Authorities in Sri Lanka must immediately rescind the emergency regulations and shooting orders that provide excessive powers to the police and military, and take immediate steps to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of peaceful protestors, Amnesty International said today.
The authorities must also refrain from using the state of emergency as a pretext to curb the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, including at the protest sites such as “Gotagogama” in the country.
Following the President’s proclamation of a State of Emergency on 6 May along with a country-wide curfew from 9-12 May, backdated emergency regulations were published overnight on 9 May. They give sweeping powers to the police and the armed forces to search and make arrests of “suspects” without due process safeguards. On 9 May, protesters peacefully demonstrating in front of the Presidential Secretariat since over a month were violently attacked by pro-government supporters after being allegedly incited to violence by top party leaders at Temple Trees, the Prime Minister’s official residence in Colombo. The police stood largely as bystanders to the violence, doing little to effectively protect the peaceful protesters and their protest site, despite having used tear gas and water cannon to disperse the protestors just days before on 6 May.
“Authorities in Sri Lanka should carry out a prompt, thorough, impartial, independent, effective and transparent investigation into the reports of violent attacks on peaceful protesters. Authorities should bring to justice those suspected to be responsible and ensure access to justice and effective remedies for victims,” said Yamini Mishra, South Asia Regional Director at Amnesty International.
“The attacks look like a deliberate decision by the Police to allow pro-government groups to physically assault peaceful protesters, destroy structures and wreak havoc at the ‘Gotagogama’ protest site. The authorities have an obligation to provide an enabling environment for the protesters to peacefully exercise their human rights, and to end the violent attacks on protesters,” added Yamini Mishra.
Elements of anti-government groups retaliated to the attack on 9 May by beating up pro-government supporters and destroying buses believed to have transported them. This escalated into targeting of parliamentarians with damage to their vehicles and arson against their homes, businesses, and party offices. According to authorities, nine people have died and over 220 people have been injured in the violence that erupted. Additionally, 41 vehicles had been set on fire, 61 vehicles were damaged, and 136 incidents of property damage were recorded.
“Justice and accountability from the Sri Lankan authorities is the need of the hour. An effective and transparent inquiry is necessary to bring those responsible for the violence to justice. The country is headed towards a deepening crisis while accountability and solutions for the economic crisis – key calls by the protesters – go completely unaddressed. Right now, Sri Lanka is a tinderbox, and any move to impermissibly restrict human rights through sweeping emergency powers granted to law enforcement agencies, including the armed forces, – will lead to further repression,” said Yamini Mishra.
The Emergency Regulations lack due process safeguards, such as the right to be informed of the reason for arrest, and the issuance of an arrest receipt at the time of arrest informing family where they would be detained. Access to legal counsel is subject to conditions. The offences are broad and can be used to bar trade union strike actions, give powers to the President to shut down public processions, restrict access to public spaces, restrict the right to freedom of expression including the right to information, freedom of movement and peaceful assembly.
Further, the Regulations provide powers to use armed force against anyone who does not comply with orders. The Regulations come with hefty penalties including life imprisonment for ordinary penal offences. There is also no access to bail for offences under the Regulations, except under “exceptional circumstances.” Persons authorised by the commanders of the armed forces are empowered by the Regulations to remove suspects from detention for a period of seven days at a time. Sri Lankan authorities are accused of multiple instances of custodial torture in the past, making these provisions dangerous and raising the possibility of misuse of these powers.
On 10 May, the Defence Ministry issued a notice saying the Armed forces have been ordered to open fire at anyone looting public property or causing harm to others- a move that has been called “illegal” by some parliamentarians. The cabinet remains dissolved following the PM’s resignation on 9 May.
“The shooting orders provide a license to kill. Violent mobs should be contained, however lethal force must not be the first resort. Any restrictions on human rights during times of emergency must be necessary and proportionate to the exigencies of the situation and must not be used as a tool against freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, right to personal security, liberty and freedom from arbitrary detention. Further, any derogations from human rights guarantees under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Sri Lanka is a state party, should be formally communicated with a clear explanation of the reasons for them to other State parties,” said Yamini Mishra.
Sri Lanka has a history of human rights violations implicating the Military, including custodial torture under consecutive emergency situations in the past. This pattern of violations of human rights must end.
