Sri Lanka police today questioned one comrade of Colombo Action Committee (CACPS) and later in the day took into custody its campaign material upon a court order.
CACPS members were engaging in a leaflet distribution campaign today (24) morning in Piliyandala town area. They were distributing CACPS latest statement (in Sinhala) titled “Defeat the state terror unleashed against the masses, including the oppressed youth, in the name of “Operation Yukthiya”! Around 9.45am in the morning, Piliyandala police stopped one comrade who was distributing leaflets to people and escorted him to the police station. Inquired as to why he was brought to the police station, the Officer in Charge (OIC), informed CACPS members that the leaflet contains material “insulting the police” and that the police want to conduct an investigation over and around the leaflet. Police recorded a statement from the comrade and was released within about an hour.
CACPS members campaigning in Piliyandala town on February 24, 2024
In the evening around 4.45pm, a team of police officers including the OIC of Kesbewa Police arrived at the residence of Comrade and journalist Shantha Wijesuriya, who is the Secretary of CACPS, along with a warrant from Kesbewa Magistrate Court to search the house for offences under Section 484 and 485 of the Penal Code. These purported offences respectively are intentionally insulting with intent to provoke a breach of peace, and circulating false reports with intent to cause mutiny or an offence against the republic or public tranquility. The police seized around 500 leaflets containing the CACPS statement and several dozens of posters and placards that had been prepared for use at the demonstration, to be held on February 27 in Kesbewa town, organized by the CACPS and Kesbewa Action Committee, on the theme of the statement.
Kesbewa Police encircle journalist Wijesuriya’s residence on February 24, 2024
Yesterday, Wijesuriya was also summoned by Piliyandala police by order of S. Wickremasinghe, ASP, to record a statement over two hours, as part of an “expeditd investigation” over a complaint lodged by him of alleged death theats by a police officer over a bribary complaint, and over another complaint made by his son’s fiancee in respect of an alleged sexual assault by police officers attched to the Kesbewa police. The ASP has already decided and told Wijesuriya that his allegations are false and that he knows that police officers did not engage in the alleged activities!
While the police have hurriedly initiated court proceedings in respect of CACPS activities, have delayed action against those accused of serious allegations.
These acts of police and of Wickremasinghe’s government are an attack against freedom of expression of CACPS and the oppressed masses, and are intended to intimidate and harass political dissent. Police and the government are attempting to block leaflets reaching the masses and stopping CACPS campaigns.
We call upon workers, oppressed masses and those who defend democratic rights to condemn this assault on political rights and fight for and demand the immediate halt of harassment of CACPS members and stifling of its political activity by the government.
Sri Lanka Speaker, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena last Thursday (01) signed into law the Online Safety Act (No 09 of 2024) (OSA), a piece of legislation long prepared by the ruling class to crack down upon freedom of dissent in the country. The law was approved by the Parliament late January, with a majority of 46 votes, including provisions not in compliance with even the limited amendments proposed by the country’s Supreme Court in its determination on the Bill delivered last October. Subject to such proposals, the Supreme Court found the law, as a whole, constitutional.
This law is patently anti-democratic. It empowers a government body, the Online Safety Commission (OSC), the sole power to determine and declare the “falsity of any statement“, which would be published on an online portal, and thereupon prosecute anybody who makes and communicates a statement contrary to such “truth” declared.
“False statement” is defined as “a statement that is known or believed by its maker to be incorrect or untrue and is made especially with intent to deceive or mislead”. This knowledge or belief is presumed to be shaped by what is declared as false by the OSC, or what the government authorities have claimed to be true.
A person could be prosecuted for the offenses, among others, of “communicating a false statement” online and (a) posing “a threat to national security, public health or public order” or “promoting feelings of ill-will and hostility between different classes of people” (Section 12); (b) where such statement amounts to contempt of court; (c ) giving “provocation to any person or incites any person intending or knowing it to be likely that such provocation or incitement, will cause the offence of rioting to be committed”; (d) voluntarily causing “disturbance to any assembly lawfully engaged in the performance of religious worship or religious ceremonies”; (e) insulting or attempting to insult “the religion or the religious beliefs of that class” with “the deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of persons”; (f) inducing “any other person to commit an offence against the State or against the public tranquility” with “intent to cause any officer, sailor, soldier, or airman in the navy, army or air force of Sri Lanka to mutiny” or with “intent to cause fear or alarm to the public”. A person, “who wilfully makes or communicates a statement”, either true or false, “with intention to cause harassment to another person” (“target person”) by publishing any “private information” of the target person or a related person and causes such person “harassment”, also commits an offence. All such statements are “prohibited statements”.
