We need to talk about the Police

This past week saw the Sri Lankan section of social media caught up in the discourse surrounding the young couple arrested for filming a pornographic film at the Pahanthudawa waterfall. 

The couple, who are believed to have filmed around 50 such movies at several other public areas in the country, were arrested under Sri Lanka’s public indecency laws, though it is this grounds for their arrest that has brought about disagreement among members of the public.

While several argue that the couple having sexual intercourse in public is correctly against the law, the fact that the arrest was made after the fact — Police were only made aware of the indiscretion when a video was posted to several websites and media platforms — and that the duo were technically not caught ‘in the act’, has caused consternation.

Many believe that this is yet another example of the Police’s heavy-handed approach to ‘public indecency’ in the country, and their self-designated role of ‘moral police’. Moreover, activists argue that it brings into focus much-needed reforms surrounding the country’s outdated Vagrants Ordinance.

An archaic piece of legislation and a legacy of colonial rule, the Vagrants Ordinance states that a Rs. 5 fine be levied against anyone found to be breaking this law. Where things get a little tricky is that the vague wording of the law — it prohibits soliciting or committing acts of “gross indecency” or being “incorrigible rogues” procuring “illicit or unnatural intercourse” — means that anything from prostitution to holding hands in public could reasonably be prosecuted by Police.

In the past, this has seen the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) community in Sri Lanka unfairly persecuted; even though Sri Lankan law does not specifically criminalise transgender or intersex people, sections 365 and 365A of the Sri Lankan Penal Code prohibit “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” and “gross indecency”, commonly understood in Sri Lanka to criminalise all same-sex relations between consenting adults.

Moreover, just this past weekend some 100 underage couples engaging in ‘improper behaviour’ were arrested in Anuradhapura. These ‘couples’, who were all students attending the same tuition class, were eventually ‘advised’ and handed over to their respective parents.

To add to this, in the past few months alone, there has been a video of a police seminar which went viral, with a speaker addressing a room full of Police personnel, unequivocally stating that homosexual behaviour was ‘unnatural,’ — a notion discredited by several scientific studies — while in another interview, Senior DIG of Police Ajith Rohana stated: “Under no circumstance are we going to separate a husband and wife … if it is a slight assault, or abuse and threat, we won’t intend on putting that matter towards the courts, because if we do remand that person, then the husband and wife are separated. What then happens to the children?” 

The problem in each of these incidents is not a case of Police action or inaction, rather that the rule of law at present seemingly gives the Police carte blanche in terms of how they choose to implement it. Laws such as the Vagrants Ordinance only adds to the seemingly endless ambit the Police have been granted under Sri Lankan law to police those they personally deem morally corrupt.

Rohana qualified his statement by preceding it with his belief that in Sri Lanka, “unlike European countries, we have cultures, we have values, we have ethics”. If by that he means a culture, value and ethics where the marginalised and most vulnerable are left with no protections and are victimised based on puritan ideals, while domestic abusers run free under the guise of keeping nuclear family ideals intact and overlooking the preposterous notion of ‘slight assault’, then he and the Police are doing a sterling job.

While long-term solutions to this issue will only come with concerted reform of the Police, including mandatory sensitivity training, in the short term, a reworking of the laws so that Police aren’t given as many discretionary powers would be a good starting point.