villager Wickrama Rajapaksa

The mosque committee and villagers have kept the bullet-riddled wall as a reminder of the regions bloody past. For over 30 years, Katankuddi was in throes of Sri Lanka’s bloody civil strife. A Muslim enclave surrounded by Tamil villages, Katankuddi suffered terribly. Its population felt besieged and was waiting for the first opportunity to flee. As in most of Sri Lanka’s North and East, where the war left over 100,000 dead, millions were displaced and the region suffered billions of dollars in damages and losses.

But the nightmare ended seven years back, when government won its war with the Tamil Tigers. Since then, towns like Katankuddi have adjusted to peace — and with it, to a whole new set of problems.

For starters, not many people want to leave Katankuddi, but hundreds want to somehow find a home there. It was never a village with much open space to spare. Because of its ethnic composition, Katankuddi was always jam-packed. Now it is bursting at the seams.

In a land area of 3.89 sq km, there are 53,000 residents and a population density of 13,664 per sq km, over 20 times the national average of between 300 to 400. According to M.M. Shafi, the secretary of the Katankuddi Urban Council, in the last five years alone, at least 500 families have returned or relocated to Katankuddi.

“People now don’t want to leave,” he said.

Peace has brought with it a huge, stinking garbage problem. Shafi and other public officials have to find ways to dispose of a daily garbage collection as high as 30,000 metric tonnes. They do have a small compost plant, but it is no match for the daily collection.

During wartime, the Urban Council began dumping the garbage in the lagoon. Nowadays, that dump is a massive man-made island extending 75 metres into the lagoon. The landfill has also provided a playground to a nearby school and with its exceptional growth rate, it can easily provide for more.

“The Muslim nature of this town can not be changed, it something that is very important. But we do have a land problem — a big problem,” said Mohamed Zubair, vice president of the Katankuddi Mosque Federation.

It such a massive problem that land value here is equal to some outlying areas near the capital Colombo. “When the war was on, the demand for land was manageable. Now it is going through the roof,” public official Shafi said.

Children ride bicycles home from school in Welikanda, Sri Lanka, which has seen a large influx of settlers since the end of the war. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Even in poorer areas of the region, land and resources like water have become scarce. In Welikanda, about 70 kms west of Katankuddi, the villages are much more spread out and the green cover is more conspicuous — but so is the poverty.

Public official Harsha Bandara says that even the Welikanda division is facing a serious shortage of water and agricultural land. In the last six months, it has suffered a major dry spell. By end of October, over 35,000 people were reliant on transported water in the division.

“The problem is that since the war’s end, people are not leaving. They will plant crops throughout the year and look for new land as well. On top of that, the rain patterns have changed, so we have a situation here,” said Bandara, who is the divisional secretary for Welikanda.

For villagers like Wickrama Rajapaksa, the drought means double trouble. “Elephants, they keep coming into villages, because dry earth makes the electric fence faulty and they know that. They also know that there are no firearms in the villages since the end of the war, but that where there are humans, there is food and water.”

He said that thousands of cattle from other parts of the country have been relocated to Welikanda and adjoining areas since the end of the war by large dairy companies.

“During the war, we had less people here. Now there are more people, more cattle and more elephants fighting for the same water and the same land.”

The government is drafting a new constitution that it plans to finalise before the end of the year and put to a public vote in 2017. But Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe recently said that the draft will protect the special place accorded to Buddhism in the existing charter, leading to fears that the Tamil minority will continue to be second-class citizens.

“The political history of modern Sri Lanka is one of missed opportunities by the Tamils and broken promises by the Sinhalese,” Mano Ganesan, Minister of National Co-Existence and Official Languages, told the Indian Express this month.

Traditional dancers during celebrations to mark South Sudan's first independence anniversary on Jul. 9, 2012 in Juba. South Sudan’s government is preparing to launch a campaign to begin a healing and reconciliation process here. Credit: Charlton Doki/IPS

By Charlton Doki
JUBA, Jun 3 2013 (IPS)

Susana Apai Wani has lived as a widow for more than two decades since her husband, James Wani, was arrested in 1992 by a policeman who accused him of collaborating with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, which was a rebel political movement at the time.

