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It is common knowledge that in the past, Sri Lanka has been able to develop the capacity of its investigating officers to successfully deal with very serious crimes. Investigations into former Prime Minister Bandaranaike's assassination and the 1962-attempted coup to overthrow the government are clear examples of the capacity of Sri Lankan law enforcement agencies to deal with such matters.
However, as per present day situation, many officers have been posted to various places as part of punishment transfers or displacement from their professional roles for mysterious reasons. If reinstated to their original roles and duties, they could bring many of the perpetrators of the disappearances of recent decades to justice. However, they know the reality within their establishment that one enters the forbidden territory of criminal investigations at one's own risk.
If the state has the will and the capacity to carry out investigations into gross violations of human rights, such as forced disappearances, there is no justification for U.N. human rights agencies to make a request to intervene. However, if the state's will or capacity is missing and these serious issues are ignored, then, those who hold authority in U.N. human rights agencies would dishonor their obligations if they did nothing. Thus, the obligations of the U.N. agencies to deal with human rights violations in Sri Lanka arise, not from the incapacity of local agencies, but by the lack of will of the state to respond to such violations.
When the U.N. high commissioner for human rights requests assistance on these issues, the governments' propaganda industry says that it has the capacity to deal with these investigations. However, the lack of investigations has shown that the state is deliberately obstructing the process, which indicates that it does not have the will to do it.
These circumstances pose the question - why, political authorities in Sri Lanka, have created such a forbidden area related to criminal investigations. A careful study would suggest that this is because the military, which has been used by various regimes for their own purposes, have acquired the "rights" to obstruct any attempt at such investigations. The political authorities perceive serious investigations into disappearances as a possible cause for an enormous rift between them and the military. The present political system, built on the foundations of the 1978 Constitution, cannot survive if serious investigations into police and military conduct take place.
The rude treatment, Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, received in the country, as well as the huge misinformation campaign carried out by the propaganda industry of the government, can only be explained with this understanding that exists between political leaders of the state, police, and military. It is in this area that much research and study is needed if the current obstacles to the protection and promotion of human rights within Sri Lanka are to be successfully countered.
When gross human rights abuses affect local people, they try to file complaints with local police authorities. The Criminal Procedure Code of Sri Lanka has laid down detailed procedures for recording complaints, carrying out investigations, and prosecution of criminal cases. When local people resort to the provisions in the local law regarding forced disappearances and similar types of human rights abuses, mostly committed by the police or the military, they discover the hidden agenda that has developed over the last decade, which is, not to investigate or prosecute these matters.
When the people exhaust all attempts to find legal redress, they realize that local authorities cannot help them and they seek help from human rights organizations and others to take the matter to U.N. human rights agencies. When this occurs, the same state that previously denied them help, declares that international agencies are not required to interfere, as local legal mechanisms are sufficient to deal with such matters. Now, the citizens have nowhere to turn as they are deprived of access to local as well as international systems to find a solution to the tremendous wrongs they have faced.
Placing citizens in such helpless situations, without a remedy, is portrayed as a matter of sovereignty. If U.N. human rights agencies question the state about complaints by their citizens of human rights violations, they are told not to interfere with the sovereignty of the state. The propaganda industry subsequently goes into full swing, claiming that the complaints can be dealt locally. However, those involved in the governments' propaganda industry know that, nothing, in fact, would be done.
The propaganda industry therefore, treats national and international human rights organizations with resentment for exposing and publicizing narratives on human rights violations because that makes their job of falsification difficult. They want to silence human rights organizations and, in fact, all critics who merely record and publish what the citizens are complaining about. Therefore, silencing human rights organizations is only an extension of silencing citizens.
The propaganda industry is not only engaged in spreading misinformation, but is only an essential part of the machinery of repression. One arm of the state commits disappearances and human rights abuses while the other arm, which is the political leadership, assures and guarantees the police and military that their actions related to disappearances and other violent acts will not be investigated. The third arm, then takes all-necessary efforts to make it appear that the reports of such abuses are either exaggerations or that, tough measures are taken locally, to address such abuses.
While those who cause disappearances use physical violence, politicians use political power to authorize violence and prevent investigations. The propaganda industry uses their pens to silence citizens and anyone who extends their support to the victimized citizens.
This year's commemoration of the country's disappearances, on Oct. 27, has offered a day of reflection for anyone who cares for a decent way of life to prevail within Sri Lanka and about the reality of repression within the country.
It is only when more people see the actual situation into which they have been pushed that they find the means to free themselves. Even the master artisans of the propaganda industry will be able to do little, when more citizens start seeing the means by which their rights have been denied and humiliated when they try to find solutions to the problems that plague them.
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(Basil Fernando is director of the Asian Human Rights Commission based in Hong Kong. He is a Sri Lankan lawyer who has also been a senior U.N. human rights officer in Cambodia. He has published several books and written extensively on human rights issues in Asia.)
