Our Cry For Justice Is Not Only For Those Who Come Seeking Justice But Judges Who Can Not Speak For Themselves: President BASL

April 1, 2014 
“The Judgment Justice Sri Skandaraja wrote presiding a divisional bench quashing the parliamentary select committee proceeding on the 43^rd Chief Justice  made him pay the Supreme Sacrifice which cost him, his family and the loved ones dearly.” said the president of Bar Association of Sri Lanka.

President of the Bar Association Upul Jayasuriya

President of the Bar Association Upul Jayasuriyamade above remarks at the convocation on March 30, 2014.

He said; “The 43^rd Chief Justice herself had to pay her price and sacrifice with more than a decade and half of her Judicial career, for standing up to her integrity. Up to date she is being hounded out. Permit me to quote from Mahatma Gandhi, ‘The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.’

“We the bar shall firmly be committed to the causes that are paramount to our integrity and the independence we stand for, at the Bar with no change of course.

“When we recount the circumstances, time, and personages of this tragic background and the guiltless life of Justice Sri Skandarajah, we find that the wrongs of headless anarchic attitudes and the ruin of a nation are on the cards and on the heads of the people of this country.

“The deprivation of that humble simple man who sat behind the bench has been robbed from the Sri Lankan nation, a Judge, whom we could call a judge in the literal sense of the words.

“In the discharge of his Judicial duties, those who looked at Justice SriSkandaraja as his Moses, shall bow their heads beneath their bitter load; in our heavy loss, and our land’s dimmed glory. But who weeps for him? The hour is  upon us when we must cry, though no mortal may ever hear us, No more of him, but let’s awake from the fearful palsy fallen upon the people, and answer to ourselves and to the system that robbed him of his rightful place.

“Our cry for Justice is not only for those who come seeking Justice but Judges themselves who can not speak for themselves. It is time that transparent procedures are put in place and independent criteria based on merit be be adopted and turn our back to those who take positions that do not legitimately belong to them.”

Read the full speech here