Justice becoming a joke

Last week, the Fort Magistrate’s Court released comedian Natasha Edirisuriya and activist Bruno Divakara, after the Attorney General advised that there was insufficient evidence to charge them with making statements harmful to religious harmony.

In May 2023, the Criminal Investigation Department arrested Edirisuriya over allegations of ‘disrupting religious harmony’ due to a comedy performance. Subsequently, the CID informed the courts that she was being investigated under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) Act and the Penal Code. Bruno Divakara, the former owner of the social media platform that published Natasha Edirisuriya’s statement related to the investigation, was also arrested.

Both these individuals spent weeks in custody before being granted bail, for the supposed crime of a joke made during a comedy skit. This was the near lunatic state of affairs of the State which decided to prosecute these individuals for using their freedom of expression. After over a year of this circus, wasting considerable time and State resources, the Attorney General has now decided there is no evidence to proceed with this case. After causing enormous mental and physical damage to two law abiding individuals the State has now moved on.

They are not the first victims of State oppression against freedom of expression. Poet and teacher Ahnaf Jazeem, who was detained under draconian anti-terror laws for more than 18 months was acquitted from the case filed against him. Jazeem was arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) in May 2020 during President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s term, on allegations of extremism for his poetry book called ‘Nawarasam’. Jazeem was indicted in the Puttalam High Court in November 2020 for allegedly making extremist speeches to students at the School of Excellence he taught and detained till December 2021. He later revealed that the police sought to force him to falsely confess to a connection to lawyer Hejaaz Hizbullah.

Today, Jazeem, like Edirisuriya and Divakara, has been exonerated of all accusations. Neither of these individuals have received any compensation for their suffering, let alone even an apology for the enormous harm done to them and their families. They are not alone for the State using arbitrary detention as a tool of oppression. SSP Shani Abeysekera, Sri Lanka’s most celebrated CID sleuth was incarcerated for 11 months where he nearly died due to health conditions, only to be released on orders of the Court of Appeal which called his case “fabricated”. Dr. Shihabdeen Shafi who was serving as a gynaecologist was falsely accused and arrested for carrying out forced sterilisations on Sinhala women. He too was later exonerated and reinstated in his job. Lawyer Hejaaz Hizbullah was detained under the PTA for nearly two years before the Court of Appeal granted bail. None of these individuals, nor the dozens of Tamil PTA detainees who had been incarcerated, some for well over a decade, have received any compensation for their turmoil.

Shouldn’t the State bear responsibility or at the very least acknowledge the enormous harm that was caused to these individuals and their families? The police who arrested them, the magistrates who authorised their detention, the Attorney General who didn’t intervene earlier despite the ridiculousness of the accusations, should all be held to account. These victims’ lives have been devastated, relationships ruined, families torn apart, and careers destroyed. Despite all this harm, no one has been held accountable or the victims compensated for the damage caused. While the exoneration of Edirisuriya and Divakara is most welcome, no one should live under the illusion that justice was served.