Negombo is just a short distance from Colombo, Sri Lanka, and is far away from the north and the east where a military conflict is under way. However, the extent of lawlessness there does not reflect that distance. The law virtually does not exist. You can commit murder and get away with it without much of a problem. The best friends that criminals can have in the area are the policemen.
Seven of these policemen were transferred after a huge local and international protest following the murder of Sugath Nishanta Fernando, who was a complainant in a bribery case and a torture case in which 12 policemen of the Negombo area were the accused and respondents. The man had complained to the Inspector General of Police, the Human Rights Commission and the National Police Commission about death threats made to him and his wife and asked for protection.
The Asian Human Rights Commission wrote to the minister and the secretary of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights and also the IGP, the HRCSL and the NPC. All this notwithstanding, Fernando was assassinated. It was months after this event that the seven policemen were transferred.
The seven policemen immediately appealed to the president of Sri Lanka for the withdrawal of the transfers. It may sound strange that the highest officer of the state would interfere in the due process of law administered in the country. Under normal circumstances, if the officers had a genuine grievance they should have appealed to the IGP through their immediate superiors. If there were any dealings to be done with the president of the country – and in a situation like this there could be no such dealings anyway – the matter would have to be taken up by the IGP with the president.
If the policemen did not want to go to their superiors by way of their appeal the law provides them with the opportunity to go by way of a fundamental rights application to the Supreme Court, complaining that the transfers have, in fact, violated their rights, if that were the case. For subordinate police officers of the rank of inspector to go directly to the president would be a nonsensical affair; these officers could be punished for trying to circumvent the hierarchical structure.
However, such appeals to courts or to superiors need not happen anymore. Today, anyone can approach the president or somebody who might claim to be acting on behalf of the president. No seals of office or letterhead are needed; it is enough to say in a convincing way that the command is coming from the top. These policemen are practical fellows who know the actual world and how things happen.
Naturally they did not want to waste their time going to court or even to their superiors. They went straight to the president and reported the matter to the press. They found no embarrassment in these actions. This seeming accessibility to the president does not mean that he responds to everyone who complains of rights violations.
For example, the wife of Nishanta Fernando has appealed to him and everyone in his government and has heard nothing in reply. The unlimited access is for those who are referred to as “our boys.” Those boys have the ears of people in the highest places at any time.
The truth is that these police know the country better than others who pretend there are laws, legal procedures, hierarchical structures and the like. Since they know the real country they do what they firmly believe they can do, and they are proven right.
Take, for example, the case of Seynool Arbdeen Seynool Aswar, a Muslim who was assassinated inside the Negombo prison in July of this year. Another Muslim, Mohammad Nauford, was an eyewitness to some of the incidents and had a conversation with the deceased, who told him how he came about his injuries before his death.
Nauford was afraid to make a statement to the police, but did make a statement with special permission to the magistrate, giving details of what he knew. During the few months that followed he came under severe pressure and his own security was at stake. Then he made an affidavit on behalf of the suspected prison officers stating that all he had said to the magistrate was untrue, and that he had said these things out of sympathy for the family of the dead man.
When this was brought to the notice of the magistrate who originally recorded his statement, the magistrate remanded Nauford. Nauford may now be regarded as a liar, but the benefit goes to the prison officers who were able to destroy the evidence of the only eyewitness.
That is the real country that Sri Lanka is now and that is the real Negombo city, where you can get away with murder if you have the right connections to the police or to the Presidential Palace. Strangely enough, even the Negombo Urban Council members of the government party have brought a resolution to state that the transferred policemen are victims of human rights organizations and the media who highlighted the murder of Nishanta Fernando.
Meanwhile, the pro-government media have also published pictures of two of the transferred policemen showing them engaged in investigations, to demonstrate how important their presence in Negombo really is.
In normal times the transfer or interdiction of policemen would not cause such controversy. In a changed country where the law has fallen to its lowest depths the policemen have become mighty.
In a separate incident, even when the Bar Council of Sri Lanka demanded the interdiction of an officer-in-charge of a police station for harassing a lawyer, the officer continues to hold his post because he too is backed by strong lobbies with connections to higher places.
Source: Sri Lanka’s lawless city of Negombo
Filed under: attorney general, Bribery Commission, civil society, corruption, crime, extrajudicial killings, human rights, Human Rights Commission, IIGEP, justice, National Police Commission, police, rule of law, Sri Lanka, Supreme Court, violations, witness protection
