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SC rules Rehab Bill vitiates constitution unless amended but it will have no say in final outcome of enactment against personal liberty

If the Supreme Court had not ruled the obnoxious Bureau of Rehabilitation Bill inconsistent with the Constitution as it did on Thursday, then Sri Lanka’s legal bible should be consigned to the flames.

The constitution would have lost the last vestige of its reason for existence – its raison d’etre – to protect the inalienable rights of the Lankan people in whose sovereign name it was first enshrined.  It would have been revealed rather as a handy tool used by governments to cover the oppression of people’s rights with the cloak of legality.

LITMUS TEST FOR PRESIDENT: President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s democratic credentials will soon be tested when he will be called upon to decide whether to promote or prevent the contentious rehab bill

Thankfully the Supreme Court ruling saved the constitution from the pyre.  Though its protective flesh had been gorged on by power-hungry regimes these last 15 years, the judicial ruling paused the present government from gnawing the bones.

This is not the first time the Supreme Court had sent a clear message to the government that the soul of human rights still pervades the constitutional air; and that any attempt to drive a stake through its corpus will be treated with abhorrence. Last year it expressed repugnance at a similar gazetted attempt when it countermanded the President’s order by suspending the contentious gazette until the final determination of the petition before it.

On March 12 last year, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa issued an extraordinary gazette to give legal effect to new regulations brought under the PTA for ‘de-radicalisation from holding violent extremist religious ideology’.  The regulations gazetted empowered the Government to arrest and hold any suspected extremist in rehabilitation camps without any judicial process.

The Supreme Court on August 5 last year showed its distaste in no uncertain terms when it suspended the presidential fiat until the conclusion of the hearing.  Taking the cue, President Gotabaya wisely dropped the rehab plan.  The revolting gazette was swiftly flushed into oblivion.

Now from those murky depths, a similar piece of legislative faeces, no less revolting, no less repulsive and no less odious has been retrieved to form the base of this new bill, euphemistically titled ‘Bureau of Rehabilitation’ but which, by whatever name called, still stinks the same.

Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s disapproval and suspension of the similarly loathsome Gotabaya gazette barely a year ago, the Government challenged fate twice when it presented its dressed-up version on September 23. Once bitten all right it may be but certainly not twice shy.

Parading in the guise of setting up a bureau to rehabilitate drug addicts, ex-combatants, and members of violent extremist groups, the bill soon loses its good Samaritan air when it extends the bureau’s hospitality to include ‘any other group or person who is required by law to be provided with treatment and rehabilitation’.

Required by what law? Treatment for what? Who are these other groups or these other persons who’ll be compelled against their will to forego their liberty and be subjected to treatments and therapies, practised at these rehab centres? The vague references and the absence of any judicial process involved in the entire operation will empower the present or any future government to arrest even peaceful demonstrators or political enemies and pack them off to rehab camps.

An Orwellian nightmare is in the making, for the Bill provides for its inmates to be ‘used productively’. This gives rise to the frightening possibility of future dictatorial regimes establishing forced labour camps or Stalin style ‘gulags’ in the guise of rehabilitation: and, to make the horror replete, grants immunity to members of the tri-forces who use ‘minimum force’ to compel a detainee’s obedience.

Section 28(2) states that it shall be the duty of any person employed in a Centre to preserve order and discipline among the persons undergoing rehabilitation. For such purpose, it shall be lawful for such person to use all such means including minimum force, as may reasonably be necessary to compel obedience.

What is ‘minimum force’? Will a gentle plodding be ‘minimum force’ or a hefty blow to the face, as maybe considered reasonably necessary in the circumstances to preserve discipline, constitute ‘minimum force’?

Furthermore, the Bill shrouds the ‘Bureau of Rehabilitation’ in complete secrecy. Its employees have to sign a mandatory non-disclosure agreement; and the Bureau’s records are kept under a blanket of strict confidentiality with only a court order or a government investigation being able to break through the wall of silence and procure a sneak peep.  Any person reporting on the goings-on behind rehab’s closed gates can be fined Rs.100,000 and be jailed for a year.

It’s a pity that President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s Government had thought it fit to resurrect and breathe new life into the nostrils of this menacing ogre, a clone of which the Supreme Court had damned to be kept moribund until final determination of its true nature.

But now that it has been revived and allowed to stalk in the wings before receiving parliamentary blessings, and is to be unleashed to make its appearance on stage to outrage the audience of 22 million people, the Supreme Court held that the Rehab Bill was inconsistent with the constitution; and that some of its clauses will require a two-thirds Parliamentary majority and some, a referendum to pass muster.

Furthermore, the determination held over 20 sections or sub-sections were inconsistent with the Constitution. However, these inconsistencies shall cease, it was held, if the said sections were amended, as suggested by the court and the Attorney General, at the committee stage in Parliament.

The bill has now entered the province of the Parliamentary salon where it’s scheduled, as advised, to get a late hour haircut and new manicure to make the ogre look presentable to fit the bill before the show begins. But how short and in what style the hair will be cropped and the nails clipped – sans any provision for a final judicial opinion – is anyone’s guess?

