For all its limitations, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission was instrumental in fostering national reconciliation and ensuring the transition to democracy. The achievement was to influence the international human rights movement in the case of los desaparecidos in Latin America or in Ulster.
Of a lesser impact, although ethically significant, is national repentance, a concept propounded by the French state to atone for its involvement in the slave trade and its complicity in the Shoah. The development of human rights also owes a debt to the ascendancy of the UN International Court of Justice, witness the increasing number of war crimes prosecuted before the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia or the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
The present paper examines these issues in the fictional context of Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost. A human rights forensic anthropologist, Anil Tissera returns to Sri Lanka to investigate extrajudicial executions and the systematic disappearance of individuals during the insurgency. Perceived as an outsider and a betrayer, she needs to tread a fine line with the authorities. Far from being a messenger of peace and restorative justice, Anil’s obsession with the Truth actually triggers more violence and she is forced to abandon her mission.
The novel poses the question— how far does one go to secure peace and reconciliation, or are there times when we must swallow injustice in the name of peace? To what extent can the imposition of Western values and standards of justice undermine national identity and thwart reconstruction?