The US State Department has called for political stability in Sri Lanka and also urged the Government and political leaders to work quickly to ensure public safety.State Department Spokesman Ned Price said the US is concerned by the deployment of the military in Sri Lanka.
“We underscore, we stress that peaceful protesters should never be subject to violence or intimidation, whether that’s on the part of a military force or civilian unit,” he said.
More broadly, the US said that it is deeply concerned by reports of escalating violence in Sri Lanka over the past few days.
“We condemn, as I said before, violence against peaceful protesters. We call for a full investigation, arrests, and prosecution of anyone instigating and involved in acts of violence.
We are, as I said before, also closely monitoring the deployment of troops, something that is of concern to us, and we’re also closely following political developments and the situation on the ground in Sri Lanka after the resignation of the Prime Minister,” Ned Price said.
The US urged the Government and political leaders to work quickly to ensure public safety and work together to identify and implement solutions to achieve long-term economic and political stability in Sri Lanka.
Ned Price said the Government must address the Sri Lankan people’s discontent over the economic crisis, including power, food, and medicine shortages, as well as their concerns about the political future of their country
The Government has spent millions of dollars for the importation of over 140,000 metric tonnes of rice from countries including Myanmar at the end of last year at a time when the country had sufficient stocks to meet the demand.
A stock of 147,091 metric tonnes has been imported during the period of November- December 2021 using US$ 73 million out of the country’s dwindling foreign reserves, official statistics showed.
The total paddy production from both the Maha and Yala seasons was equivalent to 3.3 million metric tonnes of rice which was estimated to be sufficient to meet the domestic demand at that time, the 2021 annual report of the Central Bank revealed.
Accordingly, total paddy production recorded a bumper harvest for the second consecutive year in 2021.
This rice production has been achieved as farmers continued their cultivation using chemical fertiliser and agrochemicals including pesticides already imported to the country before the import ban, a senior official of the Agrarian Development Department said. . .
This buffer stock of rice was sufficient to feed the people in this country for at least 15 months, he said, adding that there was no need to import rice during the November –December 2021 period.
However the Cabinet of Ministers had given approval to a proposal made by the then Trade Minister Bandula Gunawardena to import 300,000 metric tonnes from India and Myanmar.
Under this approval the Trade Ministry had planned to import 100,000 metric tonnes of rice from Myanmar but approval was rescinded, Trade Ministry sources said.
Therefore the Ministry has imported 20,000 metric tonnes of rice from Myanmar at a cost of $450 per metric tonne whereas other countries bought the same variety for $350 per tonne.
The over-payment was $100 per metric tonne, an inquiry conducted by the Committee on Public Finance (COPF) detected.
It has been observed that the total overpayment in this rice deal was $2 million and the stock of 20,000 of rice had been imported without even checking the quality.
The balance stock of 127,091 metric tonnes of rice had been imported from India at cost of $62 million, COPF observed.
Sri Lanka’s Finance Ministry is taking every possible step to enhance revenue even under the current situation of socio-political instability to save the people from impending starvation in food shortage and high inflation as a result of unproductive decisions and poor economic management .
This situation has now been rectified and necessary measures have been taken to secure short-term financing, from both domestic and foreign sources for day-to-day operations until a longer-term solution is reached.
. Persistent losses of related state owned business enterprises (SOBEs) add to the burden of the fiscal sector through contingent liabilities and loss of revenue while also creating significant financial pressures on the financial sector, latest report on Fiscal Sector Present Situation and Way Forward compiled by the finance ministry revealed. .
Given the financial situation of the country, divestment of underutilised and nonstrategic state assets, including unproductive SOEs, will also be required, it add
Given the tighter fiscal and monetary conditions, along with more market-based pricing, robust social safety nets must be designed and implemented. All social security payments must be based on objective criteria and made in a transparent manner using digital processes.
Digital technology will be crucial in revenue enhancement and expenditure rationalisation measures as well. Clear communication with the public, business and investor communities on all these measures will be important to ensure a sustained reform process, finace my document highlighted.
It is also important to foster the understanding that government expenditure on public services and welfare comes at the expense of higher levels of taxation or continued borrowings.
Sri Lanka can no longer afford to run high budget deficits, and whilst there is a requirement for greater investment in sectors such as education, healthcare, public transport, and service delivery, there are several aspects of government expenditure that require rationalization.
