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If it was thought that the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act had laid long entombed in crypt with stake riven through its heart, last week showed it was far from dead but alive and kicking.

It was resurrected again when Galle Face struggle activist and University student leader Wasantha Mudalige was arrested along with 18 others while staging an anti-government protest march in Colombo 2.  They were produced before the court when 16 of them were freed on bail. But Mudalige and two others namely, Hashan Jeevantha and Buddhist monk Galwewa Siridhamma Thera, were held by the police on a 72-hour detention order last Friday under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. On Monday, it was further extended by the President for another 90 days.

First introduced in July 1979 to the Lankan statute books, it was used to counter the immense threat faced by the state with the rise of LTTE terrorism in the 1980s. But though LTTE terrorism was successfully wiped out following the death of Prabhakaran in 2009, it was retained by successive governments as a powerful weapon in its legal arsenal. It remained dormant in the statute books for many years and many may have believed it had died a natural death. But the spectre’s continued existence in the legal closet was held by rights activists to be a blot on Lanka’s human right safeguards.

THE THREE AT THE CENTRE OF PTA STORM: Student activists Wasantha Mudalalige, Galwewa Siridhamma Thera and Hashan Jeevantha detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act

Last June, for instance, the European Union Parliament passed a motion for a resolution demanding that the PTA be scrapped as it ‘breaches human rights, democracy and the rule of law.’ The EU called for PTA’s repeal and asked the EU Commission to consider temporarily withdrawing the GSP, the favoured trading concession granted to Lanka upon which the country depended to boost her EU exports.

This year before the bi-annual March pilgrimage to Geneva’s Mecca, the Lankan Government became rather busy trying to put the glosses on the PTA visage and tout the red-rouged Act as the acceptable face of legitimate safeguards to pass UNHRC muster. Foreign Minister Peiris’ proposed reforms cut no ice. The PTA was regarded as akin to a fish that stank from tail to head.

Sri Lanka’s own Human Rights Commission held its nose and dismissed the proposed amendments to the Act. Instead, it called for its total abolition. Chairperson of Sri Lanka’s HRC former Supreme Court Justice Rohini Marasinghe stated, “It is explicitly for those who threaten or use violence unlawfully to target the civilian population by spreading fear. The Commission advocates that terrorism should be investigated under the General Law of the country with necessary amendments.”

Two weeks later on March 2, the Special Procedures of the UNHRC, the largest body of independent experts in the UN human rights system, called for an immediate moratorium on the use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act until the ‘necessary amendments can be made.’

They held the Government’s proposed amendment to the Act – which included a reduction of the period of pre-trial detention, an increase of magistrates’ powers to visit places of detention and the speeding up of trials – fell far short of UN expectations when it came to Sri Lanka discharging her international human rights obligations.

The UNHRC’s expert panel even gave a five-point guideline as to what would exactly fit the bill.

The five tenets, as articulated by the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association were:

n    Give a definition of terrorism according to international norms

n    Ensure legal certainty, especially when the law affects freedom of expression, opinion, association and religious beliefs

n    Ensure provisions to prevent and prohibit arbitrary deprivation of liberty

n    Enforce measures to prevent torture and disappearance

n    Ensure overarching due process and fair trial and access to legal counsel.

It was back to the drawing board for Foreign Minister G. L. Peiris who, with the people’s struggle going strong on the Green, returned to Geneva on June 13 to address the 50th Session of the UN’s Human Rights Council. Pleading for UNHRC understanding with regard to the social and economic challenges facing the country, he referred to Lanka’s close engagement with the international community and the Human Rights Council to promote and protect human rights with justice and equity for the people.

Foreign Minister Peiris – as he then was before he was dropped from the new caretaker cabinet in July – declared: “We undertake to honour legitimate commitments. The difficult situation we are facing today and the voices of our youth remind us urgently that we need to address these challenges with humility.”

He further assured the UNHRC that, as per the Council’s Special Procedure’s call in March for the Government to observe a moratorium, “there is a de facto moratorium on arrests being made under the PTA. Law enforcement officials have been instructed by the Inspector General of Police to follow due process in the conduct of investigations under the PTA, and to use the PTA only in instances of extreme necessity.”

After last Friday’s arrest of the three student activists and their 72-hour detention under the PTA, it was the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Mary Lawlor who fired the first shot of warning to the Government.

On Monday the 21st, the day the 72-hour detention order was to lapse, she tweeted her deep concern over their detention under PTA and called upon President Ranil Wickremesinghe not to sign the new detention order which would extend their detention for 90 days, warning “doing so would be a dark day for Lanka.”

But the President had been advised otherwise. Notwithstanding this first whiff of international condemnation, the 90-day order was duly signed. It won him instant applause from the SLPP ranks. Always on the lookout for a saviour to save them, Pohottuwa MPs rushed to hail him as their new messiah. SLPP MP S.M. Chandrasena paid a glowing tribute, saying: “Like Mahinda Rajapaksa saved this country from LTTE terrorism, our new leader has saved the country from present terrorism.”

The Opposition’s SJB, JVP and TNA condemned the PTA arrests while the expected international backlash soon followed. Many rights organisations rushed to condemn the use of PTA while Western nations joined the chorus.

