A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Final report on ‘Policy and legal framework relating to the proposed CTA of Sri Lanka’
The
Foundation for Human Rights (‘FHR’) and the University of Pretoria’s
Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa (‘ICLA’) have
collaborated to produce this joint paper. The authors of the joint paper
are Prof Christof Heyns, Director of ICLA and former UN Special
Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions; and Toby
Fisher, a London based human rights barrister. The review represents the
authors’ independent opinion.
Counter-terrorism legislation in Sri Lanka has been used in the past to
facilitate human rights abuses including arbitrary arrest and torture of
detainees. In response to widespread domestic and international calls
to repeal the much-criticised Prevention of Terrorism Act, the
Government of President Sirisena committed to replace it with a human
rights compliant framework for combatting terrorism. On 25 April 2017,
Sri Lanka’s Cabinet approved the Policy and legal framework relating to
the Proposed Counter Terrorism Act of Sri Lanka (‘PLFCTA’).
The PLFCTA does not provide for a human rights compliant framework for combatting terrorism.
In terms of the PLFCTA a range of powers will be conferred on the
Government of Sri Lanka, including the ability to arrest; to subject
suspects to lengthy pre-charge administrative detention; to seize and
confiscate assets; to impose curfews and travel bans; and to proscribe
organisations. All are potentially oppressive measures that interfere
with fundamental rights. Accordingly, the trigger for the exercise of
those powers should be tightly circumscribed.
A fundamental problem with the PLFCTA is that the offences to which the
Act relates are defined in such vague and broad terms that the
extraordinary powers conferred on the executive by the Act apply to
conduct that does not, on any reasonable assessment, amount to
terrorism. That failure tightly to define the offence of terrorism and
other offences is not in line with the international law principle of
legal certainty and gives rise to a real risk of abuse.
That risk of abuse is heightened by the powers conferred by the Act that
lack effective judicial or other safeguards. First, the PLFCTA permits
lengthy periods of administrative detention without charge and without
effective judicial oversight. Secondly, it provides for the conferral of
extraordinary powers on the police, without the need to show reasonable
cause and without effective judicial oversight, to search and seize, to
conduct a physical examination, and to require a bank, service
provider, or government institution to provide confidential personal
information. Without adequate safeguards these powers interfere with
fundamental rights binding on the State and are likely to amount to a
breach of, inter alia, Articles 9 and 17 of the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights (‘ICCPR’) to which Sri Lanka has been a
party since 1980.
Further, although the PLFCTA includes some measures to mitigate the risk of torture, it does not go far enough.
If Sri Lanka is to replace the Prevention of Terrorism Act with a human
rights compliant framework for countering terrorism, Parliament must
ensure that substantial revisions are made to the PLFCTA during the
drafting process. To enact a law based on the current PLFCTA would
perpetuate the discriminatory, abusive application of counter-terrorism
laws, which in the past have often been used to target one part of the
population.