A FOLLY BEYOND HUMAN IMAGINATION

EDITORIAL
BY BASIL FERNANDO

(August 31, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) 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.

1978 constitution caused havoc on the nation. Both in the Sinhala dominated South and Tamil dominated North and East saw the terrible violence, irrationality, carnage and terror. These amendments will necessary bring a much worse experiences.
Now Sri Lanka has abandoned all the basic principles of modern civilization- checks and balances to prevent abuse of power, supremacy of law, rule of law, separation of powers, the independence of judiciary and the parliament, all the principles of accountability and transparency.

What then are the principles on which the political and the legal ‘system’ rest on now. None. None at all.

In fact, there is no ‘system’ any more. The President is every thing. There can be nothing more stupid than that.

Can a political “system” function in this manner? NO.

Then what will happen? That is simply beyond human imagination. Things which far more stupid than what one can imagine, more evil than can be imagined, more catastrophic than what any one can predict, will happen. That is inevitable now.

ONLY THING THAT IS PREDICTABLE IS THAT FOR MANY GENERATIONS TO COME PEOPLE WILL CURSE THESE EVENTS AND THEY WILL CURSE THEMSELVES FOR HAVING ALLOWED THESE THINGS TO HAPPEN.

Related Article: The last debate on the constitution
Read more...

The last debate on the constitution

The way out is to create a smokescreen. To have lots of quarrels going on and when you have the monopoly of the media it is easy to do that. The very style of the media in recent years has changed in order to trivialize everything. Trivialization is an essential component of creating quarrels and quarrels are quite an easy way of trivializing any issue.

by Basil Fernando

(August 27, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) Sri Lanka has turned out to be a land of many quarrels but no debates. Often quarrels turns into violence, sometimes murder and even worst. And the violence itself leads to new quarrels and the circle goes on. Sadly however, hardly anything ever turns into a debate. Debate has become a lost art and no one even seems to remember what it is.

Take for example the question of the constitution. Among the debates of any nation, those on the constitutions would receive the highest place. Not so in Sri Lanka. No one any longer debates the constitution.

The last debate on the constitution was on the 17 amendment. There were many who argued for it and they did so long a long time. Interestingly, no one argued against it. The government’s argument was that it was good piece of legislation but that there were some defects in it. To cure the defect, the government killed the amendment itself; very much like cutting off the arm to save a finger.

In fact, in that last debate on the constitution, the government preferred to bluff rather than to debate. The real problem of the 17th Amendment was that it tried to impose limitations on the power of executive president. The limitations were on his powers to appoint whomever he wished to important positions in the civil service. The government did not agree with having any such limitations and did not wish to debate it. The government made the decision unilaterally and merely created some pretexts for doing do so.

The problem for the government was that it decided that it was not possible to debate on the need to have checks and balances. It was not possible to say that this was a wrong principle. In fact, the government position was that was a wrong principle as far as the government was concerned. The government believes that having no limits to its power is a better principle for governance and that it is impossible to govern Sri Lanka with while trying to abide by the checks and balances principle. Thus, the government believed that this principle was wrong, at least, for Sri Lanka. It had to be abandoned.

However, this was not something that could be said openly as there is almost a universal belief that the principle of having 'checks and balances' is right. To say otherwise, would be tantamount to saying that the law of gravity is incorrect. To debate over the issue of the 17th Amendment was counterproductive. Thus, the only way out was bluff. And that was what the government did.

This example explains the reason as to why there are no longer any debates about the constitution in Sri Lanka. Debates involve principles and there cannot be a debate to reject all the principles on which constitutionalism is based. If one wants to rule in a way that rejects all these principles, then there is no point in debating. Besides, it would be counterproductive to say that our government believes that all principles relating to constitutional law is wrong.

The way out is to create a smokescreen. To have lots of quarrels going on and when you have the monopoly of the media it is easy to do that. The very style of the media in recent years has changed in order to trivialize everything. Trivialization is an essential component of creating quarrels and quarrels are quite an easy way of trivializing any issue.

To have 'no principles' is the very meaning of trivialization. From having shouting matches to some 'jokes' to tickle the audience is what the public get as their daily diet now. There are experts in the job now to keep the show going on.

Soon there will be some major changes in the constitution. However, such changes will not be preceded by any debates. As the proposed amendment is for displacement of limits relating to the president's power a debate will only create problems for the achievement of the government's plans. Indeed the proposed plan cannot be justified on the basis of principles relating to constitutional law. This change will also take place in the midst of some quarrels instead.

This constitutional change will also be introduced as a triviality, though its implications to the country are momentous.

What will this debate-shy society leave as a heritage for future generations? Read more...

Enjoying Revenge

by Basil Fernando

(August 23, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) Two cabinet ministers laughed in public about the police assault of two opposition Members of Parliament at the Galle police station. They added to their laughter by adding to the story, saying that nothing else is to be expected when anyone tries to assault police officers inside a police station. That was a twist to their merriment. The two ministers were also showing that truth is whatever they say it is. Truth was unimportant. They also referred to JVP’s past, saying they have done this kind of thing in the past. Ha, Ha, Ha.

If a Tory MP was assaulted, by some strange chance, the reaction of the Labor government (or vice versa) would be very different. There would have been an expression of horror and immediately there would have been action against the police officers through a high level inquiry. The political coloring of the victim MPS would have been irrelevant. The status of the Members of the Parliament would have been the primary consideration. All attempts would been taken to assure the public that such things are not taken lightly.

The least that the two ministers could have done before they opened their mouth on the incident was call for an inquiry and to wait for the report. That way they could have kept their own dignity and helped to preserve the dignity of the position of the members of parliament.

Such merriment as expressed by the two ministers is no exception to the general norm in Sri Lanka. There is jubilation in many quarters and at highest levels about the decision to remove the four stars from Sarath Fonseka. There is sheer joy in teaching ‘A LESSON TO THE FORMER COMMANDER OF THE ARMY.’ This merriment will not go away soon. There will be more and more actions against him and the joke will be enjoyed for very many years.

While the wife of Prageeth Eknaligoda is offering Yathikas at the Kali Amma Kovil at Mutuwal, there is a lot jubilation and laughter from those who are behind this disappearance. Have whatever Yathika you like; we have done what we wanted to. Not finger is moved to start any investigation. Now, Sarath Fonseka’s wife has joined in such prayers. All that adds to the merriment of those who enjoy the acts of their power.

The same type of merriment of was orchestrated on the streets when Prabakaran was killed. There was eating of kiribath in the streets. It is similar kind of “joy” that goes on still.

Two incidents reported recently demonstrate psychopathology of this kind of revengeful joy. One incident was reported from Nivithigala, Ratnapura. A man who was travelling for a wedding with his whole family had his head severed from the body by an enemy who used the situation to take his revenge. A few weeks back a case was reported from Eppawela where a young nephew living with a family killed his uncle, aunt and two cousins to take revenge for some grievance.

It is similar type of enjoyment of revenge that we are witnessing in the political scene. More of such things seem to on the way. If the logic of this psychology has more persons disappearing like Prageeth Ekneligoda, it would no surprise. JVP MPS in particular may become targets of worse things than police assaults. Read more...

How many beatings does an opposition MP need to learn a lesson?

by Basil Fernando

(August 20, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) The beating of an opposition Member of Parliament by officers of the Galle police raises one important question: how many times do you have to beat an MP before he learns his lesson?

The politicians of the present generation are not good learners. They certainly are not the type that learns by reading; nobody ever asks them how many books they have read. Let us just leave that out.

Do they learn by seeing and hearing? Let us take the immediate example. An MP got beaten up by the police. Well, everyone who goes to a police station, unless he is carrying a bribe, gets beaten up at the police station. That is more or less the actual situation, with perhaps a few exceptions. So the MP, who was an opposition MP, should have known that the police do not like opposition MPs and he was, in fact, going to a dangerous place. He should have known better.

He did not know that or had forgotten that, perhaps because he was a little proud and thought the policemen would respect a Member of Parliament. That was an absolutely foolish thought. The police do not even know the meaning of the word 'respect'. They only know FEAR. They do not actually respect government MPs, but they do fear them. Governments MPs can have them transferred or sacked. Opposition MPs cannot do that, so there is no reason to fear opposition MPs.

