We must stand up for our rights

The regular column, FOCUS ON RIGHTS, by Kishali Pinto Jayawardene, which appears every Sunday in your paper, is very enlightening and informative. On Sunday, May 27 it was aptly entitled "Displacing safe assumptions about the society we live in" - even though it's questionable whether any citizen of this country feels safe today, given the scenario of bombs and landmines, extra-judicial killings, multiple murders, charred bodies turning up, disappearances and abductions and even, on occasion, bullets coming through the roofs of peaceful homes at dead of night.

Confidence in the forces of law and order has probably reached an all-time low. Even so, Ms. Pinto Jayawardene's exposure of the extent to which the police are guilty of gross violations of human rights, came as a stunner. We have heard of police brutality wreaked on people suspected of major or minor crimes, but Ms. Pinto Jayawardene has cited glaring instances where such brutality was plainly nothing but sheer abuse of power.

I doubt that any reader could be unmoved by what happened to Saman Jayasuriya. He was driving a van with two others seated inside, when he was stopped by two policemen in civilian clothes and asked for his licence and insurance.

When Mr. Jayasuriya asked them to show proof of identity, they pulled him out and assaulted him. "He managed to escape,” says the article, "but a contingent of policemen from the Kadugannawa police station visited his residence and mercilessly assaulted him in the presence of his wife. He was then arrested and taken to the police station."

I have highlighted just this one case out of several other even more heinous incidents which have been detailed in the same article. We, the public, need to become aware of these things. There are strong protests if a member of the international community comments on human rights violations in Sri Lanka, but let's not bury our heads in the sand, refusing to acknowledge that unacceptable things happen in our country, as they do elsewhere. The truth is that we don't need outsiders to tarnish our image - we are doing a pretty good job of that ourselves. The Tigers are terrorists and their horrendous behaviour is in keeping with what and who they are.

But we don't expect the police or the armed forces, or the Govt. to behave like terrorists and we should all be roused to vigorous protest when it's brought to our notice that any citizen's rights have been violated, whether it affects us personally or not. We owe a debt of gratitude to courageous journalists of the calibre of Ms. Pinto Jayawardene who apprise us of aspects of the law and order situation of which we may be ignorant.

By Anne Abayasekara, Via email