Critical thinking in wartime

After the lengthy period of the Norwegian peace process, which informed commentators have termed no war in preference to peace, the return to outright war in Sri Lanka surprised few. Thousands have been killed since the beginning of 2006. In addition, close to 2000 have been disappeared or abducted, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced. That the term crisis, then, most readily describes the situation in Sri Lanka today would appear almost intuitively apparent to many, and this is now evident in many analyses, especially those concerned with the work of human-rights advocacy. Indeed, faced by the Rajapakse regime's brand of authoritarianism, as well as its attacks on minority communities, its now favoured modus operandi of censorship and intimidation of dissenting opinion, its disregard for constitutional compunction and its belligerent refusal to address domestic and international advocacy on these issues, these analyses have diagnosed the present situation as one of human-rights crisis, and the situation in Sri Lanka more generally as one of overall crisis.

The current human-rights situation is indeed dire. The sequence of political assassination, displacement, massacre and abduction perpetrated by multiple armed actors, whether the security forces, the LTTE or other armed groups, demands scrutiny, condemnation and action, both within Sri Lanka and beyond. There is also an urgent need for continuous work at the level of civil society to highlight, expose and challenge the regime's abuse of power. However these writers suggest that such work must be supplemented by a strategy of critical political engagement.