“Yukthiya” operation and the due process

Minister for Public Security Tiran Alles last week insisted he doesn’t give a hoot (thutuwakata gananganne neha) what the UN or any other human rights agency says about his latest “Yukthiya” operation to counter narcotics. The minister, flanked by acting Inspector General of Police Deshabandu Tennakoon, was addressing the local media last week. The Supreme Court recently found Tennekoon in violation of fundamental rights, including protection against torture.

Alles says that the recent concerns expressed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is on the behest of a few lawyers and NGOs who had reported numerous violations of due process, excessive use of force, arbitrary detention, torture and even killings during the much-touted Yukthiya operation. Alles claims that those who criticise the Yukthiya operation are connected to drug traffickers and financial beneficiaries of drug barons. 

Bashing Non-Governmental Organisations, the UN, journalists and lawyers is textbook stuff for any violator of rights and Alles is not the first to attempt such cheap tactics to cover his back.

The much-touted operation by Alles and Tennakoon, backed by advisors to the President who wish to portray the head of state as tough on crime in an election year, has only seized around 17 kg of heroin and 15 kg of ICE after a whole month. The Navy meanwhile has seized a sizable quantity of narcotics at sea recently which did not involve the numerous violations and excessive use of force as in the case of the operation by the police and the army. 

In a country which for decades has had an overcrowding in prisons which itself leads to hardening of individuals, 29,000 people have reportedly been arrested since 17 December, with allegations that some have been subjected to ill-treatment and torture.

Searches have been conducted without search warrants, detaining suspected drug dealers and users, with hundreds sent to military-run rehabilitation centres. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that during and after these operations, people are reported to have been subjected to a number of violations, including unauthorised searches, arbitrary arrests and detention, ill-treatment, torture, and strip searches in public. Lawyers acting for those detained have alleged that they have faced intimidation from police officers. Some relatives of those arrested for substance use allege extortion as well. 

Minister Alles may not give a hoot about the UN or human rights of the citizens of the country, but these are obligations to which the Sri Lankan State has signed on and cannot be derogated on the whims of a few individuals. Every citizen has the right to due process, to be treated equally before the law, not be arbitrarily detained, tortured or extrajudicially killed. These rights have been put in place to protect the ordinary citizens against the excesses of the State and Sri Lanka has signed onto numerous legal instruments that guarantee these protections. 

Given questions over his own credibility and track record Minister Alles along with his handpicked acting IGP cannot be the custodian of Sri Lanka’s international obligations nor decide which rights of the citizens can be ignored. Eventually this buck stops with President Ranil Wickremesinghe and his Government who bear ultimate responsibility for the actions by the police and security forces. While the “war on drugs” may bring short-term popularity for those desperate to prove their law-and-order credentials, in the long run there would have to be a reckoning for these violations. If Alles et al wishes not to give a hoot it should be at their own peril.