{"id":83407,"date":"2024-01-07T00:45:33","date_gmt":"2024-01-07T04:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=83407"},"modified":"2024-01-08T02:46:40","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T06:46:40","slug":"83407","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=83407","title":{"rendered":"An unholy nexus between police abusers and politicians is very much out in the open, in the highly mis-titled \u2018Yukthiya\u2019 (\u2018Justice\u2019) operation spearheaded by Public Security Minister Tiran Alles and Acting IGP Deshabandu Tennekoon."},"content":{"rendered":"

By<\/p>\n

Kishali Pinto -Jayawardene<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whether in regard to war crimes, gross corruption or economic white collar crimes, unearthing accountability in Sri Lanka is somewhat akin to peeling away multiple layers of a rotten onion. First, the stench overwhelms you. Secondly, each layer is correspondingly more decayed than the previous. Finally, one is left with the core which is but a revolting mass of pulpy nothingness, to be consigned to the dustbin.<\/p>\n

Another \u2018showpiece\u2019 transitional justice body?<\/strong><\/p>\n

These less than propitious thoughts at the dawn of a less than propitious New Year are compelled by the necessary (albeit reluctant) scrutiny of the Bill seeking to establish a so-called \u2018Commission for Truth, Unity and Reconciliation.\u2019 Essentially, if a private entity with more money than commonsense wished to establish bodies with grievously overlapping mandates such as an Office on Missing Persons (OMP), an Office for National Unity and Reconciliation and now, a Commission on those same lines, that is not our business.<\/p>\n

If so, we may hold our tongues and say \u2018good luck\u2019 to that process. But the problem is when the State spearheads these efforts, when \u2018showpiece\u2019 bodies are touted as being what Sri Lankan victims have asked for and when public funds of no inconsiderable amount are expended. Finally, the \u2018mountain in labour gives birth to a mouse,\u2019 which must inevitably be the case. And then, where are we? Worse off than before.<\/p>\n

Why is a \u2018mouse\u2019 so inevitable, someone might ask? In July last year, I answered that question in a caustic reflection as apt now as it was then (\u2018Go to the law, not another truth and reconciliation charade\u2019, Focus on Rights, July 2nd 2023). <\/p>\n

Pointing to thousands of cases where the criminal justice law had been subverted to prevent accountability for extraordinary human rights violations, it was reminded that the priority is to correct systemic failings.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nPolitical \u2018Godfathers\u2019 of crime<\/strong><\/p>\n

That included state prosecutors mishandling prosecutions in regard to \u2018torture\u2019 and other grave crimes, Magistrates hearing inquiries being transferred, family members of victims not allowed to be represented and pardons conferred by the Office of the President on convicted perpetrators of state-sanctioned murders of civilians. Systemic breakdowns in accountability are common from the South to the North.<\/p>\n

Abusive and deeply entrenched state security and police structures operate at their whim and fancy. In fact, impunity has only increased under the command of an Acting Inspector General of Police who continues in his post despite a Supreme Court judgement holding him directly responsible for torture in custody. <\/p>\n

An unholy nexus between police abusers and politicians is very much out in the open, in the highly mis-titled \u2018Yukthiya\u2019 (\u2018Justice\u2019) operation spearheaded by Public Security Minister Tiran Alles and Acting IGP Deshabandu Tennekoon.<\/p>\n

As the Bar Association of Sri Lanka recently cautioned with justifiable alarm, \u2018arbitrary arrests, police raids without proper warrants and extrajudicial killings\u2026 not only undermine the bedrock principles of justice but also erode public confidence in the integrity of law enforcement agencies.\u2019<\/p>\n

That is, if any measure of \u2018public confidence\u2019 still exists in the \u2018integrity\u2019 of the law enforcement process, we must add. The warning that even criminals have the right to due process had been echoed earlier by the Supreme Court in relation to the Acting IGP (Weheragedera Ranjith Sumangala v Bandara, Police Officer and others, SCM 14.12.2023).<\/p>\n