It is observed that a culture of unproductive government subsidization and handouts is no longer viable. Instead, a stable macro-economic environment which empowers citizens to thrive along with the necessary social protection mechanisms, would result in a more stable and sustainable economic outcome.
Sanath Manatunge, Chief Operating Officer of the Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC, has been appointed as the Managing Director and the Chief Executive Officer of the Bank effective from May 12, following the retirement of Sivakrishnarajah Renganathan two days ago (11).
Meanwhile, Sellathurai Prabagar has been appointed as the Chief Operating Officer filling the vacancy.
Manatunge has been serving the Bank for 32 years and held many top positions over the years, including the Bank’s Executive Director, Chief Operating Officer, Deputy General Manager for Corporate Banking heading the Corporate Banking and Trade Finance Divisions, and Chief Risk Officer.
Sanath Manatunge (left) and Sellathurai Prabagar
Under Manatunge’s leadership, the Corporate Banking Division of the Bank experienced rapid loan book growth and growth in areas such as Trade Finance fee-based income, while maintaining the quality of advances, according to DailyFT.
“During his tenure as Chief Operating Officer Mr. Manatunge headed strategically-important business verticals of the Bank such as Personal Banking, Corporate Banking, Information Technology, Cards, and Digital Banking, guiding them to become industry leaders. He has also given leadership and strategic inputs for transformational projects of the Bank such as ‘SME Transformation,’ establishing a long-term digital roadmap for the Bank and many other projects to improve operational excellence,” it added.
In this month’s Meet the Investigators podcast, Nobel Peace Prize-winning reporter and press freedom advocate Maria Ressa speaks about her career, about journalism and democracy, and about having courage in the face of constant intimidation.
In this month’s Meet the Investigators podcast, Nobel Peace Prize-winning reporter and press freedom advocate Maria Ressa speaks about her career, about journalism and democracy, and about having courage in the face of constant intimidation.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists collaborates with hundreds of members across the world. Each of these journalists is among the best in his or her country and many have won national and global awards. Our monthly series, Meet the Investigators, highlights the work of these tireless journalists.
Ahead of Press Freedom Day we spoke with Maria Ressa, the Filipino journalist who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 alongside Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov.
Ressa is a co-founder and CEO of Rappler, an online news site in the Philippines, and a former CNN correspondent. In recent years, Ressa and Rappler have become the targets of numerous legal actions and threats from the Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte and his administration. She has maintained her innocence and continues to fight back.
Maria’s new book “How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future” is scheduled to be published in the fall of 2022.
This interview was recorded prior to the federal election in the Philippines, which was won by Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
ICIJ’s award-winning Meet the Investigators series is emailed exclusively to ICIJ’s Insiders each month before being published on ICIJ.org, and is one of a number of ways we like to thank our community of supporters who are so integral to our independent journalism. You can join our Insiders community by making a donation to ICIJ. Thanks to all our ICIJ Members who have shared their stories with us, and to all our supporters for helping ICIJ continue its work.
TRANSCRIPT:
Scilla Alecci: Hi everyone! Welcome to Meet the Investigators, a podcast by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
I’m your host, Scilla Alecci. Ahead of Press Freedom Day we spoke with a journalist and ICIJ member who won the Nobel Peace prize last year.
Maria Ressa: I’m Maria Ressa, I am one of the co-founders of Rappler, in the Philippines.
Scilla: Maria is a Filipino journalist who grew up in the United States where her family moved in 1973 after then President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law.
After more than a decade away from home, in 1986 she decided to go back to Manila and work as a producer, and then reporter, for CNN. In the following years, Maria opened CNN’s Manila bureau and the Jakarta bureau, covering everything from natural disasters to terror attacks in South Asia.
Maria: What motivated me during that time period was, frankly, learning. Learning, learning, learning. Learning the craft, going country to country. Learning to manage a bureau, learning to understand politician systems, learning to understand cultures.
And then, over time, it was not just learning that I began to realize that information is power, and that it is necessary to demand justice.
Now, in today’s context, with technology taking over the role of gatekeeper, the role of journalism goes back to its real basic assumption of journalism, which is that you’re not gonna lie and that the facts are not debatable.
This is a battle for facts. If we win the battle for facts, we then can do the rest of the part of being a journalist, but facts are the anchor of a shared reality.
