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The government has announced strict regulations to deal with terrorism following the suicide bomb attack on President’s brother, Gothabaya Rajapakse, defense secretary.
In the back ground of the demand by extremist elements to ban the LTTE and to abrogate the Ceasefire Agreement, the government has brought in amendments to the emergency regulations known as 2006 New Emergency Regulations.
It appears that the government has not proscribed the LTTE following pressures from the international community and to impress the world that Sri Lanka is still committed to peace efforts. There is no reference to the LTTE in any of the provisions or amendments presently enacted by the government. It broadly mentions that the provisions apply to the activities of terrorist organizations. For the first time, these amendments contain a definition what terrorism is.
The government has not issued any directives to the media about these regulations and the procedure that should be adopted by the press in reporting matters relating to defense. This has created confusion among the media.
The past experiences regarding emergency regulations and the Prevention of Terrorism Act over three decades cause fear and apprehension among the people of this country. The history of this country is that oppressive laws and oppressive measures by the government machinery had not succeeded in curbing violence in this country. These are lessons of history.
It is also the lessons of the political history of this country that such oppressive legislations enacted under the pretext of dealing with terrorism had been used by the parties in power against their political opponents. How the Srimavo government, the JR government and the Premadasa government enforced these despicable legislations against their own political opponents is a matter of recent history.
In 1982 October, SLFP Presidential candidate Hector Koppekaduwa, who contested the Presidential polls opposing J.R.Jayawardena, gave an undertaking in his party manifesto that the Prevention of Terrorism Act will be removed from the statute of this country. The then SLFP manifesto clearly reflected how the UNP enforced the Prevention of Terrorism act in the south not to deal with Tamil extremist elements but to suppress trade union activities, the political activities of the opposition and the functioning of the human rights activists in the south.
In fact, the PTA was first introduced as a temporary measure but thereafter it has been continued as a permanent enactment. It has been proved by the past experiences that the explanation that these legislations are to maintain law and order and to deal with terrorism is deceitful.
Whether it is emergency regulations or PTA or other such abominable laws, it is the Tamil people who are affected most. There is apprehension among the Tamil people that the new legislation can be directed against the Tamil community. This is a clever move to mislead the Sinhala people that the ethnic problem can be solved through a military solution. This is really an unfortunate situation.
An English translation of the Editorial in Thinakkural, a Tamil daily, based in Colombo
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