Furthermore, it was incredibly foolish for this MP to expect that the policemen would enforce the law against the government. There is, in fact, nobody in Sri Lanka that can enforce the law against the government. Not now at any rate. The law is used only to punish opponents of the government. Surely, the MP should have learnt that lesson by watching what happened to the commander of Sri Lanka's armed forces, Sarath Fonseka. Everybody with any authority is eager to enforce the law against him.

These are things that any person with eyes and ears know so therefore, the MP must be having some problem with both. Hence, he had to get a beating to learn his lesson.

There are ways the opposition MPs can get police to FEAR THEM! The ways to do that is as follows:

Step One--Understand the nature of Sri Lankan policing. It is an institution that has no independence and is servile.

Step Two: Open your mouth and begin to say just that about the police--Tell people loudly about their real nature--Then the people will come to know that MPs know as much as they do. As a result of this the people and opposition MPs will have something in common then. ONCE THE POLICE SEE THAT OPPOSITION MPs ARE WINNING THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE THE POLICE WILL FEAR THEM!

Step Three--Support every victim of torture. Tell the victims that opposition MPs want to record every case of torture, all the details and every day; that they will expose police torture to the parliament and the public. IF THEY DO THAT, IN NO TIME THESE MPs WILL KNOW HOW MUCH POWER THEY CAN HAVE.

That is the way to learn a lesson from a beating. That is the way to also pay back in kind. Read more...

Climate justice and human rights

by Basil Fernando

(August 10, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) There are times when children are wiser than the adults. We live in such a time. Today's children know more about the problems of climate as a man-made problem. They worry about it, talk about it and feel sad about it. They are wiser than the earlier generations. They are learning the folly of those ideas of progress, of development for which nature was sacrificed. They are beginning to see the way man became the enemy of the environment and is destroying the very climate that sustains human life.

We have some hope, because our children have begun to reject the inherently unjust notions about development that was called history. We are at a turning point of generational change. Perhaps the young of today, who will play their roles in not so distant future, may have the courage to decisively change the course of history by abandoning the notions of progress that earlier generations blindly believed in. The ideology of conquest as against cooperation, domination as against participation will be looked with greater suspicion than ever before. The doubts that the young have on all those aspects, including notions of gender and sexuality are why we can look to the future with some hope.

It is time for older generation to express its confession. Confessions when they are made genuinely have a great power effect change.

Need to explain

There are many things about which older generations have to give explanations to the young. We have to confess that due to our unquestioning attitudes we have contributed many wrong concepts and ideas to be adopted as practices and this has led to the loss of our flowers, the birds, the rivers, the seas, clear skies, pure waters and everything that we treasure. Above all this unquestioning attitude towards development has caused the deaths of many millions.

This same unquestioning attitudes have kept us passive when millions of people were displaced in the name of development. Displacement meant death to them in terms of their lives and in terms of their inner spirit. The idea that the end justifies the means paralysed our minds so much that we remained unmoved when such deaths take place on large scale. It is this paralysis that we have to examine if we are to honestly talk about the climate justice and human rights.

Killer disease

In essence justice means the absence of this paralysis. The capacity for justice within a society exists only to the extent of people having the capacity to be critical of themselves and their beliefs. Blind faith that leads to blind obedience is the killer disease of humanity and we need to understand more about this killer disease. Admiration for obedience is being taught by all those who talk about stability. The economist is taught to obediently follow the economic plans whatever be the consequences to the population. The planners are taught to plan with complete disregard to the human consequences of their actions.

The media is being conditioned to not critically examine the society and the ideas which are deified in particular time. The servile nature of the media to the powers that be has been one of the major causes that have contributed to the spread of this killer disease.

The creativity of the artist, of the singer, of the dancer and the poet has been sacrificed in the name of obedience to great ideas. The incapacity to question those ideas has lead to the paralysis of the mind and the will and is responsible for the climatic catastrophes we are facing today.

If we are losing the Himalayas and the seas are threatening us, if nature in all its forms is developing patterns of action that are altering its friendly course it has followed for centuries, it is because human beings gave into the false doctrines that nurtured in them the attitudes of obedience. If we wish to save our climate we must seriously grieve out emotionless obedience.

Human beings can remain faithful to their nature only to the extent that they are capable of grieving over the loss of things of on which they have had their roots. Human attachment leads to an understanding of the character of loss and in that process we should be able to grieve over such loses. However, the capacity to grieve is linked to the capacity to understand the overall processes of which human beings are just a part. If in the name of development these natural processes are destroyed then the price of that destruction has to paid with the lives of human beings.

Our linkage to the natural world has to be discovered through the examination of the very forces that paralyses our creativity, our initiative, our response to the natural world; our capacity to smell, to feel the forces of nature, our capacity to understand nature.

Siri Aurobindo

India was one of the world's most creative nations said the great Indian thinker Siri Aurobindo. He also said that this creativity dies sometime back in history. He went on to explain how India became a dead civilisation. He devoted the latter part of his life in trying to regenerate the creativity of India. To us, in South Asia, who owe so much to our roots in the Indian civilisation the previous creativity and its death has had enormous impact. In the periods of India's creativity the power of South Asia was nourished during the time of the death of the Indian civilisation and this also affected the other neighbouring nations and caused the paralysis of the minds and the souls and the hearts of those civilisations.

Therefore, in trying to understand the things that destroy us, some moments can be devoted to understanding the death of the Indian civilisation. That, of course, is too vast a subject. However, a few thoughts may be in order. When the concept of the end justifying the means became part of the Indian thinking that was the time when the death of the Indian civilisation started in the same way that such moments caused the death of other civilisations.

It is the Arthaśāstra, the philosophy of Chānakya that has contributed a great deal to the destruction of this great nation. When the rulers become indifferent to the suffering of the masses, when even religious philosophies are developed to divide the people , when the deepest dividing doctrines such as caste develops within a civilization, there is no doubt that, that civilisation is embracing a suicidal path. These suicidal ideas which made rituals more important than reason and which thereby killed the creativity of the mind and the spirit also created the deep attitudes which made us indifferent to nature and as a result we have had the catastrophes not only of civilisation but also of climate today.

The adults of the earlier generations should now have the capacity to grieve over the contributions that they have made to these great losses by the adherence to these doctrines and the blind obedience with which they allowed their minds and souls to be paralysed.

The way to pave the path for the new generations to find a cure for these losses lies in the capacity of the older generation to look self critically at their own past, their own guilt in the contributions they have made to such losses.

A human being's greatest capacity is to grow creative by a process of self understanding and grieving. The path to creativity is this path, the path of introspection, self criticism, the revival of our critical minds and the revival of our emotions and creative capacities.

The climate justice

The problem of the climate is very much a problem about the people. It means the deaths of large numbers of people, displacement, loss of cultures and connections, loss of education and the loss of youth and the possibilities of life for vast numbers of people. It is this human tragedy that we talk about when we discuss the climate justice. The loss of the flowers, the seas and the rivers have all taken away many lives and also taken away what life means to those who survive. Therefore the talk about climate problems is to talk about the very fundamental problems of human existence in our times. We have to recover the theme that human being matter. Unfortunately, the very essence of all the development theories is that not all human beings actually matter.

The most neglected sections are the victims of these climate changes who are among the poorest. What happens to them is not recorded through our media. There are no records of this throughout history. Their lives and the memories are erased from our records.

The only real solution to the problem of climate is to allow those who are affected by these problems to be heard. Their voices must be heard, the faces must be seen and their stories must become part of the common discourse of humanity.

Creating opportunities for the voices of the victims of the destruction that is being caused today to be heard is a primary obligation of the human rights movements. Many human rights groups think that their primary duty is to parrot out the UN conventions, constitutional provisions and other declarations about rights. These documents can at best only provide certain principles in dealing with this problem. The most primary obligation in the implementation of any of these principles is to create the possibility of participation of the victims of the destruction that is caused by the development strategies to be the spokesmen of their own cause.