Scilla: After spending many years overseas, in 2004, Maria went back to the Philippines where she headed the news division of one of the country’s largest broadcasting companies, ABS-CBN.
Maria: I wanted to go back and figure out what the future would be like, of news.
So I went from being a reporter handling a small bureau to handling a thousand journalists, handling our regional network group as well as the six overseas bureaus we had. I learned a ton being a news manager.
And I realized that the largest organizations were getting caught flatfooted, because here comes this Internet. And in ABS-CBN and most of the large organizations, you don’t put your best people on the Internet. You put your best people on your primetime news because that’s where the revenues come in, and you put your younger people and maybe your third string on the Internet at that point in time, right? And then I realized: ‘Oh my God, this is going to fundamentally change what we do!’
Scilla: That’s when Maria and three of her colleagues decided to set up their own news organization: Rappler.
Maria: We were like, ‘Oh well, we’ll try it. If it works well for a year, if it doesn’t work, then we’ll go back to what we were doing and if it does work…’
Who knew, right? We’ve kept it at about 100 people. It’s a very dynamic, creative destruction moment and I wanted to stay agile.
There’s three pillars of Rappler: Technology, Journalism, and Community. And it’s funny, you know, I am a journalist and, yet, I place technology as number one, because I think that’s the biggest game changer. The journalism, the standards and ethics and the mission doesn’t change.
And then, the last part is communities. So, when we raised the seed funds for Rappler the elevator pitch was: ‘We build communities of action. And the food we feed our communities is journalism.’
Building communities was built into the way we think about journalism. You need to know what your community needs. You’re not just putting stories in the black hole.
The technology today, what we’re doing is building our own tech. We started actually a decade ago; we built our platform, but I learned so much in the process.
In the end, the goal of journalism is not academic — the goal of journalism is to make the world better.
That technology is what will enable journalism because the tech will not only give you your platform, but it will also determine your distribution. And I think that’s the biggest shift.
In the end, the goal of journalism is not academic — the goal of journalism is to make the world better, right? And that’s kind of fun to be able to say at my advanced age, that is still the goal.
Scilla: And it’s interesting that technology ー which you say it’s one of the fundamental pillars of your organization ー is also one of your beats. Your organization has been one of the first, actually, deciding to cover tech from a different point of view, to understand the power they have in society and the impact they have on people. How did that happen? How did you decide to investigate tech companies?
Maria: In my last year with CNN, the last decade or so I was working on terrorism. So post 9/11 my home base was the world’s largest Muslim population is Indonesia.
And so I was looking at how the virulent ideology, how it could spread, and I used social network analysis to do that. How it’d radicalize, how does it go, how do you build this?
And when we started at the tail end of that, I was beginning to see that social media was being used this way, could be used. And so the idea for Rappler was deeply connected to what we saw that was being used for evil.
For example, on YouTube in 2011, we saw a Filipino speaking Arabic asking jihadists from around the world to come to the Philippines for jihad. And I did the story on him, but then I thought: ‘if you can spread this through social media, well, why could we not use social media for good?’
The idea is to look at information cascades as a way to see how society moves. That was the idea for the mood meter for example.
Scilla: Before Facebook introduced its emojis, Rappler’s site already had what they called a “mood meter.” After reading an article a reader could click on a happy or sad face based on the emotions triggered by the story.
Maria: The idea for the mood meter is to be able to see how a news piece travels through our society in moods. So we had that data and that was kind of fascinating.
It was a hop, skip and a jump to then study this shift in 2016, because it was a radical shift for us. When we began to see candidates — it was then Duterte — and their supporters begin to use anger and hate.
That was rare in the Philippines because the top mood in the Philippines is not anger. It’s ‘happy.’ Filipinos are happy. They click ‘happy.’
So, in 2016, that changed. It became anger, and that was when we began to see something is off, something is happening, something is being changed.
And then we began to map it.
And so, in 2016, when we saw anger and hate being whipped up by politicians, by government officials, who would normally want to be uniting society, we began to map information cascades.
And then we began to look at networks of disinformation, networks that spread lies. And then slowly we could track behavior over time of these networks of disinformation.
And if we can do this, obviously, Facebook can do this, Twitter can do this, YouTube can do this. Why are they being allowed to do it?
