Dear Editor – Like senior lawyer, Gabriel Suri (Issue No. 6071), I too am not sure about the DCC Government’s explanation that the recent $3M pay out to ex-combatants was for their rehabilitation (OPMC Press).
Rehabilitation and reintegration are such big words and $3M is big taxpayers’ money engulfed into oblivion, so it seems.
How many of them have been diagnosed and treated for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by Health authorities after the tension? That is what allied forces soldiers are rehabilitated for after returning from war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan.
All I see around me are ex-militants who are now thriving businessmen, MPs, MPAs, church and community leaders.
They have reintegrated well into society, thus rendering the $3M pay out explanation by the DCCG a total hoax.
If it was based on the TPA, that document was not even worth the paper it was printed on in my view.
Some may even contend that the TPA or parts of it are unconstitutional but that is for another debate.
Case on point. I was one of those who defended ex-combatants from both sides, rounded up by RAMSI after the tension.
The case loads were overwhelming so they had makeshift courtrooms right in the Rove prison corridors.
When our legal teams made preliminary submissions on the TPA Amnesty and PMC Amnesty Certificates it only proved to be a futile exercise.
The question that comes to mind is, why did the PM and DCCG see it necessary to rekindle the TPA some 15 years on, when so many reconciliations and tears of remorse and forgiveness have already been shed?
Geoff Ford Samuel
Tanuli