These people speak of their grievances privately but there is nobody to pick up their stories so that their voices may be heard and brought to the public discourse. All plans for development take place without listening to the voices of these people and without giving them the opportunity to be heard. Development plans are hatched and carried out in secrecy and the people have time to talk only after the destruction has happened.

To change that course is possible only when opportunities are created for the people to speak up. Today as the younger generation learns more about climate related problems and as they become more preoccupied with these problems their attention needs to be drawn to the fact that the solutions lie in the hands of the victims themselves. Without allowing victims to speak up, without bringing them to the public discourse, without allowing the victims to confront the planners there will be no stopping of the destruction that is taking place now.

Therefore the future of the human rights movement should be to find ways for the people and to get them to speak up about the problems that affect them. Development discourse must begin from the bottom and consultation with the bottom in a genuine sense must be made possible by the affected people themselves being heard.

Vast change in human thinking is needed if human survival is to be guaranteed. The knowledge that the young people are acquiring about the climate is a good beginning for such change. However, that knowledge alone cannot resolve this problem. The solution lies in the affected people becoming their own spokesman and the decision making of humanity is changed and the process of genuine consultation between the ordinary people and the planners becoming a possibility.

NB. This is a paper submitted to a seminar organised by Vigil India Movement at Bangalore on 10th August, 2010 Read more...

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

by Basil Fernando

(July 30, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) 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.

There can be hardly any human suffering greater than that of a mother who is unable to deal with the hunger of her children.

That is the problem that we are confronted with in the situations associated with these incidents.

If society had not become so insensitive these mothers might even beg their neighbors to come to the assistance of their children. It is only when the feeling of helplessness is most desperate that the mothers resort to this kind of violence.

It is a very primitive type of ruthlessness that is embedded in our economic and political system that has created this situation. A ruthless society can make even mothers go insane. Read more...

Why Was There No Cry To Bring JR Jayawardene to Justice for creating the violence in July 1983

"If July 1983 demonstrated a problem of the entire political system, the solution had to deal with that problem. However, if the problem was a racial one, their demand for separation seemed justified."
.....................................

by Basil Fernando

(July 27, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) Why is July 1983 discussed only from an ethnic point of view, is worth some discussion. This I reflected through another poem written in 1983 itself, entitled Just society. In this poem I accused J.R. Jayawardene for the responsibility for events of July 1983, though he has succeeded in put in the blame on “ Me” meaning the citizens. The world blames Sinhalese for July 1983 events. No one took J.R Jayawardene to task. There were no cries to bring him before an international tribunal or to bring him to justice in Sri Lanka.

Why was there and why is there no cry to bring JR Jayawadene to Justice for the responsibility for causing the violence in July 1983 ?

There are many reasons. He was the HERO of many and particularly the middle class, the rich and intelligencia. They have all supported his economic policies, his constitution and his vision for the country. When the hero reveled himself as the villain, no one wanted to recognize it. How could we be so stupid to have been deceived this man, is the question many are afraid to ask themselves.

Easy way to understand this mentality is to think of the situation of Neviile Samarakkon, the chief justice. He trusted JRJ so much that he was willing to be his Chief Justice. This acceptance helped JRJ to undermine the senior judges of the Supreme Court and deny the places they deserved. Having achieved his aim, JRJ treated his “ friend” like dirt. It took sometime for Samakoon to understand how he has been fooled. He died a disappointed man.

Exactly that kind of disappointment happened to a whole class of people. They suffered their humiliation privately. This psychological condition was never exposed, examined or discussed. Impact of this situation continues to this date. No real and deep criticism of JRJ has taken place, because such a criticism also become a self criticism for many.

Instead he remain the mentor of all leading politicians and those who support them. To criticize him is to criticize those who came to power thereafter. This man who is more responsible for violence of July 1983 is still the mentor of Sri Lanka’s ruling class and its propaganda agents.

JRJ’s yesterdays critics, who even wrote books against him are his followers now.

He has become the political guru of all those who benefit from the authoritarian system.

As for the LTTE, it was to their advantage to present 1983 July events from an ethnic point of view, rather than exposing the political roots of this violence. The demand for separate state required justification by way of racial hatred between Sinhalese and Tamils. Violence in July provided the imagery needed to support this point of view. LTTE with their mastery over propaganda used this to the maximum advantage.

If July 1983 demonstrated a problem of the entire political system, the solution had to deal with that problem. However, if the problem was a racial one, their demand for separation seemed justified. Thus, instead of exposing JRJ and his politics and seeking to replace him, JRJ was presented merely as another Sinhala leader and all such leaders as wanting to have similar violence on Tamils This approach worked to the advantage of JRJ.

Those moderates among Tamil leaders were deceived in the same way as Chief Justice Neville Samarakoon. Many of them who believed that JRJ will provide a solution that they could take to Tamil masses, later paid for the illusions with their own lives.

JRJ was able to create the impression that the problems he created were in fact creations of others. He even attributed July violence to some leftists, who were in fact saving some of the victims of such violence. Many of them had to spend months in hiding to avoid arrests and some surrender themselves and were held in custody. None of these were ever subjected any investigations and prosecutions.

JRJ who made Just Society his motto, undermined the entire system of law first by his constitution and then by the misuse of his powers. He reduced Sri Lanka to a lawless society. He made the making of complaints against authorities a fruitless activity. He made abuse of power and corruption normal affair in Sri Lankan society.

He got away with all that and created the impression on others who were later come to power, that you can get away from responsibility for any wrong doing. For this he remains a role model and is imitated.

The man who destroyed the foundation of law, who made search for justice nearly an impossible goal, paved way to the worst forms of violence, is still able to escape the condemnation he so much reserves.

The Poem- Just Society Read more...

The meaning of July 1983

"When acts of violence become so common and there is nothing much to talk about, it simply means life itself has reduced to something that there is nothing much to talk about. That is how I saw July 1983 events. Things in Sri Lanka is reduced to a point where there was nothing much to talk about."
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by Basil Fernando

(July 26, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) I wrote two poems on the July 1983 both of which have been reproduced over and over again in anthologies and other publications. I thought reflecting on one of these two poems as a way of trying to talk about the meaning of the events of July 1983. Title of this poem is yet another incident in 1983. Yet words yet another incident was selected deliberately. The words yet another evokes the commonness of similar kind of events which happened during the time. The story itself is terrible from whatever historical circumstance it may be placed into. Father caught up in a situation of mob violence takes his young children from the rescuer’s hands and goes back to the car which is burning and sits there with his wife. Such an incident can be thought as some kind of extraordinary violence. My idea of putting the word in yet another incident was to show that the commonness of violence that spread during this time. Making a distinction of which incidents are more cruel than the others itself becomes a meaningless exercise under such circumstances. What one family suffers is just like what another family suffers and when thousands of such events put together, there is a situation in which violence itself becomes something there is nothing much to talk about.

When acts of violence become so common and there is nothing much to talk about, it simply means life itself has reduced to something that there is nothing much to talk about. That is how I saw July 1983 events. Things in Sri Lanka is reduced to a point where there was nothing much to talk about.

People talk about things in order to make some sense out of it and if possible to remove the nonsense that is involved in some events and to bring back society into some sense. To bring the lost senses back to what may be called a normal human sense and then to make some _change, something creative, something meaningful out of suffering.

What 1983 indicated was that Sri Lanka has come to a point when it was not possible for somebody to say here is a way out of it; to say here is something, some way by which we can get out of this kind of senselessness, this kind of nonsense that we have placed ourselves in.

At that point, when I was writing that poem, in my mind I could not think of bringing some sense to the reader out of this event. I could record the event but I could not tell myself or the reader this is the way that we have to get out of this kind of situation.

I have heard over the years many people talking this and that as the way out of the situation. Some talked abut negotiations, some talked about the war, and some talked even about all kinds of supernatural ways by which we could get out of that situation. I was all aware of that kind of talk. I was aware of that kind of talk which has happened before the event and I’m also aware of that kind of talk which took place many years after that event. Somehow internally I could not participate in that discussion. Neither the negotiation nor the war made any sense to me. I believethat it would have not made any sense to the father who sat there inside his burning vehicle with two of his precious children inside that situation.