Attempting, abetting and conspiring to commit these offences are also crimes.
The punishments for these offenses range from three to five to seven years imprisonment and in some instances may be doubled in the event of a subsequent offence, coupled with fines up to one million rupees.
The OSC has sweeping powers to order any internet service provider or internet intermediary (which provide the service of social media platforms) to disable access by end-users to an online location (such as a website, webpage, chatroom or forum), which contains a prohibited statement. It can also order removal of such statements. It can blacklist a website, social media account or a platform as a “declared online location”. The commission is also empowered to seize “property movable, and immovable and to sell, lease, mortgage, exchange, or otherwise dispose of the same”.
Criminalizing “fake news” has been the demand of the ruling class for some time. It was on the agenda of successive governments during the recent past – a draft law was on the table during the former Sirisena-Wickremasinghe government in 2019, following the Easter Sunday bomb attacks, and then under former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was ousted by the mass struggles of April-July 2022, mainly organized through social media. These attempts were defeated temporarily by wider objections raised by civil society groups and international organizations, and right-wing political parties who demanded a social media and internet regulatory law that is in line with the “international standards”.
Sri Lanka’s President Ranil Wickremesinghe salutes military parades at the the government’s 76th Independence Day celebrations in Colombo, on February 4, 2024. | Photo Credit: Reuters
Presenting the Bill in the Parliament, Public Security Minister Tiran Alles claimed that this law is required to fight online harassment against women and children. This is only a pretext. He also revealed the intention to curb “misinformation” that damaged the reputation of parliamentarians. This is a reference to the extensive social media activism during mass struggles of 2022 that rejected the whole parliament.
Every opposition party in the parliament agrees with the government for a social media regulatory law placed in their hands.
During the parliament debate, National People’s Power (NPP) Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake concurred with Alles declaring that “things that should not happen also are taking place [in social media]”.
Main opposition party Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) member of parliament, Harsha de Silva worried that international tech giants would abandon Sri Lankan online space. His is the concern of the tech profiteer capitalists, whom de Silva wants to confer unbridled freedom to attract investment. Around the world, these companies have already been complicit in government censorship of free speech.
If and when in power, these parties will also ruthlessly employ these laws against the working class and political opponents, particularly from the left, to meet the demands of international financial capital.
Pseudo-left FrontLine Socialist Party (FSP) Education Secretary Pubudu Jayagoda told media, the proposed law is redundant because, “there are already laws to deal with situations of this nature [those covered by the new law]”, and conveyed FSP’s subservience to the oppressive legal system of the bourgeois state and the parliament. Its “People’s Council” programme is an appendage of the parliamentary system.
Another view among the middle class has been vocalized by Gamini Viyangoda, writing in the pseudo-left paper “Anidda” on Sunday (04). Viyangoda says that the Bill is politically maneuvered for the government “to prepare an environment to safely face the upcoming critical elections”. President Ranil Wickremasinghe, who himself knows to have a rare chance for him to gain a presidential election win, is not making these laws for himself, but for the capitalist establishment, all of whom, including NPP and SJB, have affirmed their readiness to go ahead with the austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), on the back of the people. This is the very truth that these radicals conceal from the people.
While OSA is made law, the government placed on the pipeline a new anti-terrorism law, surpassing the powers of arrest, administrative detention or custody and prosecution under the existing draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) of 1979. More than 35 parties challenged the proposed law last month in the country’s Supreme Court. Poet Ahnaf Jazeem, who is a former torture victim of PTA, petitioned the court and submitted that “this authoritarian law… is essentially designed to be used as a weapon of collective punishment against the working class… It is driven by class hate.“
Soon after his appointment as president, Wickremasinghe declared his government’s class war against the working people and the poor, poised to implement harsh austerity measures dictated by the IMF. In this backdrop, these laws are the new arms of Wickremasinghe’s armory to be used against political dissent, especially left-wing political ideas and movements, journalists and activists, to intimidate, harass, question, arrest, and imprison them, and block websites and social media accounts. Sri Lanka police is notorious for employing draconian anti-terrorism, public security and hate speech laws against social media activists, artists, protesters and ethnic-minorities.
