No justice available in Sri Lanka

No justice available in Sri Lanka
By Basil Fernando Source www.upiasia.com

Colombo, Sri Lanka — Thabutthegama is a remote village close to the city of Anuradhapura in the North Central region of Sri Lanka. A young man from this village once described the shocking conditions of life there as, “When the officer-in-charge of the police station shoots one of our live stock and takes away the animal for one of his parties, by evening, my mother will have prepared the chilies and given them to my father to be taken to the officers home to offer to him so that he can prepare his feast with those chilies.” This is the way villagers communicated with their tormentors that they bore no ill will towards them.
That was the extent of domination and fear, which existed in this remote village and the situation was not very different in most villages. Perhaps, the only difference seen in recent times is that the mentality of villagers in this story has now spread to residents of urban areas including Colombo.

Just last week, like every other week, there were incidents that illustrated the change of mentality. A human rights organisation in Negombo that tried to help the widow of a person suspected of having been assassinated at the instigation of some police officers of the area, received a telephone call for the second time, which threatened to kill two or three members of its staff. The telephone conversation recorded in a complaint to the inspector general of police by the president of the organisation went as follows:

The person who made the call spoke in a male voice and asked in Sinhalese, "Is your big fellow there?" and Prasanga answered asking "Who do you want to speak to?" Then the caller asked, "Who are you?" Prasanga answered, "Before I tell you who I am, kindly tell me who you are." Then the caller angrily said "Who am I? Who am I? That will be told when you all have to pay with your lives. One fellow paid the price already… do you know? Where is your tie-kota?" (Derogatory reference to the lawyer). Then Prasanga asked, "Who do you mean by tie-kota?" Then the caller answered, "Who is tie-kota… do you really not know? I am talking to you for the second time now. No matter how many times you are told, you don't stop? You all did a campaign in Puttalam? How many times have you been told, but you don't listen. You fellows have not learned a lesson yet." Then Prasanga said, "I don't understand what you are talking about. Maybe you have got something mixed up. Maybe you are talking to the wrong telephone number." Then, the caller answered, "Are you trying to be a baby? When two or three of your lives are lost, you will know who I am... you have your women and children, get ready and wait… if you don't stop this…" Then Prasanga asked, "What is this about?" and the caller replied, "What is it about? You all get ready for a sacrifice… are you licensed thugs, you all go on the roads, let us see. Be ready and wait." Then the call was disconnected.
A day later, a lawyer that assisted the widow in the case was assaulted and threatened with death three times when he went for official business to the Negombo police station. In his statement to the inspector general of police, the lawyer gave the following narrative of the incident:

I was walking in the corridor near the office of the officer in charge of the police station, when one person dressed in civilian garb crossed my path and said "you karriya (derogatory way of addressing a person), are you trying to f… the mother, are you trying to get yourself killed, you better know who you are, you will not be allowed to live long," and threatened me. I told him at that moment "I have no business with you; I came to the police for an official purpose." And then he replied to me, "you devil (‘yako’), I am also a bloody police officer," and again threatened to kill me. When such death threats were made to me, my attempt was to try to escape and go away. When I was trying to do that, this person dealt a blow on my shoulder. After getting that blow I turned back to go to the office of the officer in charge to lodge a complaint about the assault. When I was going to the office of the OIC, this person said, "you karriya, do you want to get killed? You are not a big fellow to me, you are struggling to be finished," and was threatening me with death and coming behind me.
While people trying to help her were threatened with death, the widow who is in hiding since her husband’s assassination on Sep. 20, 2008, wrote about her condition in an affidavit to the attorney general, the inspector general of police, the National Police Commission and others.

Under these circumstances we are now living under serious threats and therefore we need protection. However we are afraid to get any protection from the officer of the Negombo police or from any police station near Negombo.
At the same time it is not possible to live in hiding indefinitely and that if we receive proper protection we are willing to live even in our own houses.

Therefore, at this moment we can have faith only in the officers of the Criminal Investigation Division and we request that you provide us the protection of these officers and the protection should be brought under the supervision of an inspector general of police.

We request to provide this protection until this incident and until the end of giving evidence in several of the cases. And that if this protection is guaranteed to us, we will divulge the places where we are hiding to the officers who are authorised to give us protection.

What are the options left for this widow now to save herself and her two children? Purely from a survival point of view, her only option is to go with an offer for peace to her husband’s assassins and beg for mercy. Realistically, she has no system of administration of justice to rely on.

Such is the situation of the rule of law and human rights in Sri Lanka now. If this is the position of the widow in a secure area close to Colombo, one can imagine what the situation of people in unsecured areas in the country’s north and the east could be.

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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.)