Maria: Because it led us to where we are today, to show how we are being insidiously manipulated by power to maintain power and how it has weakened democracy.
It’s also led me to see that the inherent design of the social media platforms kill facts, actually spread the lies faster, and farther than facts, encouraged the worst of human behavior, has turned them into behavior modification systems.
And it is part of the reason democracy is weaker all around the world and, I would even say, is dying all around the world.
You look at Ukraine today and the lies that [President Vladimir] Putin, that the Russian media has used to justify the invasion of Ukraine — we saw this in 2014, the same bottom up attacks from fake accounts, and then the same things coming from, it was then the foreign minister of Russia at the UN. And nothing was done.
So now, with this happening, I think this is a pivotal moment globally. It will determine a look at the actions of nations, the actions of companies, the actions of social media.
This is a tipping point, I think.
Scilla: Duterte’s six-year term as president allowed by the constitution is over. And this month Filipinos are called to vote for the next president.
Maria: Right now the frontrunner in our presidential elections is Ferdinand Marcos Junior, the son of the dictator, who was ousted 36 years ago in a People Power Revolt that inspired people power movements all around the world.
Rappler has actually exposed Marcos’ disinformation network since 2019. In September 2020, Facebook took down information operations coming from China that were polishing the image of the Marcoses.
It is insidious manipulation and this is part of the reason it’s so hard to know what is fact and fiction. And if you don’t know, you cannot mobilize society.
In 2016, we were the first domino to fall with the election of Duterte. And then a little more than a month later, it was Brexit. And then you had Catalonia, you had down to like the U.S. presidential elections that brought [Donald] Trump in.
Scilla: For those of you who are familiar with the Philippines’s recent history the name Marcos will ring a bell. Ferdinand Marcos Junior – also known as “Bongbong Marcos” – is the son of the kleptocrat who ruled the country for about two decades until 1986. During the Marcos dictatorship, thousands of Filipinos were tortured, jailed without due process or murdered by the regime.
A government report later found that Marcos and his family had stolen between $5 billion–$10 billion from the Philippines’ Central Bank of the Philippines. More than three decades later the scion of the Marcos family is running for president.
Members of the Marcos family. From left, sister Imee Marcos, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr, mother Imelda Marcos, and sister Irene Marcos-Araneta.
Maria: Our future is at stake. And the irony is, it’s not just the future that’s at stake, it’s also our past because ー let’s make no mistake ー if Ferdinand Marcos wins, will we ever celebrate the People Power Revolt that ousted his family? Will we be able to get back all the wealth that still 36 years later this country still hasn’t got.
When you don’t have history, when it is being revised in front of your eyes, when, you know, Ferdinand Marcos, the father, is now buried in heroes’ grave…This is something that President Duterte enabled. Duterte was the first social media president of this country.
So, again, everything is connected. And I think the biggest problem really is that the laws in the real world are not reflected in the virtual world. So, that needs to change, in order to give democracies a fighting chance.
Scilla: After Rappler’s reporting on state-linked disinformation, Maria became the target of a vicious hate campaign on social media, and beyond. Last year a study by UNESCO showed that 60% of attacks were designed to undermine her credibility and reputation as a journalist; 40% of those attacks were targeted at her personally.
Maria: The reality is that I would still go to jail for the rest of my life. In less than two years, I had to post bail 10 times and three of those 10 cases have already been dismissed. We still have seven cases left, and then we just, this week [of February], got 12 more complaints, in a Davao fiscal’s office.
Again, these are meant to just harass and intimidate us, but at this point in time I am almost like, ‘please’… you know?
I guess what I learned is: don’t get intimidated, don’t voluntarily give up your rights. In a strange way, I have president Duterte to thank for really forcing me to draw my own lines.
How far will I go to defend the truth? Well, I learned that I would go pretty far. After six years of this, I just wanted to be a good journalist, I want to do the right thing for this time.
What will happen next? I could go to jail for the rest of my life. So I don’t know, so I just throw it up in the air. You know it’s that serenity prayer.
Filipino journalist Maria Ressa participates in a protest by press and media groups calling for press freedom in Manila in 2018. Image: Richard James Mendoza/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Scilla: Is there anything that you do to relieve the stress?
Maria: I mean, we have a great team, my co-founders are, you know, we have a joke among the four of us that only one of us can be afraid at a time. We rotate the fear.
