FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AHRC-STM-041-2008
February 19, 2008
A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission
SRI LANKA: Lessons to be learned from Pakistan’s secular forces
The authoritarianism of general Musharraf, who later became President Musharraf, backed by the worlds most powerful superpower the United States, has found itself being severely bashed by the Pakistani judiciary lead by the chief justice Choudhry and many senior judges and also by an electorate that despite of all draconian limitations imposed on them have decisively determined the outcome of yesterdays (February 18) general election. The dictator has been humiliatingly defeated and the credit goes to the secular forces of Pakistan.
In Sri Lanka forces that represent secularism have not been able to deal any significant blow to the system of authoritarianism that has been established within the country since the 1978 constitution imposed a system of complete executive control thereby undermining the basic separation of powers, checks and balances and a government that is accountable to the people. The countrys judiciary did not produce a single personality that would risk his career and even face detention and imprisonment for the defense of the independence of the judiciary, the rule of law and democracy within the country as has been seen in Pakistan where many risked their careers and several ended up in jails, under house arrest and even suffered torture. A cowardly judiciary, even by a majority judgement approved the referendum of 1982 which granted the wish of the then almighty President, J.R. Jayewardene to have an extension of six years for the parliament without an election. Even against this most absurd move the countrys judiciary and those who represented the countrys secular orientation was unable to resist.
The character of a modern nation is tested by its capacity to resist the forces that try to destroy the foundations of democracy, rule of law and human rights. In Sri Lanka there was not much resistance when everything that was associated with a modern state was taken back and an utterly feudalistic absolute power concept was introduced to the country with unlimited possibilities of the abuse of power and corruption. Beginning from the first executive president, who abused his power to acquire for himself some prime coconut lands, up to the present, those in power enjoy the right for absolute corruption and the complete absence of accountability. Even a minor attempt to counteract this process, such as the 17th Amendment to the Constitution has been abandoned and scorned.
A question that naturally arises is as to how the people of Pakistan and a large section of their judiciary and lawyers have acquired this power of resistance that Sri Lanka has pathetically demonstrated as lacking. At one time Sri Lankans boasted of themselves as the most developed part, not only of south Asian but also of the rest of Asia. However, now Sri Lankans have allowed their rulers to take away from them every important aspect of a modern state that found expression in the founding document of independent Sri Lanka which is the Constitution. What is found in the country today is a collapsed consciousness accompanied with a collapse of all basic public institutions.
As Patrick Lawrence has noted:
It is this collapsed consciousness that accounts for one of the strangest characteristics of the Sri Lankan people. Amid all the wreckage, amid all the murders and disappearances and abuse, this macabre silence prevails. No atrocity seems to stir them. If anything, the greater the atrocity the deeper the silence. Only the few still know the importance of raising their voices. And among these, still fewer have devised ways of doing so. A friend in Colombo once described Sri Lanka by saying simply, “ours, an ugly country.” He meant the brutality, the bloodshed, the corruption, and so on. One must consider whether it is not the silence of the living that is most truly unattractive.
Absent its institutions, absent its voices, Sri Lanka is rendered incapable of resolving any of its conflicts and difficulties and faces, instead, the prospect of disintegration, for in reality there is no working entity called “Sri Lanka.” Raymond Aron, the French philosopher and social critic, once wrote that France during the radical polarizations of the 1930s no longer existed except through the hatreds French people bore one another. There must have been many fine, well-intentioned French people alive at that time, just as there are many such Sri Lankans living now. But we learn from Aron just how a nation can destroy itself nonetheless: It is first destroyed in peoples minds.
It is perhaps time for Sri Lankans to open their eyes and to learn a few lessons from their neighbours in Pakistan.