It was not an act of helplessness. It was a moment of realization of senselessness. Is there a way to deal with things when they reach that kind of senselessness?

For many, the way is not to admit that we have reached that point of senselessness. When they talk about having hope, they mean things have not gone that bad. In order to have what they call hope, they want to close their eyes to the events which are happening outside and they say lets forget about it.

The problem in Sri Lanka is that despite of all the talk, none of us know how we got to that point or how we can get out of that point.

Perhaps we have some idea of how we got to that point. However, even that knowledge does not help us to find a way out of our situation.

Many would feel that they themselves are having a part as the problem creators. Some supported the holocaust of young children, young boys and girls when it happen in 1971 saying that well that is the way we got out of a revolution, that is the way we got out of communism. Ofcourse nobody really believed that there was a real threat of communism or there is a real threat of some great catastrophe. But we need to believe we got out of one, to jusify to ourselves that loss of those ten thousand or more lives were their own making.

Then soon came the green flag revolution, the open market economy as our way to paradise, to milk and honey. All the intelligencia supported it, middle class and the rich thought that their day has arrived. It was the same man who was hero of the hour who inflamed the nation in July 1983. It was too much to digest. We blamed it on the rascals in the North and East. We saw paradice dreams creating the a hell all around.

Then we got devided. The South Vs the North and East. Many of yet another incidents happened every day.

The a victory was celebrated. Was the victory not yet another incident? Many wanted to believe it was not. As days goes by it not possible convince ourself, that such victories also are yet another incident only.

Like that father we also sit and allow ourselves to be burned away.

I did not see July 1983 as an ethnic event. I saw it as a senseless situation. I saw it as a problem of the whole nation I have not seen an end of that situation but only a continuation.

Related link: Yet Another Incident in July 1983
Read more...

Yet Another Incident in July 1983

by Basil Fernando
Republished from the Sri Lanka Guardian Archive

[July 25, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian]

Burying the dead
being an art well developed in our times
(our psycho-analysts have helped us much
to keep balanced minds--whatever
that may mean--) there is no reason really
for this matter to remain so vivid
as if some rare occurrence. I assure you
I am not sentimental, never having
had a 'break down' as they say.
I am as shy of my emotions
as you are. And I attend to my daily
tasks in a very matter of fact way.

Being prudent too, when a government says "Forget"
I act accordingly. My ability to forget
has never been doubted, never
having had any adverse comments.

On that score either. Yet I remember the way they stopped that car,

the mob. There were four
in that car, a girl, a boy
(between four and five it seemed) and their
parents--I guessed--the man and the woman.

It was in the same way they stopped other cars.
I did not notice any marked

Difference. A few questions
in gay mood, not to make a mistake
I suppose, then they proceeded to
action, by then routine. Pouring
petrol and all that stuff.
Then someone noticed something odd
as it were, opened the two left side
doors, took away the two children, crying and
resisting as they were moved away from their parents.

Children's emotions have sometimes
to be ignored for their own good, the guy must have
thought. Someone practical
was quick, lighting a match
efficiently. An instant
fire followed, adding one more
to many around. Around
the fire they chattered
of some new adventure. A few

scattered. What the two inside
felt or thought was no matter.
Peace loving people were hurrying
towards homes as in a procession ....
Then suddenly the man inside
breaking open the door, was
out, his shirt already on
fire and hair too. Then bending,
took his two children. Not even
looking around as if executing a calculated
decision, he resolutely
re-entered the car.
Once inside, he closed the door
himself . . . I heard the noise
distinctly.

Still the ruined car
is there, by the road-side
with other such things. Maybe
the Municipality will remove it
one of these days to the Capital's
garbage pit. The cleanliness of the Capital
receives Authority's top priority.

The poem was initially published in New Ceylon Writing, Vol. 5

The poem mainly features in an article " The Agony and the Ecstasy of a Pogrom, Southern Lanka, July 1983" by Michael Roberts, a Sri Lankan sociologist in Australia. The article and the poem were translated into Tamil by R. Cheran, in the July 2008 issue of Kaalachchuvadu, a magazine published from Tamil Nadu, India. Read more...

EDITORIAL: A Buddhist monks conduct invites review of Buddhism practiced in Sri Lanka

The Buddhist monks are no longer the religious social animals. They have become the trouble making perverts. From hierarchy to the monk soldiers the whole Buddhist setup in the island is corrupt and are spoils.

EDITORIAL

[July 09, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian] According to emerging news, a powerful politically motivated Buddhist monk is said to be heavily campaigning to destroy a papaya farm of a poor farmer in Nagollagama, Kurunagala.

Police have been influenced by the said monk to arrest the farmer who had been illegally held in captivity in a police station whilst the said monk accomplished his rage against the farm and the farmer. According to news the raging monk had gone on the havoc and destroyed thousands of papaya trees in the farm of the villager, whilst the farmer was held in captivity. What made this monk to go on the rage is unclear.

The poor farmer has lost his livelihood and the collaboration of the police in executing the monks rage has not touched the law enforcement agencies of the land or the conscience of the nation’s politicians or the Buddhist hierarchy.

With the extremely difficult market conditions for the paddy farmers, some of them have committed suicides in the recent years and their sufferings are submerged in the war victory hypes of the political, Buddhist religious and the military establishments of the nation.

With the progressively muddling socio-political-economic culture of Sri Lanka, the so-called pious Buddhist religion in the island is not playing its due role to help the people. Instead, it too has become a part of the problem and failures and the contributors to the progressing moral, political, ethical, cultural and religious decay in the country.

In our previous writings, we plainly said Sri Lanka never practiced real Buddhism, instead only skilled in a type of Buddhism that is replica of Brahmanism of India.

Our Buddhist monks are not true Buddhists and do not practice what Lord Buddha preached. A true Buddhist monk will value the Chiratha Bikkawa Charikan bahujana hithaya sukayaâ at any cost. But this does not happen in Sri Lanka. They behave like the Hindu Brahmins wearing yellow the shawls and pretend to help the poor people.

The Buddhist monks have given a violent image for the Buddhist religion in Sri Lanka by not following the utmost principles of the religion to be tolerant, practicing ahimsa (non-violence) and be truthful in their conduct.

Theravada Buddhism practiced in Sri Lanka and exported to Thailand is followed in a menacing way, unlike the passive Mahayana route practiced in Tibet and Myanmar. Highly politicized inwardly practices of the monks in Sri Lanka are not helpful to address the real needs of the people.

The senior monks of the Buddhist chapters have not disowned materialist lifestyle and are reflecting their possessive outlook by living a luxury lifestyle like driving around in Mercedes Benzes and using the latest mobile phones. Their writ on the government on political issues is a worrying phenomenon that is further rotting the real democratic political development is Sri Lanka.

One has to visit the state universities see the duplicity of the saffron robed undergrads making love in the university compounds. The police force that rounded up the love making boys and girls in the Colombo sea-sides and the parks will not dare to arrest these perverted baby monks in the campuses. This is one of the privileges the monks enjoy as the laws and religious dictums are beyond the reach for them.

Without open and pubic criticisms and scrutiny, we cannot expect real reforms in the Buddhist institutions in Sri Lanka. If the unruly and unholy Buddhism continues this way, we cannot expect any positive progress of the society any more. Politicization of the Buddhist institutions has produced, self centric and extremist leaders like Mahinda Rajapakse to rule the country. Unfortunately, it can be said, majority of the monks are common enemies of the people and they do nothing meaningful than to create more problems for them and the nation.

In his series of interviews published in the Sri Lanka Guardian, Basil Fernando has rightly pointed out the facts and figures of caste origins of the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka and the development of Sri Lankan authoritarianism. He had gone to explain how we have lost our rights to the President of the country, all because of our wrong values and believes that we inherited from the ancient India under the name of Buddhism.

Has Sri Lanka ever conducted any serious discussion on how Buddhism disappeared in India? Buddha is portrayed as an avatar of Vishnu in Hinduism. Does it matters to our aggressive Buddhist monks to discuss even about this distort?

Unfortunately, instead of understanding the real Buddhism, the present day monks are engaging in politics, thus acting against the spiritual interests of the nations people. This is what the monk in Nagollagama did against the innocent farmer. An unwanted act indeed!

