Those Sri Lankans who grew up before 1971 have seen, at least in a limited way, some basic freedoms. None of them were used to midnight knocks on their doors. If they went to a courthouse, they could expect certain treatment that, though imperfect, would be relatively fair. If a policeman arrested them, they could ask why. Prolonged detention without the right of bail was not a frequent experience. Disappearances were hardly ever heard of.
None of this is meant to claim that there was a paradise that has been lost. All that is said is that there was, even in some limited sense, an experience of freedoms.
1971 onwards, up to now – with short intervals from time to time – has been a period in which normal laws have been suspended and emergency regulations have taken their place. The emergency powers themselves expanded to enable security forces and those who act under their direction to do whatever they like, including committing murders and disposing of the bodies, which is what disappearances mean. The emergency regulations were further expanded and the Prevention of Terrorism Act came into being. With that, any kind of action that in an earlier period would have been considered a crime, or even as a scandal, became possible.
For those who have grown up during this long period, emergency laws and the anti-terrorism laws constituted what they know as the normal law of the country. Not only did they experience the operation of these laws, they also were told all the time that these laws are absolutely necessary and that national security depended on them. The words they became familiar with were national security and the thing that has to be sacrificed for the sake of national security was their freedom. Thats the framework that conditioned their rational as well as emotional lives.
Thus, they were forced into a blindness and that blindness was justified as a better way of existence than the assertion of freedoms. The problem now is not about how to undo that past. The problem is how to undo the damage this has done to them all, for their future.
Perhaps a comparison with the training of animals may be useful to this point. It is said that when a wild elephant is caught, it is tamed by being tied in iron manacles and chains. Initially, and for a considerable time, the elephant in captivity will try to struggle against its bondage. In the process, it will learn that all attempts at freedom are very painful and futile. And then, gradually, it will submit to the law of the chains. Later the chains and the cuffs are removed. But the elephant will struggle no more for freedom. If it has offspring, those will grow into the tamed world, in which they will remain the willing slaves of their masters.
Long years of emergency laws and anti-terrorism laws have affected the imagination of all Sri Lankans, particularly of those who have not had the opportunity to see anything different, and we have adapted to these emergency laws. Fear psychosis has become the Sri Lankan heritage. Every month and year spent under the operation of these repressive laws will further destroy their imagination and their inner spirit.
Those leaders who want to have the benefit of a crushed population will want to keep these laws in operation further in. Corruption thrives where fear dominates.
However, throughout the country, no parent want their children to be crippled by this bondage. Children themselves, given the opportunity, would do all that they could to reassert their love of freedom and the desire to live their lives without being victims of fear psychosis.
It is the parents and others who should rise against the continuance of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Failure to do so is a crime against their own children.
To sign the petition to end the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), please go to: http://campaigns.ahrchk.net/repealpta/
