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
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Monday, May 1, 2017
‘Lies And Deception’ In The Cabinet Approved Counter-Terror Draft
April 30, 2017
The Sri Lankan Government has managed to ‘trick’ sympathetic members of
the European Parliament into signifying approval for a draft
Counter-Terror Act last week which is far worse than the existing Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). The CTA was proposed to replace the PTA as a better alternative as promised by the Government.
Today’s Sunday Times carries a link to the ‘leaked’ Cabinet approved draft now
to be drafted as a Bill and a lead story by senior journalist Namini
Wijedasa on the conflict between the draft CTA’s prohibition on the
‘gathering of confidential information’ if it adversely affects public
security and the Right to Information Act of 2016. The RTI Act leaves
out ‘public security’ as a ground on which to deny information.
The
Government’s attempt to ‘trick’ its critics comes from unclear offences
in the initial draft being secretively brought back through different
language. The old draft was leaked by the Sunday Times last year
but after a storm of shocked protests, its contents were revised to take
out the worse parts. But those revisions are now no longer there. For
example, the old offence of ‘espionage’ has been taken out but the
actual content of the offence relating to ‘confidential information’ has
been brought back under a different heading, linked to ‘terrorist’ or
terrorist related offences.
Prominent
legal commentator Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena points out that this
exercise amounts to ‘lies and deception.’ Writing her regular column to the Sunday Times, she
says that protections offered through the draft CTA for legitimate
criticism in regard to the issue of ‘confidential information’ are
totally inadequate.
Protection
is given for anything published in ‘good faith’ with ‘due diligence’
and ‘for the benefit of the public in the national interest in
registered print and electronic media or in any academic publication.
Also, the protection will not apply if the publication is not
‘registered’ or is carried online.
Under
the Cabinet approved CTA, it will be a terrorist offence to write or
talk in a way that causes harm to the ‘unity, territorial integrity or
sovereignty of Sri Lanka,’ It was under a similar provision in the
Prevention of Terrorism Act that journalists had been jailed through
politicized prosecutions in the past. Now a publication may qualify as
an offence if the writer is found to lack good faith or did not observe
due diligence or the publication was not in the national interest by a
judge. These are ‘safeguards that provide scant protection in a
dysfunctional judicial and prosecutorial process’, Pinto-Jayawardena has
said. ‘Provisions that are perfectly reasonable in functional Rule of
Law systems assume sinister meaning connotations here because of that
reality’ she adds.