Sri Lankan Buddhist monks are destroying the social order of the country and are acting like the menacing politicians. The Sri Lanka Guardian reported with the video presentation about the young boy being sexually abused by a Buddhist monk in Habaraduwa temple in Galle.

Most villagers took that monk to a side and they acted against the interest of the boys' poor family. The poor boy in fact became a victim, when he went to study at the temple as they could not go to a private tuition due to reasons beyond their control. What went wrong really was when the young boys family was put under enormous pressure and continuously attacked by the villagers.

Do the main two Malwatte and Asgiriya Chapters of the Buddhist religion in Sri Lanka do anything to discipline the unethical monk? They did nothing but have contributed and are contributing further towards the failures and are penalizing the victims family.

The Buddhist monks are no longer the religious social animals. They have become the trouble making perverts. From hierarchy to the monk soldiers the whole Buddhist setup in the island is corrupt and are spoils.

When the monks change and conduct themselves the nation change and if they do not change the nation will decay. We hope decay will not reach the irredeemable state. Read more...

Justice in Argentina and in Sri Lanka

by Basil Fernando
[July 05, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian]

Jorge Rafael Videla,
Argentina's former military ruler
Facing charges for killing
Thirty political prisoners
In nineteen seventy six
In nineteen eighty three

Fifty three Political prisoners were killed
were killed at the Welikada prisons
In cold blooded murder
None were ever punished
Those who helped

To cover up such heinous crimes
Now partake in high positions
And even sits in the commission
For Reconciliation and Lessoned learned
That is Sri Lanka’s justice
Wonderful art of peace and reconciliation. Read more...

Jail no -Hell sure

by Basil Fernando
[July 03, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian]

Fifteen years rigorous imprisonment for
An IGP in South Africa
For corruption

How many years do
All our IGPs deserve?
Alas,
Who is there to send them to jail?
Read more...

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

by Basil Fernando

(July 01, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) 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. Because certain institutions were formed at certain times in history, particularly colonial times, this has given rise to the feeling that these institutions still exist and function more or less as before. In this way they become phantom limbs.

The problem is related to external appearances versus inner realities. A professor from China once said that judges are given the external appearance of being judges; however, they may not have actual judicial power or proper training and competence. In my work in Cambodia at the beginning of the new period with the 1993 elections supervised by the United Nations, I was able to study the external appearance of judges and prosecutors as against the inner reality. The educational level of these judges was around grade 8, due to the upheaval in the country of the prior decades. The system had been designed and created by the Vietnamese, who were working according to the Soviet model. The people who were given various tasks in the courts were those that did well in the political party work as organisers. The system was the opposite of a liberal democratic one, in that it was the task of a court to defend the state and not the individual. The very meaning of the Cambodian word for ‘trial’ when translated into English was ‘sentencing session’.

People from outside Cambodia who wanted to begin a new system at the time also wanted to believe that a justice system existed in the country and that if some more education was given to these judges then they could function like judges in a liberal democracy, which is what the 1993 Constitution declared the country to be. However, other than via the introduction of some new words there was no change in daily reality. Within a few months of extensive human rights education, people started coming to the United Nations’ offices to ask where they could get the protection for the rights about which they had been educated. There were no police stations that would register their complaints, and the system of policing was one of intense surveillance. The prosecutor’s role was still to defend the state. Close interaction with the system and the justice minister revealed that “judgements” were actually written before trials were held. When this matter was discussed with the minister he clearly said that they did not have qualified judges and the only educated people they had were in the interior ministry. Those people could write better judgments than the judges who sat to hear the cases. He went on to say that people brought to court were guilty. Thus, the people coming from abroad who wanted to believe that the system could be transformed from a Soviet-style one into a liberal democratic one through some training programmes had to ignore the fact that there were no foundations in the system for any kind of criminal justice where individual liberty could be defended. Some external changes could give the appearance that there were also internal changes, but in fact these changes did nothing to alter fundamentally how the judicial institutions in this country operated.

Through my job I became profoundly aware of the tremendous contradictions in this situation. It was from this insight and the insight I also gained in Sri Lanka before leaving it in 1989 at a time that thousands of people in the south were being forcibly disappeared that I understood what the absence of justice meant.

This same situation of there being the appearance of a judiciary but no real capacity in the judiciary to protect the individual is visible in many other countries in Asia. For example, there is no such thing as a judiciary in Burma anymore. In that country through a highly sophisticated process which has gone on over some decades the system of courts has been shaped to play a useful role on behalf of the military. The military completely controls this system, so there is no basis for any kind of distinction between the executive and the judiciary. Though the courts function as if they have jurisdiction to make inquiries into the legality and the legitimacy of things they do not have any such power at all. To a lesser extent, the same types of problems can be found in other places, like Bangladesh, and even in certain respects in much more advanced but still heavily restricted systems like those in Thailand and the Philippines.

When people are in a country where justice institutions are more like phantom limbs, they have a sensation of legality which, in fact, is an imaginary legality. People in disputes may believe that they can obtain some kind of justice by resorting to the courts, and many people do in fact pursue legal cases. However, as they interact with the system they slowly discover that what at first looked like reality is illusory. The system is not only unwilling but also incapable of delivering anything that might be called justice. However, there is nothing to replace the belief that they once had in the system. There is nothing that people can do when they are made victims. They can go to a lawyer, who will still just advise them of the various actions they can take within the framework of the law, irrespective of its reality or unreality.

At this point, belief in the justice system goes from being an empirical and rational exercise to a type of religious experience. Holy men whom people visit for solutions to their problems give instructions on all kinds of things that people can do to create some hope that things will work out to their advantage. The administration of justice in many parts of Asia today may create that kind of hope; however, there is nothing to connect hopeful expectation to reality. The suggestions made by lawyers and other professionals to persons hoping to obtain justice are no more likely to result in success than the suggestions of mystics and oracles. But because there is no other option, people do not like to admit that this is the reality, and instead they cling to beliefs that their interventions will have some desired effect. While everything tells them that a course of action will not bring the type of redress that they want, they resort to it for want of alternatives.

The frustrating experience of people seeking but not obtaining justice is prevalent in most Asian countries. The sensation of sheer powerlessness in the face of wrongdoing is commonplace.
Illustrating the problem

Recovering the authority of public institutions: A resource book on human rights in Sri Lanka (AHRC, Hong Kong, 2009, 545 pp)

The second part of the study was a book detailing 200 cases out of about a thousand recorded by the Urgent Appeals programme of the AHRC on the widespread use of torture and attendant abuses at police stations in Sri Lanka, and the incapacity of citizens to get any kind of legal redress for these abuses. Each case is part of many years of work to document the facts properly as well as to search for some form of justice by way of complaints or legal action or by resorting to international agencies, such as the United Nations. In some cases the litigants have been going to court for over eight years in the hope that they might obtain some kind of relief. However, the legal process only compounds the agony of the citizen who has already been subjected to injustice by agents of the state. The citizen having been subjected to abuse at the hands of law enforcement agencies finds that no other part of the state apparatus can or will protect him. The general failure of the administration of justice renders the individual powerless.

I used this part of the study to illustrate the problem through the empirical evidence that is found in the hundreds of cases documented. These cases together clearly establish that lawlessness has spread throughout the entire administration of justice. The details are overwhelming. The only option left to the government and others who do not want to admit the problem is to prove that the facts presented are untrue. Despite many attempts to do so, state agencies have not succeeded in challenging the factual evidence that has been brought about by way of the details of torture and other human rights abuses in these and hundreds of other cases.

Aside from the cases themselves, the book contains a lengthy section in which I have tried to explain the circumstances in which lawlessness has emerged as the dominant feature of the administration of justice in Sri Lanka. So-called anti-terrorism laws have encouraged anarchy within the system and have caused chaos in the social and political life of the country.

The book also contains commentary on various laws and related institutions such as police investigation divisions, the attorney general’s department and the judiciary. It explores the deficiencies existing within these institutions as well as the causes of the failure of justice within Sri Lanka. The failures of justice in individual cases can thus be linked to these institutional failures. The book as a whole is extremely detailed and heavy on factual information so as to establish that the allegations made about the failure to implement human rights in Sri Lanka can be proved with reference to existing publicly-available documentation.

