Font size: 
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 and Right to Life. The staff members were questioned regarding a pamphlet published on Dec. 10, 2007, on the occasion of International Human Rights Day. This pamphlet, which mentioned various human rights problems in the country, also mentioned the forced disappearances that have taken place in recent decades.
In their statements, the representatives called for accountability of the police and armed forces and for an end to impunity when human rights are abused. The police intent in recording the statements was to submit them to the Attorney General for the purpose of prosecuting the authors of the pamphlet. In fact, the pamphlet was written on behalf of 27 Sri Lankan human rights organizations that had agreed on the contents prior to publication.
The phrase “acts demoralizing 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 demoralizing the armed forces – even articles written by defense analysts, as a notice on the Web site of the Ministry of Defense made clear.
Any talk of a strike against rising food prices or fuel prices, for example, is characterized as a similar activity. Any and every form of complaint expressed by citizens to the media or civil society groups 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 come under attack on the basis that it might demoralize the armed forces.
Since the late 1980'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 with the 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 also arose critical and creative literature relating to disappearances in all the languages of 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 those who perpetrate them. All this 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 “preventing demoralization of the armed forces” is the new central political theme in the country. The attempt to prosecute representatives of two well-known human rights organizations over a pamphlet, only 500 copies of which were printed seven months ago and which expressed nothing new, can only be seen as part of a larger scheme.
The fact that the accusation lacks authenticity does not seem to matter. The purpose of this exercise appears to be 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 society.
When a society respects the rule of law, the crimes for which people can be punished are well defined and well publicized. That a person can be punished only after being proven guilty of committing a crime is an elementary principle of criminal justice. Making false accusations and conducting arbitrary investigations followed by baseless prosecutions is a sure sign that basic notions of criminal justice have been abandoned.
However, this type of “prosecution” has taken place in Sri Lanka on numerous occasions. The present executive president was once the chief accused, charged with several of his political colleagues by a former government of trying to overthrow the government. There was no basis at all for such an accusation, yet 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, has conducted prosecutions without any basis in law. 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 the system to recover. The proposed prosecution of the representatives of two human rights organizations is an indication of the spread of this cancer.
This author’s previous columns 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 demoralization may become the noose on which the country's legal civilization may suffer its demise.
--
(Basil Fernando is director of the Asian Human Rights Commission based in Hong Kong. He is a Sri Lankan lawyer who has also been a senior U.N. human rights officer in Cambodia. He has published several books and written extensively on human rights issues in Asia. His blog can be read at http://srilanka-lawlessness.com.)
