Asking ‘hard’ questions from the ‘yahapalana’ government
As ‘fashionable’ as this may seem at the moment, truth-telling in Sri Lanka should not be confined to the Northern conflict, its victims and its perpetrators.
An essential link in the justice dilemma
there was an active abstaining from filing indictments under the Act. Has this practice of undermining the Act changed and if so, what are the statistics that can be cited in response thereof ? These are the ‘hard’ questions that the Sri Lankan State must be called upon to answer. The Government needs to be put strictly on issue in regard to this matter. It must not be allowed to take refuge in mere waffling about directions and the law in theory.
A common record of state failures
Just last year, the United Nations Human Rights Committee (the Committee) established under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights considered an appeal filed by the dependants of Sunil Hemachandra, the lottery ticket winner who was taken into custody by the police following his claiming a substantial sum of money and then died inside the Moragahahena Police Station detention facility in 2003. Issuing a Communication of Views, the Committee examined the matter in detail.
In fact, the record reads like a common repeat of all such similar cases, in the South and in the North, broadly speaking. Here, the investigation had been carried out by the same members of the police force (from Moragahahena Police Station) as those implicated in the victim’s death. None of the officers involved in the alleged violation was suspended or reassigned pending the inquiry, and the case was not referred to the special investigation unit.
The judicial process was no better. The magistrates relied on the evidence collected by the police officers which lacked the requisite impartiality and independence. It is stated on record that the Attorney General refused to inquire into the matter, despite the express order to do so from the Magistrate of Horana. The dereliction of duty occurred at several levels. Despite the victim’s critical medical condition, characterized by uninterrupted bleeding, to which the detention authorities were alerted, the authorities failed to seek medical assistance for several hours.
The responsibility of the State
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court did not order any further investigative action, or a full separate investigation. Indeed, it took the Court seven years to rule on the fundamental rights petition filed in respect of this incident, finally concluding in August 2010 that the victim’s custodial death was not due to torture. In its Concluding Views therefore, the Committee found quite reasonably that the Sri Lankan State was responsible, either by act or omission, for failing to protect Sunil Hemachandra’s life, to properly investigate his death and take appropriate action against those found responsible.
So even as the furore about the 2006 Singarasa precedent is ignited afresh as was examined in these column spaces last week and the Prime Minister engages himself in potentially inflammatory referrals of judicial decisions to the Speaker of Parliament for rulings, there are other priorities in issue. His administration must demonstrate an actual commitment to reforming the State’s investigative and prosecutorial policies.
In the absence of this, one judicial precedent or another (bad in law or otherwise) and copious reports to the United Nations will matter very little.