Recently, Alles deployed special police forces to “fight drug menace” and arrested over 56,000 since December 17. This operation, falsely named “Yukthiya” (Justice), is intended to terrorize urban and rural impoverished areas, intimidating working people and youth throughout the country. Last month, the government commenced using facial recognition technology, according to Alles, as part of plans to “eradicate” the under-world and drug-trafficking.
Wickremasinghe has come a long way toward a police state, with dictatorial powers conferred to him under the country’s communal constitution. He has deployed tri-forces as strikebreakers and used essential services laws to witch-hunt worker leaders.
The global imperialist crisis, however, has not left Wickremasinghe alone in this onslaught against the masses. Just one month before OSB was tabled in parliament, the United Kingdom passed a similar law targeting social media freedom. In India, websites and social media platforms are now required to remove content about the Union Government, when notified by the Press Information Bureau (PIB) as “fake”.
The trade union leaders have succumbed to Wickremasinghe’s IMF “economic restructuring” plans and have no political programme to fight against austerity, nor to defend democratic rights. It is only the working class, which can and should fight to abolish these repressive laws and defend democratic rights. This requires organizing in their own independent organizations, united across ethnic divisions and industries, to bring about a government of the working people, free the economy from the siege of international financial capital and restructure the economic life on socialist lines.
This week, poet Ahnaf Jazeem, a former victim of Sri Lanka’s draconian terrorism law, filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the government’s proposed new Anti-Terrorism Bill. This new law is to replace the existing Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which, since its enactment in 1979 by former President J.R.Jayawardena government, was extensively used by successive governments against Tamil and Muslim youth and political opponents in the North and South of the country, to kidnap, detain, torture and kill and remand for years without trial.
Jazeem pleads from court a declaration “that the Bill in its entire content, is antidemocratic, infringes the foundational democratic fabric of the society and the democratic aspirations of the Sri Lankan people, and therefore unconstitutional, and lacks fundamental qualities required of a law for the same to be placed for approval by legislators even with a two third majority, and does not meet the threshold of democratic quality required to qualify it to be placed before the people to be approved by the People at a referendum.” The mechanism referred to here is how even “unconstitutional” laws are passed as law under the constitution of the island. Jazeem, contrary to almost all other petitioners, have refused to enforce this anti-democratic procedure.
Ahnaf Jazeem
Jazeem is the eldest son of a Muslim family of five children of a poor farmer and day-labourer, residing in Mannar, some 300Km North to the capital Colombo. He is the author of Tamil poetry anthology, Navarasam [nine moods] published in 2017. After graduation he was employed as a Tamil Language teacher. On May 16, 2020, Jazeem was arrested by the Police Counter-Terrorism and Investigation Division (TID) allegedly on the suspicion of having “published books on and taught his students ‘extremism’ and ‘racism”. He was then wrongfully detained under the orders of ousted President Rajapaksa for thirteen months, during which period he was subjected to severe physical and mental torture including being cuffed to a table day and night continuously for five months, and forced to record a self-incriminating statement.
Incarcerated in remand custody thereafter, Jazeem was granted bail in mid June 2021 on strict conditions. The case against him on a false charge of ‘indoctrinating’ his students under the PTA concluded with Jazeems’s acquittal in December last year, without even requiring to call proof in his defence. His freedom was secured by mass support he gathered from around the world. He is yet arbitrarily listed as a designated person, who the government believes “commit or attempt to commit, participate in or facilitate the commission of, terrorist acts”, by the Ministry of Defence.
The petition states that it is with this personal experience of being a victim of the existing terrorism law that Jazeem is challenging the proposed law. Jazeem was prosecuted as part of the racist anti-Muslim witch-hunt of the then Sirisena-Wickremasinghe government and then of the Rajapaksa government.