Only on opening night, will the truth be out whether the motley of political make-up artistes at the committee stage had made a pig’s breakfast of the advice tended. But with the horror publicly revealed on stage, it will be too late to alter one blotch of rouge. It will slip into Lanka’s statute books, no less revolting, no less repugnant and no less odious. It will lie there dormant, till the wolf howls and the moon’s up and the sinister night invites it to arise and stalk the land invoking fear among the peaceful populace.

But the door to redeem its genesis is still open. The chance to abort the ogre before it breathes and comes alive is still available. It should be grabbed without delay. The consequences of a demon birth are only too well known that to ignore the prophesied danger will be to imperil the sovereign rights of the Lankan people.

It’s an affront to natural justice to deny a man or woman his or her liberty without first being proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt and duly convicted of the offence by an impartial judge of a competent court of law with right of appeal to a higher court.

But the ‘Rehab Bill’ usurps that due process from the courts and arbitrarily places it in the hands of the police, the armed forces, the bureaucrats and the politicians who will stand as judge and jury on your personal liberty and your exile to rehab camps. You are left without the protection of the courts, your fate dangles solely on a Minister’s prejudiced judgement, on his random choice or personal whim. Think about it.

It’s a shame that the Government has decided to go ahead with this obnoxious bill without aborting the ogre before its birth in Parliament. It is ironic that the Fates have cruelly chosen President Ranil Wickremesinghe to preside at its inauspicious baptism. It will, no doubt, be a horrific blow to his cultivated image as a self-styled long standing pro-western, liberal-democrat – also steeped in the Buddha’s advice to the Licchavis – with a far more enlightened view on human rights than most of his Asian counterparts. What a tragedy it would be if the enactment of this Rehab Bill were to end up stigmatizing his presidential legacy?

It will also be a blow to the image of the Lankan Government, trying to defend the indefensible at UNHRC in Geneva. Another heinous sin to add to the long litany of human rights violations.  A nation which, while pledging to repeal the draconian PTA, is busy enacting an equally loathsome legal weapon to its arsenal. It will also be another entry in the dossier the UNHRC was freshly authorised to maintain by the British led resolution, overwhelmingly adopted last month with only 7 states voting in Sri Lanka’s favour.

Can Lanka ever hope to attract international sympathy to her economic plight as she begs on all fours for aid, while hell-bent on the political front, trying to devise more devious machinations to deny the Lankan people their fundamental human rights? Or is the Rehab bill, if enacted, intended to provoke the UNHRC to demand the Act to be repealed? It will grant the Government more time to respond and thus postpone the day of final reckoning.

But the day of judgement will come sooner than expected. Unless there is a change of heart and the plan to enact the Rehab Bill is shelved, and the people are spared this terrible threat to their freedoms, the entire Government and its corrupt horde of SLPP backers will be driving the last nail home into Democracy’s coffin, and, thereby, sealing their own fate.

India asked to send bison to Lanka after 4 centuries RETURN OF THE BISON: Known as Indian gaurs it is gavaras in Sinhala Colombo has asked India to send a number of Indian bison to Sri Lanka, the Indian newspaper The Hindu reported on Saturday. No, it is not for meat or hide but to breed them in captivity and release them into the forests from where it has disappeared 400 hundred years ago. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs which had first received the request two months ago had forwarded it to the Environmental Ministry which is said to be considering the export order for Indian bison – known as India’s gaurs or as gavaras in Sinhala – as part of its wildlife diplomacy. But the Environment Ministry has expressed its reservations. It has said it could take some months since – perhaps considering Lanka’s present beggared state – the proposal must first be studied for sustainability. S.P. Yadav, Director, National Tiger Conservation Authority, said, “we’ll have to evaluate if the conditions for translocation are right, such that the animal can sustainably thrive over there.’ Sri Lankan High Commissioner to India, Milinda Moragoda, admitted ‘it could be fraught with difficulties.’ According to the Hindu report, he said: “India is without a doubt Sri Lanka’s closest friend, supporter and trading partner. We have a shared history, shared cultural identity, and shared gene. We even got Buddhism, on whose traditions we derive our national values, from India.” But apart from whether it is correct to mention India’s greatest gift of Buddhism with India’s gift of bison in the same breath and hold the two as part of our shared history, the mystery remains why these local gavaras vanished from Lanka’s jungles. Was there a bovine epidemic, a natural disaster or a prolonged drought that dried up their watering holes or blighted their fodder that wiped out the species from their natural habitat? Or did a combination of all these factors in the 17th century cause their natural drift from the forests to intermix with other urban dwellers even as wild dogs may have done? Extinct from the forests they may well be but do these bovine herds still live in our midst, unbeknown in the guise of woater buffaloes? Though ample evidence exists to suggest it, more research will, of course, be needed to determine this conclusively. With the present alarming exodus from the island, it is, perhaps, part of the long-term plan to keep the remaining stock well replenished in advance. Let’s keep our fingers crossed, and pray that, even on a humanitarian credit line, India will expedite Lanka’s import order to bring coals to Newcastle. PS: The Hindu report was a follow-up to a news report that first appeared on August 29 in the Hindustan Times. The Wildlife Ministry on Tuesday, however, stated that the Ministry has not been informed of any move to import bison. Perhaps, two months of surveys have revealed that the plan is redundant. With plenty found marooned on a desert island in Colombo’s suburbs, we don’t need India’s help on that score.