Campaigns of cruelty

Eleven human rights organisations including global watchdogs Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have raised the alarm about the continued incarceration of attorney Hejaaz Hizbullah, who has now been held in detention for a year and two months. The rights groups have flagged the indictment filed against Hizbullah in February 2021, alleging that he had committed a speech related offence of causing “communal disharmony” under the provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. According to the joint statement on Hizbullah, this offence is one of several overly broad offences contained in the draconian anti-terrorism legislation Sri Lanka has persisted in keeping in its statute books for 40 years.

The statement on Hizbullah, who is recognised as a human rights activist and a minority rights advocate by these international rights groups, looks more broadly at the Prevention of Terrorism Act. For decades the law has been abused to detain persons for lengthy periods without trial. A study published by the Human Rights Commission in December 2020 found that, in some cases, PTA detainees were held in remand for 15-20 years without trial, in clear breach of due process and the right to fair trial. In several cases, the time prisoners have spent in detention under the PTA far exceeds the length of a prison term these persons would have served if convicted by a court of law. Torture and ill treatment are also common for persons being held in custody under the PTA. By design the PTA provides only minimal judicial oversight for detainees held under the law. As a result, prisoners held under the PTA are often subject to torture and other forms of ill-treatment inside detention centres away from the eyes of the world. The joint statement on Hejaaz Hizbullah and the Sri Lankan Government’s continued abuse of the PTA provisions to persecute and torture critics and dissidents could not come at a worse time.

The Sri Lankan economy is cash-strapped and contracting, and the country is teetering on the edge of sovereign debt default. In the wake of the pandemic, tourism has taken a devastating beating, depriving the Treasury of valuable foreign exchange earnings. With deadly variants of the coronavirus sweeping across the world, the global leisure travel sector will continue to contract, as the return to normalcy continues to be delayed. But Sri Lanka’s economic woes are also tied to its abysmal human rights record. Last month, the EU Parliament called on the European Commission to suspend vital trade concessions granted to Sri Lanka – more commonly known as GSP Plus – on the basis that the country continues to abuse anti-terror laws that do not conform to minimum international standards to jail citizens and critics of the Government. The EU Parliament Resolution on Sri Lanka was broadly about the country’s human rights situation, but specifically regarding the use of the PTA. The European Parliament urged the Commission to consider an immediate temporary suspension of the import concessions as leverage to force the Lankan Government to put its house in order on the human rights front. The withdrawal of GSP Plus at this juncture, even on a temporary basis, would cripple Sri Lankan exports and cause further economic strain. The Government is acutely aware of the tight rope it is walking on the PTA, but its obstinacy is showing. There are murmurs about reforming and amending the PTA by the Justice Minister and others, but other arms of the State remain determined to subject the prominent lawyer Hizbullah and the young poet Ahnaf Jazeem to cruel imprisonment under the same brutal law. In the face of relentless international condemnation, the Government seems resolved to continue this campaign of cruelty against Hizbullah, Jazeem and others, even despite the very real threat of economic consequences.

In terms of putting the country’s interests first, the continued use of the PTA begs questions about whose agenda the Government is really serving. Within a few months President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will mark two years in the presidency. His administration is facing national crises of existential nature on virtually every front. The release of Hizbullah and Jazeem and a genuine review of the PTA is low hanging fruit from the Government’s perspective, and these steps could be vital to securing Sri Lanka’s economic future in a time of deep crisis. Choosing to continue these vengeance campaigns instead goes completely against the national interest and puts Sri Lanka firmly on the road to economic ruin and global isolation.