This was on an evening in May 1992, when South Sudan was still part of Sudan and the southern rebels, the SPLM – now South Sudan’s ruling party – were fighting the Sudanese government for independence. The country’s civil war killed an estimated two million people and lasted for 22 years, from 1983 to 2005. South Sudan eventually became an independent nation on Jul. 9, 2011.

Wani has not seen her husband since his arrest. She was never officially told that he died, but other political detainees who spent time in prison with him, and were later freed, told her that he had been killed. "What has happened is in the past - let’s say: ‘Let’s leave it in the past.’” -- South Sudan’s vice president, Riek Machar

Wani told IPS she has already forgiven the ex-policeman whom she believes killed her husband, but would like to “just speak to him, to ask him why he did that to a fellow South Sudanese?”

Elia Kwaje*, a former child soldier with the SPLM’s army, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), admitted that he committed many atrocities during the civil war.

“One day I raped a young girl… and another time I shot and killed a pregnant woman,” he told IPS.

“I really feel bad about it but it was during the war. We were thinking differently during the war… one day I want to ask for forgiveness but I don’t know if people will understand,” he said.

But Kwaje may soon have the chance. South Sudan’s government is preparing to launch a campaign to begin a healing and reconciliation process here, based on the model of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) established by South Africa following the end of apartheid.

The TRC was set up by the South African government in 1995 to provide a way for its citizens to come to terms with the violence of the apartheid era by giving both perpetrators and survivors of violence a chance to testify. Perpetrators were allowed to apply for immunity from civil and criminal prosecution.

During a week-long conference at the end of the year President Salva Kiir will launch a campaign that will coincide with the commencement of hearings by the country’s Presidential Committee for Peace, Reconciliation and Tolerance. The process is expected to last five to 10 years.

Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul will lead the committee of mainly religious leaders which will hear testimony from both perpetrators and survivors.

However, while the committee will not prosecute wrongdoers for their crimes, they will not be safe from civil prosecution. But in a country where, according to the United Nations Development Programme, 90 percent of its 10 million people survive on less than one dollar a day, this seems unlikely.

“The war has created trauma in all of us. We must come out and talk about people reconciling and stop living in the past. What has happened is in the past – let’s say: ‘Let’s leave it in the past,’” South Sudan’s vice president, Riek Machar, who has been at the forefront of efforts to reconcile the South Sudanese, told IPS.

Last year, he apologised to Jonglei state’s Dinka Bor community for his role in what is commonly referred to as the “Bor massacre”. Machar had been head of the SPLA faction that killed hundreds and possibly thousands of people in 1991 in Bor, Jonglei state. People were killed when Machar and Lam Akol, another key rebel leader, broke away from the SPLA that year. Machar later renamed his faction South Sudan Independence Movement.

In addition to atrocities committed during the civil war, the new country has to deal with cattle raids that ultimately turn into massacres.

More than 1,000 people died in fighting between the Murle and Lou Nuer ethnic groups in Jonglei state in 2011. At least 900 more died in clashes from December 2011 to February 2012. The U.N. says at least 120,000 people have been affected by inter-ethnic violence in Jonglei state.

However, Professor Alfred Lokuji of the faculty of peace and rural development at South Sudan’s University of Juba, told IPS that perpetrators of violence needed to take responsibility for their crimes rather than excuse their behaviour because of the war.

“We cannot have an intelligent discussion about peace and unity if we do not want to admit that there are victims of our actions,” he said.

While welcoming the reconciliation process, civil society activists have warned that it should not be politicised and override justice.

“The ongoing violation of human rights in places like Jonglei state, where there are cattle raids and killings, should not be condoned in the name of reconciliation,” Biel Boutros Biel of the South Sudan Human Rights Society for Advocacy told IPS

Sarah Ajith James, chairperson of the South Sudan Women General Association, an umbrella organisation of women’s groups, told IPS that women were particularly demoralised by the rampant violence in parts of the country. Many remained resentful of the violence they have lived through, she said.

“I have been moving from one state to another educating women about their rights. When we were training the women, we heard a lot of murmuring. But I feel bad because people are bitter, people are frustrated. Some of them are even asking: ‘Why did we vote for independence? It would have been better if we had remained as one country,’” James said.

*Name changed to protect identity.