Liberal Party proposals for a new Constitution 

Equality and the public

Equality

14. a) Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law

b) Equality includes full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms.

To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken.

c) The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.

d) No person may unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds in terms of sub-section c).

e) Discrimination on one or more grounds listed in sub-section c) is unfair unless it is established that the discrimination is fair.

Life

15. Everyone has the right to life.

Freedom and Security of the person

16. Everyone has the right-

a) not to be deprived of freedom arbitrarily or without just cause

b) not to be detained without trial

c) to be free of all forms of violence from public or private sources

d) not to be tortured

Privacy

17. Everyone has the right to privacy including the right not to have, subject to due process of law, their person or home or property searched, their possessions seized or the privacy of their communications infringed.

Freedom of religion, belief and opinion

18. Everyone has the right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion.

19. Religious observances may be conducted at state or state-aided institutions provided that -

a) those observances follow rules made by appropriate public authorities

b) they are conducted on an equitable basis

c) attendance is voluntary

Freedom of expression

20. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes-

a) freedom of the press and other media

b) freedom to receive or impart information or ideas save that these rights do not extend to

i) propaganda for war

ii) incitement to imminent violence

iii) advocacy of hatred based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion or any other ground noted in Section 14 sub-section c).

Freedom of association

21. Everyone has the right to freedom of association

Labour relations

22. Everyone has the right to fair labour practices.

23. Every worker has the right to form and join a trade union, to participate in the activities of a trade union, and to strike.

24. Every employer has the right to form and join an employers' organisation and to participate in its activities

25. Every trade union, employer and employers' organisation has the right to engage in collective bargaining. 

Environment

26. Everyone has the right-

a) to an environment that is not harmful to their health and well-being

b) to have the environment protected for the benefit of present and future generations through reasonable legislative and other measures that 

i) prevent pollution and ecological degradation

ii) promote conservation

iii) secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources

Property

27. Everyone has the right to private property.

28. No one may be deprived of property except in terms of law of general application, and no law may permit arbitrary deprivation of property

29. Property may be expropriated only in terms of law of general application for public purpose and interest and subject to compensation, the amount and time and manner of payment of which have either been agreed by those affected or decided and approved by a court

Housing

30. Everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing.

31. The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right.

32. No one may be evicted from their home, or have their home demolished, without an order of court made after consideration of all relevant circumstances.

Health care, food, water and social security

33. Everyone has the right to have access to health care services including appropriate social assistance in the event of inability to support themselves and their dependents

34. The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right.

35. No one may be refused emergency medical treatment.

Final part next week

Rights reporting caught in a war situ

By Rajpal Abeynayake

"Later , at the Ops Combine headquarters, at Havelock Town in Colombo, everybody in the Defence establishment flocked to see the prize catch. Minister Ranjan Wijeratne had also arrived to look at Wijeweera, Brigadier Algama had earned himself a bad reputation in the eyes of the JVP, in Embilipitiya and in Galle. 

He would go to Janawasamas and tell the public, "If anybody tries to deliver threatening letters or comes to ask for extortion money to your homes and work places, kill them! THROW ACID AT THEM. Hack the bastards to death with katties!" Now the dreaded prosecutor was face to face with the rebel Supremo."1

These types of dramatic characterizations (here a Sandhurst trained military big wig asks civilians to take the law into their own hands) emerged after the violence, in chronicles that were almost academic in their nature of treatment of events. 

But the newspapers were unable to keep up with the pace of these developments when they were happening, or were unwilling, and this lacuna in the coverage of human rights violations in times of conflict is something that repeats itself in the northeast of the country and could repeat itself in other parts of the country in the eventuality of the surfacing of a new conflict situation in these areas. 

Subsequently, and particularly after the change of government in 1994, some of the alleged perpetrators of human rights violations were charged. 