The US Ambassador, Julie Chung, in a tweet on Tuesday said: “Using laws that don’t conform with international human rights standards – like the PTA – erodes democracy in Sri Lanka.” The British High Commissioner followed, tweeting: “PTA is seen as inconsistent with respect for human rights. We urge authorities to stand by their commitments to stop its use.”

The European Union Delegation in Lanka tweeted on Monday: “Concerned about reports on the use of Prevention of Terrorism Act in recent arrests as we refer to information given by the Government of Sri Lanka to the International Community about the de-facto moratorium of the use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act.”

The international community had long held the PTA unacceptable; and the proposed amendments presented to the UNHRC in March this year as failing to comply with international norms. The UN’s Special Procedure had asked for a temporary ban on the use of the PTA until the ‘necessary amendments to the Act’ were presented. The Sri Lankan Government had given that assurance and, later at the 50th Regular Session of the UNHRC, the Lankan Foreign Minister had confirmed that a de facto moratorium had been placed.

Furthermore, though the Government had proceeded on March 22 to enact the amendments rejected by the UNHRC, the Government’s decision, announced this Tuesday, to amend the Act again with ‘less stringent conditions’ and with a new euphemistic title ‘National Security Act,’ is a tacit acceptance that the present PTA – under which the controversial arrests were made last Friday – is indeed harsh and vitiates against the Governments’ universal human rights obligations.

The Government of Sri Lanka stands guilty of having breached a solemn covenant it had made with the international community in the conclave of the United Nations Human Rights Council. It had willfully failed to observe a moratorium on the use of the PTA; and done so despite an assurance given by its Foreign Minister only 67 days prior at the UNHRC Session that it was being observed, with orders given to its security personnel not to use it, except in instances of ‘extreme necessity.’

Whether the arrest of three student activists, who had been at the forefront of a mass people’s protest for three months at the capital’s public esplanade, under the PTA can be credibly justified on the grounds of ‘extreme necessity’ by the Government at the forthcoming UNHRC September Sessions, remains to be seen. But what is in the dock, alongside the Sri Lankan Government, is the nation’s tattered credibility.

It is on this that the EU turned its focus on Monday when it referred to the Government’s assurance ‘given to the International Community about the de facto moratorium of the use of PTA’.

To atone for Friday’s transgression, the Government is best advised to ensure that the planned new amendments to the PTA as announced on Tuesday will conform to Sri Lanka’s international obligations that will pass UNHRC muster; and not be another set of cosmetic amendments to be viewed by the UNHRC as another shabby attempt to hoodwink the international community. It is also best that the Government desists from using the PTA to make further arrests and ensures that the investigations into the three already arrested are speedily ended.

Though South Asia’s India and the East’s China and Japan are important to restructure Sri Lanka’s debt, much depends on the West. Even if all goes to plan and the IMF grants its bailout, more important than its USD 3 billion bonanza will be its symbolic approval. It will open the gateway for the Government to renew its appeal to western donor countries and lending agencies, who have so far withheld their development loans until the IMF gave the all-clear that Lanka was not beyond economic redemption. Their development aid will be vital to rebuild the bankrupt nation from scratch.

But, unlike in totalitarian China where its people have no say, in the western world’s full-blooded democracies the citizenry will not take kindly to their leaders granting public money to prop foreign authoritarian regimes that violate the rights of its people.

Lanka is not out of the woods but still deep within it; and, having lost her compass, cannot yet fathom whether she’s heading East or West. It would certainly be a misfortune were she to also lose her political antenna to stay tuned to the human rights’ world frequency.

CONDITIONAL PARDON: Ranjan walks free from jail Ranjan walks free but with muzzle on Ranjan Ramanayake finally walked free from Welikada Prison on Friday, following a presidential pardon granted after he had apologised to the Supreme Court for making a derogatory reference to the judiciary, for which he had been convicted for contempt of court by the Supreme Court and jailed for four years. Sent to prison on January 12 last year, only one blot spoilt the euphoria over his early release. The presidential pardon was conditional. It placed a clamp on his untrammeled right to free speech and cramped his flamboyant style. Fortunately for him, he hadn’t peered out from his cell ‘upon that little tent of blue the prisoners called the sky’ but had used the prison as his ‘grove of Academe’ to read for an Open University degree in Verbal and Non-verbal Communications. Addressing a press conference at Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa’s office, Ranjan spoke of his immediate future. He said: “I am under an order not to speak on certain matters. It’s a condition of the pardon given to me.  What I can say is that in this country, you don’t go to jail for committing crimes. Only if you expose them.” Sadda Vidda Rajapakse Palanga Pathira Ambakumarage Ranjan Leo Sylvester Alphonso, the 59-year-old actor turned politician who secured the largest preferential vote in the Gampaha District at the last elections, had won public admiration for his one-man mission to expose corruption in politics. In the face of political persecution, he had remained unbowed. He had not compromised his principles nor sold his soul for money or for positions as some of his colleagues had unashamedly done. In the night of a thousand stars whose positions rotate as the world turns, he had been the fixed Polaris, the Northern Star. No doubt, after being eclipsed for a year and seven months, he will shine again, muzzle or no. For none can keep a good man down. Take a bow Ranjan. You have won again the nation’s applause.