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The Bar Association later called for a general meeting after a grenade attack on the residence of an attorney engaged in a legal practice related to anti-graft and torture cases. The general assembly adopted a lengthy resolution condemning the incident as an attack on the legal profession and all its members and demanding an honest and impartial investigation.
The Bar Council at a meeting on Nov. 22 unanimously adopted a resolution, proposed by the president of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, W. Dayaratne, condemning the treatment of attorney D.W.C. Mohotti at the Bambalapitiya police station last month. Mohotti was subject to abuse, humiliation and ridicule at the hands of Upul Seneviratne, the officer-in-charge of the station, when he tried to surrender a suspect to the police.
Saying the headquarters inspector’s behavior constituted “degrading treatment” toward a member of the legal profession, the Bar Association called on the inspector general of police and the National Police Commission to take disciplinary measures against Seneviratne.
In addition to this kind of treatment, Sri Lankan lawyers also face death threats if they appear for alleged terrorist suspects. The Bar Association has not yet taken up this issue and expressed its position on such threats.
Despite the resolutions and protests by the Bar Association, lawyers, civil society organizations and international organizations, the police authorities have not taken any action so far on any of the incidents these groups have brought to their attention.
Within the framework for the administration of justice in Sri Lanka, the position of a lawyer has diminished while that of a policeman has increased enormously. The police have become a power unto themselves and the legal system seems powerless to bring them within the framework of the rule of law.
In previous articles, this author has repeatedly warned that the Sri Lankan police have now become a threat to the rule of law. As law enforcement is in the very hands of the police, when they themselves become a threat to the rule of law it indicates a crisis of a magnitude that threatens the very survival of Sri Lankan society as a society governed and controlled by the rule of law.
The Bar Association and lawyers in general, who have rightly taken up the problems of individual members, must now look at the larger picture and address the basic crisis of the rule of law in the country. Where the rule of law is displaced, the very role of lawyers becomes irrelevant. It is this irrelevance of their profession under the contemporary conditions in Sri Lanka that they must address now.
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(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.)