Drawing conclusions

Sri Lanka: Impunity, criminal justice and human rights (AHRC, Hong Kong, 2010, 164 pp)

In this third book the consequences of the phantom limb in criminal justice and its effects on human rights are explained and an attempt is made to draw some conclusions. The consequences are discussed in terms of abysmal lawlessness and zero status of citizens; militarization and human rights in South Asia; loss of liberal democratic constitutionalism, and impunity. Each of these aspects is detailed in separate chapters.

The first chapter takes up the difference between a rule-of-law system and a non-rule-of-law system through study of the basic legal infrastructure in a liberal democracy with an institutional framework of police, prosecution and judiciary. When these institutions are functional they are able to ensure the basic framework of the rule of law. This is not an ideal situation. A functional state is not a perfect one. The term ‘functional’ simply means that the system is operating overall to reach its basic objectives. When a system is functional, defects or faults can be reviewed and over time, at least the more glaring ones can be corrected.

By contrast, when a system has become dysfunctional this implies that it cannot achieve even its basic objectives. This is not simply a problem of defects. It is a problem characterized by incapacity to resolve practically any difficulty besetting the system, as a result of which the system is completely overwhelmed and incapable of operating. This is the situation of the policing, prosecution and judicial systems in many Asian countries today. In those countries the minimum requirements of a rule-of-law system cannot be realised because of institutional dysfunction. The people of these countries do not have the protection of the law, even though there may be external appearances to the contrary.

The consequence of institutional dysfunction I have described as abysmal lawlessness. The idea of abysmal lawlessness is explained in a chapter in the third book, which attributes to it the following features: lost meaning of legality; predominance of the security apparatus; disappearance of truth through propaganda; the superman controller; destroyed public institutions; and zero status of citizens. I also outlined these features in an essay published in article 2 at the end of last year (vol. 8, no. 4, December 2009).

The militarisation that accompanies institutional dysfunction is an especially important feature of the non-rule-of-law systems found across Asia, and in a separate chapter in the last part of the study I examine the spread of militarization and its consequences.

Certain trends and patterns in public and social life reveal a rise in militarization of state institutions. These include widespread kidnappings; loss of legal protection in matters of arrest, detention, searches and other areas of state interference in personal life; judicial corruption; undermining of civilian policing; diminishing respect for women; loss of the importance of the individual; obstacles to the realisation of contract and tort, and loss of memory, language and attitudes.

The meaning of militarization is dealt with politically, legally, socially, financially and ethically. Politically, the very notion of the separation of powers loses its meaning. The state bases its legitimacy on the use of force rather than on the basis of consent.

Legally, the rule of law is displaced. Arbitrary orders through emergency regulations and anti-terrorism laws replace coherent legislation. In fact, the executive acquires such power that it need not justify its actions before any forum.

Socially, reason too is gradually displaced. Instead of consensus-building through rational discourse there is propaganda. The distinction between truth and falsehood becomes thinner and eventually is lost altogether. Language changes, facts and figures lose significance, and the media becomes a no-fact zone.

Financially, as law and language lose their significance so too the notion of auditing for accountability ceases to be relevant. The distinction between private and public ownership is blurred. The state interferes in every financial transaction on behalf of private interests. Private ownership of property loses its certainty, except for those few who are outside of the system.

Ethically, crime becomes relative. The absolute prohibition on killing ceases to connote anything of importance to society; murder becomes a lesser evil. Violent measures to settle disputes are justified because no institutions provide remedies. Life is cheapened. The devaluation of life affects personal and family relationships. Abuse and distrust of others becomes the norm and powerlessness becomes an excuse for compromise, no matter how morally unacceptable.

How can we escape from the cycle of militarisation? History does provide us with examples. First, the capacity to understand the shock and shame suffered under these circumstances, as well as collective shock and shame, needs to be uncovered and inculcated. In the aftermath of World War Two, people in Germany suffered various illnesses. Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich studied these ailments and wrote a book called The inability to mourn. What they discovered was that the capacity of both the individual and the society to recover was dependant on the capacity of people to admit to their plight and mourn for what had happened. Only in this way could they find a path to recovery.

This first step is closely associated to the second: that the problems with public and legal institutions must be discussed boldly and relentlessly to bring about change and restore some public confidence that someone is doing something to address what has gone wrong. This means documenting in as great detail as possible every incident of abuse, and developing databases and information centres for the purpose. Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize laureate, recalled the advice of the rabbis at the height of the holocaust who told people to make records of everything they saw happening to others or themselves. The literature that survived through this process provided the basis for later reflection and helped the recovery process legally, socially and spiritually. One remarkable document of this nature was the diary of Anne Frank. There is no alternative to dedicated documentation of injustice and abuse. The night, when it comes, causes havoc—but faithful records of that havoc are essential for the recovery of the conscience.

Turning to how a dysfunctional legal system is associated with emergence of widespread impunity, the third book in the study tracks how Sri Lanka has left the orbit of constitutionalism. It shows how the autonomous civil service was destroyed through the 1972 Constitution and how civil servants were brought under direct control of the executive president through the 1978 Constitution. With this change the entire civil service was politicised and recruitment, promotion, transfer and disciplinary control were all made the subjects of political considerations. This feature of the system spread into policing, the attorney general’s department, and also into the judiciary. Judicial independence has been undermined through interference in the appointment of senior judges, who lost the protection they needed to perform their tasks in accordance with a rule-of-law state.

The last part of the book begins with the attempts of civil society organisations to battle with Sri Lanka’s dysfunctional system by various means. Litigating to protect civil rights in a dysfunctional system often does not lead to any improvement for individuals; however, it can help in the discovery of details, exposing previously hidden defects and contributing to understanding of the methods by which power is abused. The chapter deals with cases pursued for several years in the courts and the lessons that have been learned about the system through these cases. In an interview published in this section, I make the following comment:

The ultimate success for human rights remedies lies in winning public opinion in favour of… redress. For many reasons, previous and existing social attitudes directly or indirectly support various practices of repression by the state. That police torture is necessary for public security and stability for instance, is an inbuilt social prejudice prevalent in Sri Lanka. Another inbuilt perception is that torture victims are bad criminals. Our work and approach attempt to demonstrate that these prejudices are in fact contrary to reality, and that law enforcement without torture can create a far better community spirit, both within the community and the law enforcement agencies. Moreover, the entire society will benefit from a legal system that has adequate remedies for human rights violations.

This kind of social discourse cannot be carried out without practical participation in the litigation process. It is not possible for instance, to introduce adequate legal remedies by merely teaching human rights or enacting new laws. Litigants must go to court to demonstrate the difficulties involved in actually obtaining these remedies. The root causes of such difficulties should also be analyzed and explained. It is only through this process that you can condition sectors of society and the state to appreciate the meaning of adequate remedies for human rights in terms of article 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In a chapter entitled “Sri Lanka: A murder tolerating nation” the book explores how inhibitions against killing have been abandoned in order to achieve some political objectives, and the social impact is discussed. The policy to kill is explained thus:

There was a deliberate policy to kill the arrested persons instead of detaining them. Besides the incapacity to keep large numbers of persons in prisons, there would also have been the political issue of holding large numbers of political prisoners, which would inevitably lead to considerable protest regarding their release. Such demands would come from various political parties and human rights organizations within the country, as well as from the international community. This would create a political problem with several repercussions for the government.

The results of killing for political purposes are described as follows:

This approach of eliminating political opponents paved the way for killings to become common in the society at large. Killing is a pragmatic approach to get away from all legal methods and consequences. If a property dispute is to be dealt with legally for instance, it may require cases to be filed in court and the cases themselves may take a long time.

The basic message was that the legal process was cumbersome and dispensable. Killing could be used much more easily to deal with disputes without all the problematic consequences of law. The law was marginalised and killing normalised. This situation has become the status quo in Sri Lanka, virtually destroying all guarantees of life that are normally available within a civilized society.

