Death threats to lawyers and the public (Sri Lanka) – a pamphlet relating to a letter of threats sent to lawyers by a group calling itself Mahason Balakaya: the battalion of the Ghost of death
[Introduction]
Lawyers are a very much threatened species in Sri Lanka. The period following the repression of the rebellion of 1071 has seriously threatened the very foundation of the rule of law and consequently the role of the lawyer. The constitutions of 1972 and 1978 fundamentally challenged the separation of power doctrine and its actual practice. The constitutional diminishment of the actual role of the judiciary has also had a tremendously adverse affect on the legal profession. Added to that the ever-enlarging space of the emergency laws, national security laws and anti terrorism laws has squeezed the space available to the practice of an independent legal profession.
What is even more important than the limitations of the legal ethos are the political and social developments within the country in which violence has become a normal way of life. Threats to every aspect of the citizen’s lives increased, the police lost the capacity to enforce the law and as a result a situation of lawlessness spread throughout the country. In the north and the east a prolonged period of internal conflict virtually destroyed all space for normal living within those areas. In the country as a whole corruption spread as never before. All these and other factors have undermined the process of the settlement of disputes through the court system which is what gives the grounds for the existence of the legal profession.
Published in November 2008 by the Asian Human Rights Commission; 76 pages; Language: English; ISBN 978-962-8314-39-3; PID: AHRC-PUB-019-2008
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