Policing the police in this blessed homeland

Thoughts from London

by Necille de Silva

It was not so long ago that some Sri Lankan MPs were invited by International Alert, that London-based organisation, to visit Britain to study the Northern Ireland conflict. Apparently the head of International Alert at the time, Kumar Rupasinghe who was much in the political news during the heyday of the Janavegaya, thought that if the Sri Lankan law makers were exposed to the Northern Ireland problem they might be inspired to search doggedly for an end to our own conflict with Mr. Prabhakaran et al.

So they heard a multiplicity of views on why the Irish conflict has still not been resolved and how to solve it. They might even have been taken to Northern Ireland so that they could get a feel of the issue at hand.

If they did actually go to Ulster for that first hand experience, some of the Sri Lankan parliamentarians got physically closer to where the action is in Northern Ireland than they probably did in Sri Lanka.

Anyway not long after that International Alert lost Kumar Rupasinghe or was it the other way round. There were all sorts of stories floating around in the media and talk of some kind of activity in Sierra Leone or one of those far off places where few people-at least those I know- set foot. The government of that African country wrote some nasty letters about interference in the country's internal affairs.

I'm not one who is particularly mindful of cause and effect but shortly after whatever hit the fan Mr. Rupasinghe parted company with International Alert but I won't vouch there was any causal connection.

The consequence of all this seems to be that International Alert does not have that same urgency or interest as its one-time head in trying to bring about a political solution to Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict or national question or whatever.

And what of those learned law makers who had that educational expedition to the very heart of a conflict that is even older than our own. Did their perspectives change and has Sri Lanka gained from their experience?

I, for one ,have no intention of under-rating the intellectual capacity of our parliamentarians having for years heard and read their speeches and their ability to grasp the most contentious issues and abstruse concepts without a helping hand.

But just in case they have only been able to see some remote connection, if any connection at all, between the Northern Ireland and Sri Lankan conflicts, perhaps it might be helpful to point to the very recent report of the Commission of Inquiry into the reorganisation of the Royal Ulster Constabulary(RUC) which, those MPs would realise has been one of the key issues in the Catholic-Protestant, republican-loyalist imbroglio.

The commission which was headed by Chris Patten, the controversial last governor of Hong Kong, has come up with such far reaching recommendations that Mr. Patten has had some harsh epithets thrown at him by the Protestant-Unionist camp.

But I must say that none of them are as colourful or abusive as the ones the Chinese authorities used to describe Chris Patten who tried to humanise and democratise Hong Kong a few years before Britain relinquished sovereignty.

The Patten commission realised surely that if any meaningful step was to be taken to resolve the armed conflict, it was necessary to change the image of the RUC whose special branch has been at the cutting edge of the fight against terrorism.

What the Patten commission wanted was not a police force but a police service.

Those who are involved in trying to find a solution to our own problems-and I don't mean just the northern conflict- must realise that a once impartial police service which upheld law and order has been reduced in Sri Lanka to the level of an institution which is simply serving the government in power and its politicians and not providing a service to the community.

There are two interesting points the Patten Commission makes with regard to the composition and training of the RUC that Sri Lankans involved in conflict resolution should pay particular attention to if the Ireland conflict is to have any meaning for us.

Not all of the report's 175 recommendations will naturally have meaning and significance for us. But some of them do and would go a long way to make our own police certainly more acceptable to the community than it is today.

The report says that the RUC, which is criticised as militaristic and hierarchical compared to other police forces, has, as a result of the security threat and in order to protect itself from attack, resorted to methods of policing that have separated its officers from the community.

When viewed against the indiscretions( if one might be permitted an euphemism) of the Sri Lankan police who have not only become a willing tool of government but also of individual politicians, the RUC emerges almost as a lily white service. Listen to this quote from the report: "This identification of police and the state is contrary to policing practice in the rest of the United Kingdom. It has left the police in an unenviable position,lamented by many police officers. In one political language they are custodians of nationhood. In its rhetorical opposite they are symbols of oppression. Policing therefore goes right to the heart of the sense of security and identity of both communities".

Surely our own situation is much worse. At home the problem is not only one between communities but also one between government and the rest with the police wielding its power on behalf of the government as recent events in Colombo and elsewhere have so clearly demonstrated.

The Patten commission was also critical about the training. It pointed out that of the many hours spent in training recruits only a few hours were devoted to the crucial subject of human rights. The Commission suggests that all new and existing officers take an oath expressing an explicit commitment to upholding human rights.

The Commission also advises the appointment of a lawyer with specific expertise in the field of human rights to the staff of the police legal services and that performance in relation to human rights should be monitored by the policing board.

Can you see this happening in our blessed homeland. Our police will happily take any oath to human rights that can be thought of and violate it the very next day.

Why, you ask? The answer is very simple. We are not human-from the police perspective, that is.

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