An incident which happened this week was shocking confirmation of the fears repeatedly expressed by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) about threats to the legal system of Sri Lanka. A special police unit, acting on orders from above, recorded statements from three representatives of two well-known and reputable human rights organizations, the Law and Society Trust (LST) and Right to Life. The staff members were questioned regarding a pamphlet published on the 10th December 2007 on the occasion of the International Human Rights Day. This pamphlet, which mentioned various human rights problems in the country, also mentioned the forced disappearances that have been taking place during the recent decades. The accusation made by the police was that the statement, which called for accountability of the police and armed forces and for the ending of impunity, amounted to attempts at demoralising the armed forces. The purpose of recording the statements was to submit them to the Attorney General for the purpose of prosecuting the authors of this pamphlet. In fact, the pamphlet was written on behalf of 27 Sri Lankan human rights organisations who agreed on the contents prior to publication.
The phrase acts demoralising the armed forces is being used frequently now in Sri Lanka. Any act of criticism or protest is being portrayed as an act aimed at demoralising the armed forces. Articles written by defense analysts were also characterized as acts aimed at demoralising the armed forces and a notice to that effect was published in the website of the Ministry of Defense. Any talk of a strike, for example, against rising food prices or fuel prices is characterised as a similar activity. Any and every form of complaint by the citizens given expression to in the media or civil society organizations is deemed to be motivated by the same aim. From noon to night, propaganda agents and organs of the state repeat this refrain. Now even the discussion on disappearances that has been a theme in the political discourse in Sri Lanka for over three decades, has been brought under attack on the basis that it might demoralise the armed forces.
Since the late 80’s, protests against disappearances have remained a major theme in Sri Lankan politics and elections have occasionally been fought on this issue. This is quite natural as Sri Lanka is among the countries which have had highest numbers of forced disappearances. The present Executive President of Sri Lanka was one of the most prominent campaigners against disappearances in the past. The Mother’s Front of Sri Lanka against disappearances received international attention in the past. A citizen standing up against disappearances was considered a citizen with a conscience. There arose also critical and creative literature relating to disappearances in all the languages in Sri Lanka. All the governments in the recent past have made pledges to the United Nations and to the international community to take steps to stop forced disappearances and to prosecute the perpetrators of such disappearances. At that time none of these activities were seen to be threatening the morale of the armed forces. In fact, such attempts to eliminate forced disappearances were perceived as the only way to build discipline in the armed forces and the police.
Now there is a new theme: preventing demoralisation of the armed forces, and it has been made the central political theme in the country. The attempt to prosecute the representatives of two well known human rights organisations over a pamphlet, only 500 copies of which were printed seven months ago, and which contained a theme which expressed nothing new, can only be seen as a part of this larger scheme. The sheer absence of any form of authenticity of the accusation does not seem to matter. What appears to be the purpose of this exercise is to make an example of these two organizations as an expression of determination to punish anyone who talks about forced disappearances. Sadly, it is quite normal to use this tactic of punishing some persons in order to teach everyone else a lesson and to create a chilling effect in the society.
When a society respects the rule of law, the crimes for which people can be punished are well defined and well publicised. That a person can be punished only after being proven guilty for the commission of a crime is one of the most elementary principles of criminal justice in a society based on rule of law. Making false accusations, conducting arbitrary investigations followed by baseless prosecutions is a sure sign of the abandonment of the basic notions of criminal justice.
However, this type of prosecution has taken place in Sri Lanka on numerous occasions. The present Executive President was made the chief accused and was charged with several of his political colleagues by a former government that accused them of trying to overthrow the government. There was no basis at all for such an accusation, however, the accused were brought before a high court and charged. After keeping the case pending for some time the prosecution was withdrawn because by then, the political aim of the prosecution had already been achieved. Thus the Attorney General’s department, which performs the role of prosecutor within the criminal justice system of Sri Lanka, conducted prosecutions without any basis in law. Therefore the possibility of this happening again cannot be dismissed lightly.
The absurd manner in which the law is manipulated today indicates the type of noonday darkness that is spreading across the country. Trifling with the law causes enormous damage to the rule of law system in a country and the psyche of the people. Once a legal system is pushed over a precipice in this manner it is not easy for such a system to recover. The proposed prosecution of the representatives from two human rights organizations is an indication of the further spread of this cancer.
In previous statements of the AHRC, for over a decade now, we have repeated this theme of the exceptional collapse of rule of law in Sri Lanka. If Sri Lankan society and the global community do not intervene to stop the misuse of the law for political purposes the slogan of trying to protect the armed forces from demoralisation may become the noose on which the country’s legal civilisation may suffer its demise.
