Reflections on Sri Lanka’ Constitution

Posted on October 7, 2010 by srilankalawlessness
H.A. Parackrama Karunaratne (28) of No. 34, Badiwewa, Ma Oya,Jayanthipura, Polonnaruwa went to make a complaint of gambling near his house. He was arrested, tortured and hand cuffed to a tree while his other wrist was cuffed to his leg by a sergeant of the Ma Oya Police Post on 26 April 2010.

The picture above speaks for itself. It depicts what happened to a young man who went to get police assistance to stop illegal gambling happening near his house.

When the man went to police station to find about what action had been taken on his complaint the police sergeant who had earlier taken down the complaint behaved strangely. The picture shows what he did to the complainant.

Why did the sergeant do that? No Sri Lankan will find it hard to guess — the gamblers knew how to get the police officer on their side.

There is nothing unusual about the story. It is now, more often than not an example of what happens in both small and very serious matters.

The citizen that does the right thing gets into trouble and one who dares to do wrong thrives — in everything — business, politics et all.

The situation prevailing in the country is what is known as abysmal lawlessness. To go by the law is to be the loser while the law breaker is the winner.

The all important question is how did this come about? How did this happen? The answer is very simple – it was by way of the country’s constitution, which was adopted in 1978. It was a constitution made to defeat law and discipline; to create an almighty ruler, who is above the law — a supremo — a brother who is number one.

The result is the chaos we see every day.

To fail to understand this is to fail to understand anything about Sri Lanka.

Without law, without control of corruption, what can policing mean, except what is depicted in this cartoon.

The case mentioned above took place a short time ago. For details please refer to the story below; (more…)

Filed under: abductions, Constitution, corruption, fundermental rights, illegal arrest, illegal detention, Judiciary, justice, police, politics, rule of law, Sri Lanka, torture, violations | Leave a Comment »

Street protests against the denial of fair trial

Posted on October 7, 2010 by srilankalawlessness

“Now, there are street protests to demand fair trials and justice. These acts of protest demonstrate the frustrations of the people against the entire political system based on 1978 Constitution. The insanity of the constitutional thinking has now begun to destroy the citizen’s belief in the right to a fair trial.”

Perhaps for the first time in Sri Lankan history, many people have taken to the streets in the last few days to protest against the abuse of the judicial process and to demand fairness. Some lawyers were quoted by the media as saying, “Now, we have to demand justice from the gods, unseeing forces, as there is no justice in Sri Lanka”. The present regime has acquired the justifiable reputation that it dares to manipulate justice and have its opponents punished without regard to the right to fair trial and due process. It is proving that the executive president can, indeed, do anything, except making a man into a woman or vice versa, as was claimed by the first executive president, J.R. Jayewardene. The denial of fair trial has been both seen and felt by the people and the street protests demonstrate this frustration.

(more…)

Filed under: Judiciary, justice, politics, President, rule of law, Sri Lanka | Leave a Comment »

What upsets Colombo’s middle class?

Posted on September 20, 2010 by srilankalawlessness
” Some things can be faked but it is dangerous to make them appear as fakes. The old fox Jayewardene who took away most of the substance of democracy from Sri Lankans made sure that all the appearances were kept intact.”

“We in Colombo also now have to become like people living in the North and East in our outlook. We no longer know what is what, which is which, whether we are coming or going”, a lawyer friend of mine living in Colombo, a told me today. He was trying to reflect the mood of the people after the passing of the 18th Amendment. The aftermath of the violent conflict against the LTTE, which promised peace, has not brought peace of mind to the people living in Colombo. There is new kind of unease, the loss of the very ground on which people stood and a fear of things to come.

If the government expected an easy time due to not having the fear of facing elections and contesters for power, it seems that they miscalculated rather badly, for elections alone are not the only way parties come to power and stay there. They are also a way of life. It is like having the monsoon or the full moon. If these things do not appear at regular intervals people fear that something is going wrong. (more…)

Filed under: civil society, politics, President, Sri Lanka | Leave a Comment »

A FOLLY BEYOND HUMAN IMAGINATION

Posted on August 31, 2010 by srilankalawlessness

There is hardly any point in making any comment on these “amendments”, except to record a complete disassociation and express moral disgust.

