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The Modara police shot dead a suspect who was alleged to have killed a young mother living in the area. He too was arrested and it is alleged that when he was taken to identify a wooden pole used in the killing he tried to attack the police and was then shot dead. The suspect was a deserter from the Sri Lankan army who had served as a lance corporal.
A further case was reported of a suspect who had been killed after arrest when trying to escape from the custody of the Weligama police. Yet another person who was taken after arrest by Waduwa police to find a weapon jumped from the boat in which he was traveling in Bolgoda Lake, allegedly committing suicide. All these cases were reported to have happened this month and in police stations quite close to the capital, Colombo.
One of the cases that received wide publicity was the killing of the two alleged suspects of the Delgoda family massacre, in which five members of a family were chopped to death in their home. The officer in charge of the Megahawatte police submitted a report to the Magistrate's Court of Gampaha, with the following description of the incident:
"On the basis of a statement made by Amaradasa, to the effect that the weapons were hidden at No. 277A, Kaduboda, Delgoda, when the police went to find the weapons a bomb hidden in that place was taken [by the two suspects] to kill the police officers. On the orders of Sub Inspector Nishanka, PC27273 Wijeratna and PC 34334 Gunwardena shot with their T56 [light] sub-machine guns bearing number 28030808 and 29041767. After the shooting as the two suspects had been wounded they were taken to hospital where they died." The two suspects were shot in the chest and the head.
Subsequent to the incident several villagers contacted human rights organizations and gave different versions of the death of these two persons. Some villagers claim that one of the suspects was beaten to death at the police station and the other was shot dead in some remote place; both bodies were then brought and dumped at the alleged place of the incident. These villagers also stated that they suspect other persons of involvement in the family massacre, who are still at large.
In all these cases the magistrates accepted the versions given by the police and entered verdicts of justifiable homicide. The magistrates decided the correctness of the versions given by the police before the cases had been brought to trial at a High Court and before all the evidence was examined.
Such deaths, which have become quite common occurrences, indicate that the higher police authorities approve of such practices. The fact that neither the government nor the Parliament has taken any visible or effective action to question this practice also suggests that there is direct or indirect political approval of such killings.
The former inspector general of police quite publicly approved this practice, and the present one has spoken of stopping crime by "hook or by crook." Neither was taken to task by the government or Parliament.
In some countries such as Bangladesh and India where shootings by the police have come to the notice of the judiciary, the Supreme Court and other courts have intervened and rigorously tested the police. In Sri Lanka there have been no such attempts and this practice goes on unchallenged.
The practice of killing after arrest is not new in Sri Lanka. In 1971, in the repression unleashed on an insurgency, thousands of persons were arrested and killed. In the period between 1986 and 1990 at least 30,000 people disappeared -- meaning that they were abducted and killed while in police or military custody. In the north and the east this practice has gone on from the late 1970s until now with, it can safely be said, the tacit approval of the police and military establishments. No serious inquiries take place.
Recently, with the visit of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, the question of the recording of complaints, investigations and prosecutions came to public discussion. The real issue is not whether a U.N. human rights monitoring mission should investigate the allegations of killings and other abuses of human rights -- the issue is that somebody needs to investigate them. At the moment no one is doing so.
The need for a U.N. monitoring mission for the investigation of human rights abuses is based on the assumption that the government has neither the will nor the capacity to investigate such abuses. While there are many government spokesmen based in the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process and some Sri Lankan consulates abroad to oppose any discussion on the U.N. investigations, they have not indicated who is actually going to do such investigations. Obviously their position is that these incidents need not be investigated. The underlying assumption is that investigations into killings and other abuses by the police or military will create serious political problems.
Some members of the government's propaganda industry have talked about the need to engage with the international community regarding the allegations of abuses of human rights. Would this engagement mean attempting to convince the international community that the government is in fact seriously dealing with such incidents? Or does this engagement mean finding various ways to deny the existence of such incidents altogether and to make it appear that allegations of abuses of human rights are exaggerated? Further, does it help the Sri Lankan people who face such abuses to know that greater abuses are taken place in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places?
The legitimacy of a government does not depend purely on elections. (Of course even the legitimacy of some elections is questioned in many countries including Sri Lanka.) An essential component of legitimacy is that all allegations of crimes and abuses of human rights are adequately and effectively investigated through the exercise of the government's authority over the law enforcement agencies. A government that does not exercise authority over its law enforcement agencies has violated one of its most basic obligations.
The question of legitimacy is not synonymous with the question of sovereignty. A vital component of legitimacy is the accountability of the government relating to the investigation and prosecution of all crimes irrespective of who the perpetrators are. U.N. human rights bodies are created to deal with the accountability issue only. It is this issue that the propaganda machinery of the government is trying to avoid and in the process of such avoidance manipulates not only the facts but also the very essence of the debate.
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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.)