The Court\u2019s warning has fallen on deaf ears
\nThe Court advised the Department of the Police that, \u2018Even reconvicted criminals of the most notorious kind are entitled to their fundamental rights.\u2019 All this is, of course, familiar stuff. The steps contingent to an arrest in observing due process, had not been followed in the arrest and torture of an ex-soldier implicated to incidents of theft. This led to the Court holding that a rights violation had been committed.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the Bench\u2019s observation that \u2018while findings of fundamental rights are ample, the wrongdoers \u2013 specially the big fish in the pond – are seldom held duly accountable,\u2019 seems (unfortunately) to be apposite in the Weheragedera case as well.<\/p>\n

For the decision seems scarcely to have ruffled the feathers of the Acting IGP in question, his patron Minister or the ruling establishment, for that matter. The National Police Commission has been dithering in taking \u2018appropriate disciplinary action\u2019 against those implicated. Public appeals to the Attorney General to commence action under the criminal law have been met with a deafening silence.<\/p>\n

Replicate this instance by a thousand fold and we have the \u2018rotten onion\u2019 of state accountability, as much for the majority as for the minorities. Systemic subversion of the legal system is why no prosecution for emblematic human rights violation has been successful in recent decades. How can that not be the case when the political establishment (Government as well as Opposition) lack the requisite will?<\/p>\n


\nPainful insult to obvious injury<\/strong><\/p>\n

For victims of minority ethnicity, this is punishment upon punishment. That goes beyond the police arresting protestors of Tamil ethnicity heckling the President on his visit to Jaffna this week. That is classic state \u2018over-reach,\u2019 predictable and slightly ridiculous. <\/p>\n

But the State\u2019s recourse to \u2018transitional justice\u2019 bodies without \u2018justice\u2019 speaks to systemic manipulation of the law to entrench inequity. And while it may be well and good to cynically \u2018engineer\u2019 these mechanisms, the vexed question of state accountability will always surface.<\/p>\n

The Bill on \u2018Truth, Unity and Reconciliation\u2019 envisages a gargantuan body of not \u2018less than seven\u2019 and \u2018not more than twenty one members.\u2019 Appointment\/removal of members by the President is through \u2018recommendations\/concurrence\u2019 of the Constitutional Council (CC). Certainly a degree of justifiable scepticism arises in the degree of confidence that can be placed in that safeguard, given the CC\u2019s approval of a controversial Acting IGP.<\/p>\n

That apart, what the \u2018Truth Commission\u2019 has been tasked to do is much of the \u2018same old, same old.\u2019 Its mandate is to investigate, inquire and make recommendations in regard to inter alia, violations of human rights, \u2018caused in the course of, or reasonably connected to or consequent to the conflict that took place in the Northern and Eastern provinces during the period 1983-2009 or iots aftermath.\u2019<\/p>\n


\nPlacating \u2018international critics\u2019 at the expense of victims<\/strong><\/p>\n

This hugely long period of time, not only duplicates the work of previous Commissions (this body is empowered to examine those recommendations as well) but makes its task that much more complicated. Its powers are considerable, including \u2018search and inspection\u2019 under a magisterial search warrant. <\/p>\n

The Commission will also have the power to excavate or observe excavations of suspected sites of mass graves, similar to the authority given to the OMP.<\/p>\n

But the nub of the Bill lies in clause 16 (2) where the Attorney General is empowered to institute criminal proceedings based on material collected during a Commission process. <\/p>\n

Specifically, the Commission\u2019s recommendations shall not be \u2018determinant\u2019 of civil or criminal liability, the preceding sub-clause details. So, what else is new? <\/p>\n

This is exactly what happened with previous such bodies, exactly where the exercise failed and exactly why we talked disparagingly about the \u2018mountain and the mouse.\u2019<\/p>\n

The mistake lies in even expecting that things may be different, as for example, that the Office of a Special Prosecutor may have been empowered to handle these cases. The challenges of the Commission in addressing state accountability remain formidable. Would victims not be better off without these bodies that the Government parades in Geneva, New York and elsewhere to placate its critics?<\/p>\n

At least, the state coffers will not be deprived of scarce resources diverted towards largely redundant exercises.
\n
\nCourtesy:Sunday Times<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Kishali Pinto -Jayawardene Whether in regard to war crimes, gross corruption or economic white collar crimes, unearthing accountability in Sri Lanka is somewhat akin to peeling away multiple layers of a rotten onion. First, the stench overwhelms you. Secondly, each layer is correspondingly more decayed than the previous. Finally, one is left with the …<\/p>\n

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