What is proposed is not “ amendments”, but complete ABOLITION of what ever that is left of Constitutionalism, in a liberal democracy. Lord Donamore must the turning in his grave, unable even to graph what happened to what he described as an experiment when he proposal the universal franchise for Sri Lanka.

Those who have spent many decades hoping to end the colossal catastrophe called by 1978 constitution are now forced to recognize some thing much worse in magnitude of the evil. Those who campaigned for the reinstatement of the 17 amendment has to now to see, how that amendment has been reduced to a joke.
(more…)

Filed under: 17th Amendment, Constitutional Council, politics, President, rule of law, Sri Lanka | Leave a Comment »

A mother burns the mouths of two little children who were crying for food

Posted on July 30, 2010 by srilankalawlessness
 A mother burned the mouths of two children who were crying for food. The two children were girls, one and half and five years old. The mother has been arrested and is presently in remand custody. The incident took place on the 28th July at Awissawela.

A few months ago a mother threw one of her children into Kalu Ganga as she was no position to feed her children. At the same time another mother handed over her children to a court to get them into intuitional care, as she too was in no position to feed them.

This tragedy should be an eye opener for everyone. It is easy to blame this woman and even to call her a psychopath. That kind of name calling is the easy way that we often use to trick ourselves.

A mother being unable to deal with the demands for food of her very young children is one of the most difficult human situations. Motherhood is associated with idea of the giving of food and love. A mother feeds her children with her own milk. (more…)

Filed under: child rights, civil society, justice, politics, Sri Lanka | Leave a Comment »

A three-part study on the crisis in institutions for administration of justice in Sri Lanka

Posted on July 1, 2010 by srilankalawlessness

This year I was able to complete my work on the relationship between the crisis in institutions for administration of justice and its consequences for the realisation of human rights in Asia. This work consists of three publications. The first was The phantom limb, which was published in 2009. It was followed by Recovering the authority of public institutions, which was also published in 2009. This year the work was completed with another publication, Sri Lanka: Impunity, criminal justice and human rights. Though all three books are studies of Sri Lanka, they are intended as case studies of a problem common to almost all parts of Asia, except for some places like Hong Kong and South Korea with comprehensive rule of law systems.

Stating the problem

The phantom limb: Failing judicial systems, torture and human rights work in Sri Lanka (AHRC, Hong Kong, 2009, 80 pp)

The first publication is perhaps the most important one in its articulating of the basic understanding of the problem. A medical doctor who attended a presentation I made on the absence of institutions for administrations of justice and its impact on human rights suggested the term “phantom limb”. In response to my speech, he said that the situation I described was known as the phantom limb syndrome. An amputee who has lost a limb continues to imagine that he has that limb and even feels pain in the limb. The problem of institutions for administration of justice is similar. (more…)

Filed under: abductions, civil society, crime, extrajudicial killings, fundermental rights, human rights, Judiciary, justice, police, politics, rule of law, Sri Lanka | Leave a Comment »

Indebtedness, Lawlessness and Investment

Posted on June 15, 2010 by srilankalawlessness

Sri Lanka’s police system cannot even deal with crimes like rape, murder and theft. It is corrupt to the core.

 A BBC news report has revealed that over 99% percent of the Chinese contributions to the Sri Lankan economy are loans. These are loans either given by the government or by the Chinese banks. Then there are loans taken from other countries, and also from commercial banks. The country today is run entirely on the basis of loans. Investments from outside are small and negligible.

There is a vast difference between of development models based on borrowing and those that rely on investments. Southeast Asian development, which is talked about a lot these days, was based on creating climate to bring in foreign investments. Malaysia and Singapore are usually spoken of as investment based models . In both countries with a proper policy of investment and certain grantees to the investors the new investment came in. This improved the economy, provided greater employment and also improved the condition of people as a whole. Creating conditions for investment in this manner requires a sophisticated understanding of international business as well as a capacity to develop local policies in order to consolidate an economy to answer the problems that the economy is faced with at a given time. (more…)

Filed under: corruption, crime, police, politics, rule of law, Sri Lanka | Leave a Comment »

Contemporary relevance of Baba Saheb Ambedkar

Posted on April 17, 2010 by srilankalawlessness

“Ambedkar’s Buddhism was a Buddhism of a minority trying to liberate the entire nation. Ambedkar opposed separatism but always kept in mind the unique nature of the oppression of the Dalits.”

