A/HRC/45/45/Add.1 VIII. Conclusions and recommendations 77. Despite having been presented with important opportunities for genuine change and reform starting in early 2015, the Sri Lankan authorities have failed to adopt and implement a comprehensive transitional justice policy with the four constitutive elements of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence. Such a policy, if designed and implemented in an inclusive and participatory way, has the potential to provide recognition to victims, strengthen the rule of law, foster civic trust and promote social integration and reconciliation. The Government, entangled in internecine disputes, has squandered these opportunities for redress and prevention, thus depriving not only victims but all of Sri Lankan society. 78. In the aftermath of large-scale violations and abuses, when trust among citizens and between citizens and State institutions has been shattered, it would have been opportune to adopt policies meant to identify the conditions that led to the violations, reliably attribute responsibility, offer diverse forms of reparation to victims so as to enable them to resume their lives with an increased sense of well-being, reform institutions to prevent future violations and help to lay the foundations for increased trust. Not only has this not been achieved but, with the presidential elections looming, the openings for doing so are fast closing. 79. While understanding of transitional justice has increased in society and parts of the Government, such understanding has not been internalized sufficiently. Transitional justice can achieve its potential only if it is not used as an instrument of “turn-taking”, to benefit one community over others or to further partisan political interests. 80. The promotion and enforcement of human rights is at the core of transitional justice. That means that the rights of all, independently of all other considerations, including ethnicity, religion, politics and gender, must be strengthened. Having misunderstood these foundational principles, Sri Lanka, which could have been an example for the world about how sustainable peace ought to be achieved, appears to have missed a historic opportunity. 81. While the events that took place towards the end of the conflict merit special attention, the history of violations in Sri Lanka is longer and more “inclusive”: this is a country in which every community has victims. In addition to the Tamil who suffered violations during the conflict, among the victims who are still awaiting redress are those who suffered during the insurrections mentioned above, the many victims of terrorist attacks, the family members of the over 600 police officers gruesomely murdered in 1990 and the Muslim population forced out of Jaffna in 1990. 82. The debate continues in the newspapers concerning the number of victims at the end of the conflict, in other words whether there were 40,000 or “merely” 8,000. Transitional justice processes can help in settling these interminable debates, which are precisely of the sort that manifest and produce low levels of trust and that lend themselves easily to political manipulation. 83. Transitional justice processes are nothing like witch hunts, they do not involve massive purges and do not trade on charges of collective responsibility or guilt by association. The Special Rapporteur notes with concern the use of rhetoric such as “war heroes will never be brought to trial”. This misrepresents the target of transitional justice accountability measures by suggesting that it has a generally anti-security agenda, and overlooks the fact that no one who has committed violations of human rights law or of the laws of war deserves to be called a hero. Sifting through cases in which force has been used legitimately and lawfully and cases in which it has not, under conditions in which all relevant due process guarantees are meticulously adhered to and in which not only the rights of victims but also the rights of suspects and the accused are protected, is at the heart of transitional justice accountability measures. 84. The Special Rapporteur adds that the promise made not to try “war heroes” is a legally unenforceable political statement and therefore cannot offer any real security. Implementing such a promise would ultimately require, domestically, a violation of the principle of the separation of powers, among other things, and, internationally, offers absolutely no warranty. As experiences in other countries have shown, accountability will be sought either at home or abroad. This is an additional reason for the Government of Sri 15