We plan worst-case scenarios because inevitably whatever you can imagine is worse than what the reality is. So if you’re prepared for the worst, it’s actually always better. Every battle begins in your mind.
I look at the bright side. Even the Nobel Peace Prize, right? Who would have thought?
But I just did what I did, the right thing. And this is actually something that, in Rappler, we’ve been saying since 2016: We want to look back a decade from now and know that we did everything we could, that we did the best we could for our profession, for our country.
[Audio clip, Berit Reiss-Andersen, Nobel Peace Prize Committee Chair: The Nobel peace prize in 2021 has been awarded to two outstanding representatives of the press.]
ICIJ’s training manager and Eastern European partnership coordinator, Jelena Cosic, with Maria Ressa at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 10, 2021.
Scilla: In 2021 Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, the veteran editor of independent Russian magazine Novaya Gazeta received the Nobel Peace Prize. The committee said it chose them “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”
You were there as a representative of every journalist around the world, and that was great, because I guess, for many of us, especially for those working in very difficult conditions and was kind of a symbol that also journalism matters, deeply. How do you see the fight for press freedom now?
Maria: It’s fundamental, I mean, it’s fundamental to the survival of democracy. The Nobel Committee was pressured in a weird way. They chose journalists at a year when we have never been as besieged. The last decade has shown increased dangers for journalists.
The work that ICIJ does actually is probably the best response which is that we must collaborate, collaborate, collaborate, because the physical cost, the emotional cost, the mental cost for every journalist today has just increased.
It is a recognition of how difficult it is to do our jobs, but also a recognition of how critical our jobs are today. What do I see our job is today? It is standing up to power. It is demanding the truth. It is holding power to account.
So that Peace Prize, I think, is for all of us to continue. And now, I always felt this year was going to be the tipping point. Are we going to descend further into tyranny, into fascism? Or are we going to restore? Are we going to strengthen democracy? Because It’s very weak.
What I look for when I hire a journalist is not: can they write well? Can they do television? But it’s actually courage, because, in the end, what makes journalists different from anyone else … is the courage to confront power.
Scilla: Do you have any advice for young, aspiring journalists?
Maria: Be excited. Be creative. Don’t look at the past. Analyze exactly what is happening today.
Stick to the standards and ethics. The mission of journalism is important but the form will change.
What I look for when I hire a journalist is not: can they write well? Can they do television? But it’s actually courage, because, in the end, what makes journalists different from anyone else who is writing, or who can ask good questions, what makes a journalist different is the courage to confront power, that you can actually demand the answers in a way that is respectful of the institutions. But, in order to do that ー and to do it at a time when the costs are so high ー you need courage.
To young journalists: When I was your age, I didn’t have your power. You will have tremendous power. Don’t let naysayers get you down. This is an incredible time of creativity, of imagination. You must create what journalism is going to become.
Scilla: On this inspiring note I want to leave you and thank you all for listening to another episode of our Meet the investigators podcast. Please share it on social media or send us feedback at socia@icij org.
April and May 2022 will be remembered as the most important months in the post-independence era. During this short period the much hoped for people’s awakening expressed itself powerfully. People who wielded authority failed to see the writing on the wall although the wall was just next to the Presidential Secretariat and everywhere in the country. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa thought he was merely seeing ghosts. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa believed in the comforting words of his friends despite knowing that the treasury was empty. The entire political establishment preferred to take shelter in a fool’s paradise.
Some of them rallied around Mahinda Rajapaksa on the May 9 to try bullying tactics to suppress the protest movement. It misfired badly and nation rose to defend the protesters and retaliate against violence. That brought Rajapaksa era to an end although Gotabaya Rajapaksa nominally remains president. He is now an isolated person taking shelter in some unidentified place
The real issue now is what is next? It is only the people who can provide a workable answer to that question. Without their direct participation, no solution can emerge. The major issue is how to enable people to become agents of political and social change to resolve the economic crisis. That can happen only if the nationwide protest movement takes a further step towards achieving the goals they are fighting for by initiating a discourse on how to achieve system change. That they want the existing political leadership, which is unwilling and incapable of dealing with the serious demands of the people, to go is quite clear.
There are several issues on which there is consensus among the people.