The proposed law will apply within or outside the territorial limits of Sri Lanka. The government commits to “protect other sovereign nations and their people from the scourge of acts of terrorism”, which lays down the readiness of the Sri Lankan ruling class to support imperialism and states of the type of Zionist Israel, so that any agitation by the people against such support of war by the government will be declared unlawful and as an act of “terrorism”.
Any person, who commits any act or illegal omission specified in the law, with the intention of (a) “intimidating” the public or a section of the public; (b) wrongfully or unlawfully “compelling” the Government of Sri Lanka, or any other Government, or an international organization, to do or to abstain from doing any act; or (c) propagating war or, “violating” territorial integrity or “infringement” of sovereignty of Sri Lanka or any other sovereign country, commits the offence of “terrorism”. This definition of terrorism is overly broad and could easily be used against political dissent.
Number of other clauses in the Bill that define offences “are overly broad, and draconian and will have ripple and chilling effect on the democratic fabric of the society and upon the democratic rights of the people of the country, especially the working people, the marginalized, ethnic minorities, the political dissidents hostile to government austerity policies and to freedom of expression and journalism,” the petition states.
Punishments for the offences under the law reach upto twenty years of imprisonment to life sentence.
The law also proposes unprecedented powers to the executive President and administrative officers in respect of detention, rehabilitation and laying down regulations in respect of the offences.
Under Clause 31 (1)(b) of the Bill, a detention order sought by the Inspector General of Police (IGP) or any officer not below the rank of a Deputy Inspector General of Police authorised by the IGP could be issued by the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence. Under PTA, it is the Minister who has this power. This removes all authority of a Magistrate to review the justification for the deprivation of liberty, and that too for a minimum period of 2 months, extendable to a maximum period of one year.
The law will alarmingly enable a police officer together with a Deputy IGP to remove a suspect from under judicially supervised custody to executive controlled custody (administrative detention), without establishing the commission of an offence, and in any event, even if an offence had been committed, by merely reporting an allegation.
The law will legitimize an existing practice whereby persons in detention are compelled by the Attorney General (AG) to accept ‘rehabilitation’ which in effect is a form of punishment without finding of guilt. The danger is that an executive office, the AG, is empowered to compel a person into acceptance of or impose a penalty without proving guilt. The President is empowered to specify places of detention.
Under clause 79 of the Bill, the President will be empowered to designate any organization as a proscribed organization, which power could be used against opponent non-governmental organizations, trade unions, action committees, political parties, media institutions and persons.
These egregious provisions of this law will also enable the President, after an application is made to the High Court by the AG and court stamp is obtained, to issue “restriction orders” against a person who has committed or is preparing to commit an offence stipulated in the law. The President, on the recommendation made by the IGP or the Commanders of armed forces may also designate any public place to be a “prohibited place”.
These powers will strengthen the already dictatorial powers of the president and create conditions for a police state.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe. (Image courtesy of island.lk)
The capitalist ruling class is amassing its armory against the working class: including the Public Security Ordinance, ICCPR Act, the colonial Penal Code, Establishment Code, Essential Public Services Act, Bureau of Rehabilitation Act and some other laws. Yesterday (24), the Parliament passed another historically unprecedented repressive law, the Online Safety Act (OSA), to block internet freedom, social media activity and largely freedom of expression of any sort. The government is now able to declare, through a commission, what is “true” or “false” on its own and arrest, detain and prosecute anyone who states otherwise.
President Wickremasinghe’s government is committed to implementing harsh austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the shoulders of the working people and the oppressed. His government is extremely discredited, and even has no popular mandate, as his predecessor was ousted by mass struggles in April-July 2022. New laws and repressive measures like “Yukthiya”, a mass intimidation campaign in the guise of “war against drugs”, yet a lighter version of the Duterte-type, are being used against striking workers, demonstrations and student protests.
Wickremasinghe effectively declared war on the working people just as he was parachuted to the presidency in a constitutional coup through the Parliament, an institution utterly hated by the People. The working people are faced with a social counter-revolution. Defending democratic rights and the fight against austerity need the mass mobilization of its class, around their own rank-and-file organizations, across ethnicities and trades, nationally and internationally, to usurp political power to re-arrange the society on socialist lines.