The situation of the north and east, where a prolonged military conflict had even more disastrous consequences, is taken up from a rule-of-law viewpoint. In a country where dismal lawlessness characterizes ordinary life in non-conflict zones, it is not difficult to understand how much worse life has been made in areas beset by one of the most bedevilling and devastating wars in the world of recent decades. Now that direct military conflict has ended, the government has approached the problem of reconstruction in the north and east as one with an economic solution. It has characteristically neglected the legal and institutional arrangements to stabilize conditions and give people in these areas any prospects for the defence of their human rights.

The reestablishment of stability in the north and east will require a working policing system, able to guarantee security to the people rather than commit further abuses. When the entire policing system of the country has collapsed how can this sort of institutional development take place in the north and the east? While there is some talk about truth and reconciliation, what meaning does it have in the absence of any kind of security and protection for citizens, and in an environment where there is no possibility of guaranteeing any kind of legal entitlement? These are the sorts of problems that have to be addressed if some semblance of security is to be restored to the populations of these areas.

Courtesy: Article2 Read more...

Killing the disabled ticket seller

by Basil Fernando
[June 30, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian]

The Disabled Ticket Seller
With a severe head injury
Found dead ,is the news.

Five more similar cases of beggars
And disabled killed not long ago
Whose hand is behind all this ?

Those who try to beautify the city,
Are they not the suspects?

Moral ugliness of all this
Does not catch
The city dwellers eyes
When a nation is morally dead
Murderer is seen as a purifier
And a beautifier , a liberator , a hero.

Such a nation deserves a dictator.
Weep for my lawless mother land,weep,weep. Read more...

The failure of international journalism in Sri Lanka

"Today, what remains of democracy and the rule of law in Sri Lanka is no different to the dream that amputees have about the continued existence of their lost limbs. The phantom limb complex prevails, while in reality, justice is impossible for those who have been victims of political crimes, as well as those who have suffered serious crimes, such as murder or rape."
______________

by Basil Fernando

(June 29, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) For many decades now, international journalists have interpreted every story that has emerged from Sri Lanka to be some kind of war story. Some journalists have proposed that Sri Lanka’s use of overwhelming force was able to eradicate terrorism in the country, and that other countries such as the United States, should follow suit. The pathetic failure of international journalism is demonstrated by these endeavours.

In recent years, Sri Lanka has undergone a systemic collapse, as the rule of law system and any semblance of democracy have crumbled. This is a story that has never been portrayed adequately by international journalists; instead, almost all journalists continue to refer to Sri Lanka as a democracy. Journalists focus on Sri Lanka as a war zone, and there is little reflection about the development of Sri Lanka outside of the discourse of war.
_____________________________________

Depuis maintenant plusieurs décennies, les journalistes internationaux ont interprété toutes les histoires venues du Sri Lanka comme autant d’histoires de guerre. Certains ont suggéré que l’utilisation massive de la force a permis d’éradiquer le terrorisme au Sri Lanka et que d’autres pays comme les Etats-Unis devraient suivre cet exemple. Ces tentatives d’analyse démontrent l’échec pathétique qu’a connu le journalisme international au Sri Lanka........

Click here to read full text of this article in French
____________________________________

In the south, the Sri Lankan government carried out one of the most ruthless acts of repression in history, killing tens of thousands of civilians between the 1970s and 1990s. The official number of disappearances at the hands of Southern rebel group, Janatha Vimuksthi Peramuna (JVP) is estimated to be around the figure of 30,000. Numerous civil society organizations and international agencies believe that this figure does not fully represent the magnitude of this repression. In terms of statistics, the scale of disappearances that took place in Sri Lanka is similar to what took place in Argentina in the late 1970s. However, while the disappearances in Argentina gained international outrage, the references to similar occurrences which took place in Sri Lanka have been few and far between. The disappearances took place in the south, and the Sri Lankan police and military were mobilized to kill Southern rebels, most of whom were Sinhalese. Since this story did not conform to the ethnic war story that international journalists were constructing about Sri Lanka, it was discarded in favor of a story that was more appropriate for their cause.

In 1978, Sri Lanka adopted a Constitution wherein the Executive President was raised above the law. It was a staggering change; instead of the Constitution being used to bring checks and balances to the Sri Lankan government. It obliterated checks and balances for the Executive President and effectively dismantled Sri Lankan democracy. This experiment has survived, and there has begun a discussion of removing the two-term limit of the President in power and creating a possibility for political transformation equivalent to that which took place under Suharto in Indonesia and in several African countries. However, for international journalists, this issue still did not contest the importance of stories about the war.

The transformation of the Sri Lankan democratic government into an authoritarian system has made freedom of expression an almost impossible function. Media agencies bow to the pressure of this repression. Disappearances and other kinds of attack continue to remain a threat to anyone who exercises their right to oppose this political transformation in the country. The murder of Lasantha Wickramatunga and the brutal attack on several other journalists as well as the fleeing of journalists from Sri Lanka remains a symbol of this vicious repression. Even these stories have been only a passing fancy to international journalists. The story of Lasantha Wickramatunga would have been entirely forgotten had he not received international awards for his actions. Even so, no justice of any kind has been dealt to the perpetrators of this murder. In fact, the identity of those who killed Mr. Wickramatunga remains a mystery. There was no credible investigation into the murder of any kind, demonstrating that the once sclerotic justice system is now entirely incapacitated. The story of the collapse of the administration of justice in Sri Lanka has still not been covered by the international press.

Today, what remains of democracy and the rule of law in Sri Lanka is no different to the dream that amputees have about the continued existence of their lost limbs. The phantom limb complex prevails, while in reality, justice is impossible for those who have been victims of political crimes, as well as those who have suffered serious crimes, such as murder or rape. One story which recently came to the surface was of a man traveling with his wife on a motorbike. The couple was stopped and the woman’s arm was cut off so that the thieves could steal her gold bangles, and her finger was cut off so they could take her gold ring. When her husband tried to resist, he was shot. Last week, a CID inspector who dumped the dead body of a murdered person into the sea was discovered. The magistrate had to issue a warrant to get the Deputy Inspector General arrested because he was avoiding court. Such difficulties which face ordinary Sri Lankans do not attract the attention of international journalists.

The collective failure of the international press has aided Sri Lankan authorities in consolidating an authoritarian regime in which the norms that were established to protect citizens have been broken down. Those journalists who believe in the importance of their role in disseminating information must question why the international media has failed to discuss and analyze the situation in Sri Lanka. There are many similar cases going on in other Asian countries and countries around the world. However, the issue remains that the international press has failed to reflect the depth of the crisis that ordinary Sri Lankan citizens continue to face.
Read more...

Premier’s Poson day dream

by Basil Fernando

[June 27, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian]

Look, he said, this wonderful country
Where no murder ever happens
How uncivilized are
All those other lands !

Cutting of an arm to get the gold bangles
from a travelling woman
Cutting a finger to get a ring
Kidnapping a three year old
To demand a ransom

Rape of Doti’s daughter by a court officer
At Kulutara
Murder in every corner
A body a bag at a road side
Never happened in his ultra-civilized dream land.

Read more...

Sovereignty of my lawless motherland

by Basil Fernando
[June 24, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian]

I am the elephant
I am sovereign
I will trample all people
I am the bully
I am sovereign
I will spit on the faces of people

Who are these others
To talk of law, to talk of democracy
I am sovereign
What I do
Is no one else’s business

If people go hungry
What do I care
I have powers
That are rare
I am sovereign, so I am. Read more...

UNJUST- A thought provoking documentary

The story of these three women is not just their story. It is the story of all persons who have been subjected to human rights violations. When a justice framework does not exist, what do human rights mean? (Photo : Josefina Bergsten )
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A video production by Josefina Bergsten

A comment- by Basil Fernando

(June 19, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) This video is about three women. Angkhana is a woman from Thailand, a lawyer. She was married Somchai, a well known lawyer in Thailand. They have several children.

One day, Angkhana learns that her husband has been abducted. He has been dragged out from his car in Bangkok. He is missing.

From then, another chapter opens in her life. First she tries to look for her husband. She knows that he was involved in, among other things, dealing with the cases of several torture victims who complained of severe abuse by the security persons in Thailand. It was when he was preparing evidence to be filed in court on their behalf that he went missing.

