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Opposition UNP Member of Parliament Lakshman Seneviratne is one of the latest public figures to report that he has received a death threat. A few weeks ago he alleged in Parliament that some of those behind the wave of abductions and assassinations in the country were in high places within the government. He went so far as to name Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, younger brother of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, as one of those responsible for the present state of affairs.
The chairman of the Presidential Commission to Probe Abductions, Disappearances and Killings, Mahanama Tillakaratne, has recently stated that 1,713 disappearances were reported in the country from Jan. 1, 2006 to Feb. 25, 2007, with 1,002 persons subsequently reappearing. The majority of killings and abductions were reported in the Eastern Province. The international ceasefire monitors of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission recently reported that in June 2007, in one week alone, there were 34 abductions in the east of the country.
Throughout the prevailing period of terror, the government's consistent position has been that it is innocent of any wrongdoing, is being unfairly accused, and that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elaam and criminal gangs cannot be totally restrained by the government's security forces in the present climate of war and terrorism. LTTE operatives have recently been caught with 1,000-kilogram truckloads of bombs for explosion outside the north and east theaters of war. It is evident that turning over a new leaf in favor of the sanctity of life is still far from the mind of the LTTE.
On the other hand, it is shocking that the defense secretary of the country, who is also the president's brother, could even be named as being part of a scheme that has terrorized the Tamil people who have been its primary victims. Such accusations made by responsible spokespersons of the largest opposition party highlight the crisis and the breakdown of confidence in governance in the country. More recently, malevolent forces have spread their tentacles toward Muslim and Tamil businesspersons, from whom vast sums of money have been extracted. Some estimates have put the figure at Rs 6 billion (US$50 million).
The question has been whether civil society groups are having an impact on the decision-making processes of the chief protagonists, who appear to have the sole power to govern either well or badly. It is notable that the crisis over the government's eviction of Tamils from Colombo on the grounds of national security was brought to an end when the Center for Policy Alternatives, a civic group, filed action in the Supreme Court and obtained a court order to stop the evictions. This incident showed the importance of institutions working together to uphold the human rights of the people.
The power of the judiciary, as the third branch of government, was demonstrated to great effect when the Supreme Court put a halt to the forcible eviction of Tamil people from Colombo. Until the Supreme Court gave its verdict, the eviction of 370 Tamil residents overnight from their lodges and rented accommodations seemed a foregone conclusion. However, this great power only came into operation because of the civil society intervention.
Another example of civil society working together with national institutions would be the seminar on the issue of arrest and detention, and the protection of human rights organized by PAFFREL, the Peoples Action for Free and Fair Elections. The seminar saw the head of the national police force, Victor Perera, and other senior police officers from the Colombo district participating and speaking with every appearance of sincerity about the dilemmas and challenges they were faced with in the course of their duties. The thrust of the police chief's speech was that police officers had to counter those who broke the law and violated human rights without behaving in the same manner.
Recently the police chief was virtually made the scapegoat in the fiasco where the government sought to evict Tamil lodgers from Colombo. However, the media published leaked internal government documents that showed the decision had been taken at a meeting attended by Defense Ministry officials at the highest levels. This incident, where political appointees presided over illegal decisions, and regular officers of state were compelled to carry them out, demonstrates the need to protect the autonomy and integrity of important national institutions, such as the police.
The challenge for civil society is to ensure that national institutions are protected from over-politicization and being made subservient to political pressures, which are illegal and harmful to the national interest. Educating personnel in these national institutions by merely conducting seminars is not sufficient. Nor are pickets at Lipton's Circus in upper- class Colombo -- as is the style of urban-based peace and human rights groups -- likely to do the trick. These are useful in creating public opinion, but do not enforce change.
The better hope for a strengthened set of national institutions that could stand up for principles of good governance and protect human rights would be for civil society to seek to revive the now defunct 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which required high-level appointments to important positions of state to be by political consensus of the government and opposition. As in the case of the eviction of Tamil lodgers, the obvious next step would be for civil society to take this matter before the judiciary to enforce the law.
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(Dr. Jehan Perera is executive director of the National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, an independent advocacy organization. He studied economics at Harvard College and holds a doctorate in law from Harvard Law School. © Copyright Jehan Perera.)