The law and law enforcement
There should be a review of the legislation and practices regarding failures of the corruption control system. It is essential to reveal to the people why this system has failed to achieve its objectives in such a dramatic manner, causing hardship and difficulties not only to individuals but also to the economic and political system. Legislative and institutional mechanisms can be developed to ensure methods to control corruption. There are many lessons to be learnt from other countries and experts in the field may voluntarily help Sri Lanka.
Democracy and rule of law
A system of governance based on democratic principles and rooted in the tradition of the supremacy of law and the rule of law should be incorporated into every law including that of the constitution. Any provision of law whether it is in legislation or in the constitution should be regarded as having no validity in law if the principles relating to democracy, supremacy of law and the rule of law are violated. If this recommendation is put into effect, many problems relating to the 1978 Constitution can be corrected.
In all discourses that deal with solving the current economic crisis, people should be informed of the discussions; attempts at secrecy should be disallowed. People should be encouraged to participate in their localities and in their professional capacities to discuss ways to end the economic crisis and to lay the foundation of principles and practices for dealing with matters of the economy. Local traditions and conventions should be built that would become part of social consciousness as has happened in countries where there has been genuine democratic change. People should be able to intervene in any interference to their economic system and wellbeing.
Taxation
A just and equitable taxation system should be established as soon as possible. The affluent classes have resisted being subjected to a system of just taxation. When some attempts were made by previous governments, the propaganda machinery was unleashed and the governments were defeated. A decisive attempt should be made to develop and implement a taxation system where better off income groups share the burdens of keeping a healthy economic life.
A clear agricultural policy
A clear agricultural policy should be developed in consultation with farmers, agricultural experts, economists and everyone who has a concern to ensure that food supply is not sabotaged by unnecessary imports and also to eliminate commissions when bringing imports. This is linked to strengthening the legal system.
Opening political space for youth
The youth are now playing their role in political and social life. They are a new generation with a different understanding of society and with attitudes that were not possessed by past generations. Every attempt should be made to bring these younger elements into the public discourse. The respect for freedom of expression, association and assembly are essential when it comes to dealing with a societal crisis. When the younger generation is entering into public debates, they should be allowed to participate. This will cause a major shift in the political culture.
Right to education
It is essential to preserve the right of education. In dealing with the economic crisis, no attempt should be made to deprive the rights enjoyed by youth for a better education, which will contribute to economic development as well as economic and political stability.
Food and medicine
There should be no food or medicine shortages. The first priority is to ensure that a food crisis will not result due to measures taken to overcome the economic crisis. From now on, the government as well international humanitarian organizations should assist Sri Lanka to avoid a catastrophic situation. There is already increased malnourishment as well as suicides related to hunger.
Money laundering and recovery of stolen national assets
The misappropriation of national wealth by individuals should be a matter of highest concern. Neither Sri Lankans abroad nor foreign investors will assist in overcoming the economic crisis if they think funds are being misappropriated. Many measures should be taken to deliver justice and fairness in all investigations and prosecutions and in ensuring that culprits will not escape. Whatever has been taken away illegally and deposited elsewhere should be properly investigated and the recoveries made. Many international organizations work on the issue of discovering wealth from stolen nations with greater cooporation among the nations.
The birth of a new social consciousness
This is the most agonizing experience many Sri Lankans have gone through. Such moments can shape the political consciousness of people. Nationwide protests are an indication that people are deeply concerned about their lives and the lives of their children. People are united in the cry to save the country from the economic and political crisis it is facing. This is when a deeper consensus emerges as to what people want to be and what are the kind of institutions their society needs. The people have a reason to show their resilience and to participate in a process to improve their prospects for the future.
Now the discourse should shift to pursue answers to these issues.
The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) observes that all bodies responsible for keeping law and order in the country have failed to cooperate in response to the tense situation occurred in the country recently.
In a statement, the Commission noted that the Inspector General of Police (IGP) and the Army Commander were summoned to the HRCSL on the 11th in connection with the May 09 assault and that it received explanations from the two on how the Police and the Military had acted in controlling the situation.
Summons were issued to Senior Deputy Inspector General of Police in charge of the Western Province Deshabandu Thennakoon to appear in the Commission on May 13, it added.
Given observations on the recent events, the HRCSL also emphasised that there is a problem with the function of the intelligence units of the country.