"Based on the findings of commission appointed by President Chandrika Bandarnaike Kumaratunga, over hundred members of the security forces are being charged in the courts for alleged cases of disappearances during the regime of the last government.'2 

Such news items , hidden generally from the news spotlight of the day, are a good indicator that once the issues are past, the import of reporting of human rights violations decreases. There is also, much after the events have taken place, a lack of discussion on how much of these violations were in fact sanctioned, and were perhaps even necessitated by a virulent armed campaign of aggression/ terrorism which often was aimed at civilians of other political parties. 

Sans this debate or discourse, and sans a backdrop, reporting of these prosecutions soon petered out to nothing, which showed the disembodied nature that human rights reporting acquires after the events have passed. 

Refugee camps

The situation in the north east however, in that cauldron of conflict, is continuing, and the reportage is no more contemporary than it was when the war in the southern part of the country was in progress. Statistics for the year 1997 for instance show that there were 1,10,680 refugees in refugee camps alone, and 2,26,465 refugees outside camps.3 

This number would have definitely increased; for instance there was another exodus of tens of thousands of people form the city of Vavuniya in the North several weeks back, adding to the burgeoning refugee problem in the country. 

Rights violations and the refugee problem are indubitably two different issues, but what is important is the fact that the refugee problem does not receive any real coverage in the newspapers on any sustained basis. 

What this would show is that any human rights transgressions that are possible if not probable in a situation of a mass human exodus do not receive coverage, if not attention, that is deserved in a media that is hard put to cover these issues on a sustained basis due to the fact that the problem occurs far away from where the newspapers are stationed. 

Therefore, the human rights reporting of the poorest of the poor, the displaced and destitute, sometimes, at least in the war situation in the northeast appears to be almost a forgotten problem, at least as far as the refugees are concerned if not the others. 

The war situation also glaringly lays in abeyance some of the most fundamental rights, of some of the poorest in the nation's outlying areas. 

For example, last October, there was an Air Force bombing of a market in a northern town, apparently by mistake. Some twenty five civilians died in this bombing. 

Low intensity conflict

In apparent retaliation, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam massacred a village in the Eastern Province border, obliterating almost the entire village including men, women and children. It can be argued that both the bombing and the retaliation violated the most fundamental human rights. 

These violations however receive coverage in the newspaper, but are also seen to be covered as long as the news is on the spotlight. There is seldom any follow up coverage; granted also, that there is very little the media seems to be able to do to address these situations given the sporadic nature of their occurrence in a low intensity conflict that has been dragging on indefinitely now for over 16 years. 

However, the media also seems not to have been able to successfully hold either the government or the LTTE "accountable'' for these rights violations. 

Either media censure of these violations has not been strident enough, or the protagonists in the conflict do not care about the public perceptions that have been engendered by the media coverage of these conflicts and media censure of excesses on both sides. 

If the press is not able to get to grips with the big picture, or if the more glaring violations continue despite the censure of the media, the press perhaps has to play a larger role in stemming the tide of "lesser'' violations that occur. These continuing violations have a debilitating effect on the social fabric, and are ultimately a factor that threatens the very existence of the concept of human rights. 

Public Security Ordinance

The press has perhaps in this regard a role to play as a facilitator or a liaison between the potential victims of human rights violations and the law enforcement authorities.

"Facilitation'' however, would essentially under the prevailing circumstances mean that the press can educate the public and the poor rural population on the fact that there are laws and legal decisions which have been in favour of the idea that the state cannot transgress human rights even under circumstances in which Emergency Regulations and the Public Security Ordnance prevail.

(The Emergency Regulations, which have been almost continually in existence barring sporadic intervals for the last decade, place certain restrictions on the normal provisions of the Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code.) 

Alternately, the newspapers themselves have been hamstrung by certain judgments which have held that the restrictions placed on the freedom of speech by the Emergency Regulations are valid. 

More next week

Footnotes
1 C. A.Chandraprema, " Sri Lanka : Years of Terror, P 305.
2 The Daily News 23/11/1998
3 Refugee and Rehabilitation Organisation. ( TRRO)

More Plus

Return to Plus Contents