Baba Saheb Ambedkar’s memory was celebrated by large numbers of admirers and followers in India and outside once again this week. Perhaps no other modern contemporary leader of India is as much remembered by such large numbers of (mostly much oppressed) people throughout India as Ambedkar is. One-time untouchables, who now called themselves Dalits, a name that was given to them by B.R. Ambedkar, remember him as an inspiration in their own struggles to regain their dignity. Perhaps no people have been put into such a degraded position in society anywhere as the untouchables of India. The millions of people who belong to these groups have fought a battle to re-emerge as people with dignity, and to that revival Ambedkar has contributed greatly.

Ambedkar’s political thought is still very relevant to not only to the politics of India but also to politics in South Asia in general. South Asian countries are today facing deep crises, unable to develop political and social institutions to guarantee stability to their societies primarily because of centuries of oppressive and social political systems that were their heritage due to the caste system. The caste system essentially was a system of domination by a small group, called Brahmins, who developed most sophisticated forms of cunning into the social control systems of their time in a way that even for centuries they could maintain their dominance. The damage that was done in the process of repression that accompanied the creation and the maintenance of the caste system have become the obstacles to the development of the intelligence the creativity and the capacity of all the people to deal with contemporary problems. Their past holds them in their bondage. (more…)

Filed under: Buddhism, civil society, politics | 1 Comment »

No justice–no nation–one justice–one nation

Posted on April 9, 2010 by srilankalawlessness

“The common criteria for justice and the capacities to mete out those criteria which are available to all the citizens is the only common bond that would last and would ensure that differences are ironed out by ideologies of tolerance and linkages are built among the groups and sectors of society.”

What makes a nation a nation is above all the justice that prevails within that nation. It is justice that creates the bond between the people. Justice connects one with the other. Justice among the people is the one thing that is common to all in a nation if it exists. Justice binds one person or group or a particular nationality with different races and religions. Justice provides the actual bondage between genders. Justice creates the bondage irrespective of culture and language. Justice is the common language of a nation that wants to stay together and the absence of justice is the characteristic of any nation that courts disunity, instability, violence between groups and individuals. Without the bond of justice no other kind of reconciliation or inner levels of understanding and friendship can be built.

However, this area of the presence and absence of justice has ceased to be discussed when dealing with problems of violence, conflicts and the problems of dealing with even issues of terrorism and anti terrorism. Once the factor of justice is removed from the discourse of any of these subjects, voluminous discourses can be created but no real solutions can be found to any of the problems that are being discussed. In an attempt to undo violence more violence is created which in turn creates counter-violence and the cycle goes on. In the attempt to impose the power of one group over another a similar kind of cycle takes place where one power is resisted by another power which at the end develops into conflict. Conflicts in turn develop into direct or indirect violence and violence enjoys the cycle mentioned above. (more…)

Filed under: civil society, disappearances, extrajudicial killings, justice, politics, rule of law, Sri Lanka, violations | Leave a Comment »

Absence of fairness and executive control of legal process

Posted on April 1, 2010 by srilankalawlessness

No citizen has a special privilege where committing crimes is concerned. Whether the crime is that of murder or rape, income tax fraud or the non-disclosure of information relating to income, it makes no difference. All citizens are bound by the same laws and therefore, those who violate such laws, irrespective of their standing in society; they should be subjected to the same consequences.

The unfortunate situation in Sri Lanka is that this elementary principle does not operate in the country. On the one hand some are allowed to commit crimes and get away with it while on the other certain persons are selected for prosecution and punishment. In this situation there is an underlying arbitrariness and unfairness. It is this unfairness in the operation relating to the basic law with regard to the crimes themselves that justifies the classification of Sri Lanka being among the most lawless countries in the world. This is not due to the lack of laws but rather the lack of the principles of fairness in the application of the laws.

“Having similar crimes and similar methods of dealing with complaints regarding criminal activities is the very essence of a society based on the rule of law and justice. Citizens must be able to complain when crimes are committed should expect that similar investigations and other legal measures will be taken to deal with these crimes.” (more…)

Filed under: civil society, corruption, crime, extrajudicial killings, fundermental rights, human rights, Judiciary, justice, media, police, politics, rule of law, Sri Lanka | Leave a Comment »

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