She turns to the state and inquires about her husband. Within days, it becomes clear that the abduction had been done by the state and it becomes even clearer that in the kidnapping the prime minister himself has at least some indirect knowledge. In the subsequent years, the state has not answered her questions about the whereabouts of her husband or what happened to him.

Soon it becomes clear that it is a case of forced disappearance. The only people who helped her in her search for her husband are several human rights groups in the country and outside. They make a determined attempt to ask for accountability on the part of the state.

Then she began to understand integrated network of enormous secrecy surrounding her husband’s disappearance. There is an enormously organized attempt on the part of the state to deny information to keep the entire process severely under secrecy. With protest, it goes on for a very long time. She is promised some enquires, but these inquires are wholly inadequate. And then there is the legal process. For years and years, the legal process drags on. Ultimately, one person is sentenced for three years. However, the details of the whole process are kept hidden.

She tries to get information about what has happened to her husband, and where the body is if he is dead, or any part which can be found. However, the response of the state is entirely minimal. For most part, no real reply is given to her by the state.

Here is a woman whose husband has been taken away without any legitimate reason. She has reason to believe the state agencies have killed her husband. And further, the entire system of justice is unwilling and unable to deal with her problem.
She is a citizen. She is supposed to have all the rights like any other citizen in Thailand. But even on this most elementary issue of the right to life of her husband and her right to know information about him, the state is plays a completely negative role. The state becomes the killer and also the one who hides everything from her.

The second is a case from Indonesia.

Suciwati is an Indonesian young woman. She is a worker. Being involved in the trade union movement, she came across a man who is passionately committed to the rights of workers and who is an ardent human rights activist. She is attracted to him because he is brave and kind and an honest person. They get married and they have two children. He is a deep family man and they have a happy family.

Her husband, Munir, who wants to do a greater service to the country through the field of human rights, wants to learn more and gets a scholarship to Netherlands. He leaves with a determination to spend years learning in order to prepare himself for the future. Soon before he leaves, there was a man who inquired about his leaving and offers to be helpful. He departs in an Indonesian airline, belonging to the Indonesian government.

Next she hears that he is dead. As the time goes by, she learns that the death has been by poisoning while he was in the plane. It becomes a clear case of highly organized murder. There is huge protest in the country in which many join and demand inquiries. It takes years.

Once again, the Indonesian state, very much like the Thai state, engages in secrecy. There are all the attempts to cover up the murder, and to protect the murderer. Once again, it becomes clear that the state is involved in the killing. And the state is also involved in trying to protect the killer and to deny information to this woman.
Years and years of struggle later the court gives an order, and the order was to acquit the accused. Once again there is protest and with enormously powerful protest, there is another case filed, the earlier verdict is overturned and one person, the man who worked at the airforce, a secret agent, is found guilty. He is sentenced to 20 years.

However, those who organized the killings, the more powerful ones, are being protected. Again there is protest; however, there is no attempt, by the state, to give details about the total circumstances of the killing.

Again this woman is a citizen, and like others, she has all the human rights in name. But her husband is killed by the state. Her children had been denied their father, and all the responsibility of bringing up her family is on her shoulders. She is denied by the state a proper inquiry into the murder, although the state owns a responsibility to investigate all crime. It takes years and years to get anything moving.

Finally, the justice system itself betrayed this woman. What do her human rights mean to her? When the basic rights that should have protected her husband has been denied, the basic right of the children to have their father has been denied, basic right of her as a woman to have her husband has been denied. Other than that, the state itself engages in a struggle to deny information. Worse still, the justice system also betrays her.

The third woman is from Sri Lanka, Padma. She has a loving husband and two children. Both children are very young. They have what she says is a happy family.

One day police officers virtually restrain her and put her in a jeep and tried to force her to bring her husband from work. She is told that her husband is responsible for triple murder. When her husband comes, he is arrested and soon severely tortured by police who tried to find information about the murder. It turns out that they have arrested the wrong man and then have severely beaten up the wrong man. Due to the beating, he suffers severe kidney failure, and is admitted to hospital while unconscious.

The entire burden of fighting for her husband’s life, which threatened by the officers of the state, is forced upon her. Her struggle is supported only by a group of human rights activists and some friends, who attract the attention of doctors. She is thereby able to save the life of her husband.

On his return, a fundamental rights petition is filed and the Supreme Court finds the police officers to have violated the rights of her husband and makes a landmark judgment, from the viewpoint of law.

However, later there is a further case against these police officers, and in order to save themselves, they shoot her husband on a public bus on his way to work.
There begins another struggle for inquires and after severe attempts, some inquiries take place. However, the years of litigation before court, and the court finds the accused not guilty. The entire process of justice is denied in relation to the torture and the murder.

She is denied of a loving husband, her children are denied of father, and the entire burden of bringing up the family falls on her. And all the burden of denial of the right to life for her husband and all other problems created for her have been done by the state. And the justice system denies any kind of justice.

She too is a citizen; she too has human rights like others, and what do her rights mean to her? There is murder, there is complete denial of justice, and the entire process is one of complete absurdity. In this agonizing absurdity where her life is caught, what do human rights mean to her?

What do human rights mean in the absence of justice?

In the case of Angkhana of Thailand, Suciwati of Indonesia and Padma of Sri Lanka, we are faced with profound questions about the nature of society and the very meaning of life and the place of justice.

Human rights are based on the fact that the state has the obligation to protect the citizen's rights and guarantee these rights for all. However, in the lives of the three women mentioned above, we have seen that the state has become the killer and denied them the rights they are entitled to. The state in all three cases is different as they come from three countries but the fundamental problem is the same: That problem is that the state itself has become the killer.

When rights are denied, the state is supposed to investigate into that matter and engage in an exercise of restoration of the lost rights. The restoration may not result in the perfect return to the situation before the violation, but the restoration is supposed to deal with all the issues relating to violations and bring about trust within the individual of once again being placed back into a normal situation of living.

How does this operate when the state itself is the killer?

That is the very issue that these persons from three different countries are faced with. The third aspect is that in the event of the denial of rights by one part of the state, which is the executive, there is another branch that protects rights: the process of justice. Now the agents of justice are behind the killings. The security forces also happen to be the investigative branch in matters of justice. In these cases, at the very inception, the inquiries are denied. In this instance it is the judiciary that has to intervene powerfully against the executive so that the wrong done by the executive is cured by the judicial process.

The very essence of justice therefore is that it has the capacity to correct wrongs done by the executive branch. However, in the case of these three women, the judiciary does not have any such power. The judiciary offers many rituals. There are trials, witnesses are called and various things happen. However, they are nothing beyond rituals and have no deeper or profounder sense of meaning. At depth is the issue of the denial of justice. Justice is denied because in these countries justice is incapable of being justice. The judiciary is incapable of being the judiciary in the real sense of the term. What you have is some kind of a phantom judiciary acting as if they have some kind of power when there is no real power.

Then all these three women are victims of the absolute power of the executive that engages in the denial of rights and there is no protective arm at all within the state to help them. Their only refuge is civil society. However, within civil society too there are only a small group of persons who exercise solidarity and friendship towards them. These people share the same powerlessness as the three women. Here are groups of citizens sharing equal powerlessness giving support to each other. There is value in their protests, there is psychological help in small groups, some kind of final human bonds between groups of citizens. And all are equally powerless.

Below is the vast civil society of the country which neither understands nor intervenes in this whole process of problems created by the executive. In many ways they are uninvolved in the whole process, in a conscious sense. However, they are all involved in the denial. There is a pretended ignorance, indifference and lack of involvement.

The story of these three women is not just their story. It is the story of all persons who have been subjected to human rights violations. When a justice framework does not exist, what do human rights mean?

Beneath that there is a further and deeper problem. What does the term, ’women's rights’, mean in the absence of justice? Women too are part of the same society. They are human beings. Protection of their rights requires that there is a protective mechanism within the state. When the justice mechanism has been killed, what is the protective mechanism for them? Can that aspect be completely ignored when we are discussing the rights of women? Read more...