No victory if Sri Lanka cannot win the peace

The correspondent reported India was no longer prepared to accept the Sri Lankan Government's oft-repeated excuse that while it was committed to finding a political settlement it had to be one suited to Sri Lanka as a whole and could not be realised within any set time frame.

After a lengthy period of 'wait and see' following the end of the civil war, the international community is also beginning to run out of patience. India decided to support a United States-sponsored resolution that called for Sri Lanka to implement the recommendations of its own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. More importantly, the resolution raised the possibility of international intervention in the country, although only with the consent of the Government.

The Rajapaksa brothers reportedly reacted with fury at India's move, but in the long run there is very little they can do. India is a member of the troika, along with Spain and Benin, selected by the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) to undertake universal periodic reviews (UPRs) of Sri Lanka's human rights progress since 2009. Inevitably India sees Sri Lanka as a troublesome irritation within its own sphere of influence and has a special interest in pushing the country to satisfy the international community that it is setting its house in order.

There is a considerable amount needing to be done to achieve this. Nepotism, personified by the Rajapaksa fraternal trio at the top of the ruling pyramid, is rife in the country with Ministers sponsoring the election of sons, daughters and other relatives right through the political system down to provincial assembly level.

There are also periodic crackdowns on dissenting media. Just before Menon's visit security forces raided the offices of the online Sri Lanka Mirror and arrested nine journalists and the tea lady (she was quickly released) on the grounds its website was "continuously publishing false and unethical news about celebrities and popular personalities, misleading international and local communities".

One wonders how many magazine and tabloid journalists would be behind bars in Australia if that law was enforced here, but this bizarre and almost comical incident reveals a growing authoritarian trend within Sri Lanka that no longer automatically tolerates critical debate, whatever its nature.

In more recent times representatives of the Sri Lankan Government around the world have begun to warn of attempts to revive the LTTE among the Tamil diaspora, including in Australia. The prospect is horrifying. The Tigers were, after all, a brutal and ruthless organisation that in their final days herded old men, women and children into the firing line in the cynical hope the resulting massacres would prompt the international community to intervene. A return to that kind of fighting is unthinkable.

The Sri Lankan Government won the war; it would be rightly sentenced to universal condemnation if it allowed the peace to slip away.