Supreme Court Order to reduce
security checks
OPEN LETTER
To The President, Prime Minister & Parliamentarians of Sri Lanka
Asoka Weerasinghe
Ottawa, Canada
Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G . Canada
February 10, 2008
OPEN LETTER To The President, Prime
Minister & Parliamentarians of Sri Lanka
Your Excellency and Honourable Ladies and Gentlemen:
It has not been easy for a lot of us outside Sri Lanka, who have volunteered
as an expatriate army trying our utmost for months and years, in our
own capacity, however minuscule, to blunt the LTTE propaganda abroad,
to watch our innocent civilians getting killed, especially when our
school children, so young in caskets, killed by a Tamil Tiger suicide
bomber taken in procession to be buried. It’s painful. It hurts.
With that backdrop it has been much more difficult for me to accept
the Supreme Court Order to reduce security checks of persons at security
check points by our police and armed forces and reduce security road
barriers. These exercises had a purpose. They were to provide security
to all Sri Lankans and foreign visitors, and eliminate further killings
of the innocent civilians by Tamil Tigers transporting explosives, material
to make explosives, ammunition, small arms, and suicide body kits, et
cetera.
I was in Sri Lanka last June when all that ballyhoo of ‘ethnic
cleansing’ happened when our security forces picked up 301 out
of about 12 thousand Tamils from Colombo lodging-houses and taken north
to secure the capital from suicide bombers. This was after the receipt
of confirmed reports of Tamil Tiger infiltration in Colombo. The armed
forces had reasons to be suspicious when almost all the suicide bombers
who were involved in assassinations of politicians, security forces
and innocent civilians came out of the woodwork of these lodgings. The
armed forces were doing their job and now they are frustrated.
The fact is, which ever way you wish to slice the pie, I believe that
the Supreme Court interfered with the national security in favour of
the cry of “ethnic cleansing” and human rights violations
by a bunch of foreign funded bleeding-heart human rights do-gooders.
If 301 Tamils removed to the North from Colombo was established legally
as ‘ethnic cleansing’, what would the Supreme Court call,
the chasing of 27,000 Sinhalese between 1971 and 1981 through intimidation,
terrorizing and killing from the Jaffna peninsula, where they lived
for generations?
What would the Supreme Court call the chasing of 100,000 Muslims from
the Jaffna peninsula within 24 hours in 1990 making Uganda’s Idi
Amin look like an angel, as at least he gave the Ugandan-Indians three
months to get out by November 9^th , 1972? Think of it, he was more
humane than Prabhakaran. What would the Supreme Court call the stoning
and chasing of 400 Sinhalese undergraduates and lecturers from the Jaffna
campus in August 1977, and brought south lying on the floor of buses
escorted by the army and police as the rocks and stones thrown by Tamils,
came hailing at them like meteorites? This is the difficulty that I
have with the Supreme Court Order.
Respectfully, when the Supreme Court issues a decision which one could
see the ramifications for the security of the individual and their ‘right
to life’, then the judges and their decisions should not stay immune
to public criticism.
Last June, every time I was stopped for a security check in Colombo,
I thanked the army officer who checked my passport and asked me where
I was coming from and where I was going, and taking the 3-wheeler driver
to aside to collaborate whether I was telling the truth, “Thank
you, Sir, you make me feel safe in Colombo”, I said. I was checked
nine times during that month. Was it that they were harassing me unnecessarily
and violating my rights? Nonsense! They were doing their job and I was
glad that they did it. We now know that such random security checks
and body searchers have been reduced by the Supreme Court Order. Strange!
There was wisdom in all these security checks. This was the only reason
why the armed forces managed to apprehend a haul of ammunition and explosives
packed inside a lorry at Mabole, Wattala sometime back, which otherwise
may have killed innocent civilians in the hundreds.
It was such a security check at a barriered check point that brought
about the detention of the explosive laden lorry 41-3589 at the Vehicle
Checkpoint at Palugas Handiya, Kotawehera Police Division on June 1,
2007, that otherwise the Tamil Tigers would have created mayhem in Colombo
and we would have experienced the worst terror attack in two decades.
The lorry was detected to have been carrying a total of 1025 Kg of explosives.
Perhaps it may be such a check that identified undercover LTTE operative
in the city at Mabole, Wattala, last week, whose task was to supply
explosives and small arms and ammunition, to Tamil Tiger terrorists
to blast Colombo.
Thus the reduction of such security checks by an order of the Supreme
Court should be construed as an interference to national security exposing
and making the individual vulnerable for a possible losing his or her
‘right to life’. And that such a security check to be identified
by some as a human rights violation should be dismissed and the decision
by the Supreme Court should be challenged by Parliament.
Any ruling by a Court of Law in Sri Lanka that affect the national
security are best settled by Parliament as the Courts are unqualified
to decide on issues of terrorism which violates the ‘right to life’
of individuals young and old, male or female, a Tamil, Muslim, Burgher
or Sinhalese. It also undermines the right of the people to govern themselves.
This contention of mine is nothing new. In August 2005 the then British
Prime Minister Tony Blair during a media briefing on deporting terrorists
said: “So it is important to test this anew in view of the changed
conditions in Britain. Should legal obstacles arise, we will legislate
further including, if necessary, amending the Human Rights Act in respect
of the interpretation of the European Conventions of Human Rights.”
“Let no one be in any doubt”, he said. “The rules of
the games are changing”. Likewise, let us hear Sri Lanka’s
President say, “Let no one be in any doubt, the rules of the games
are changing and I am not going to watch my people fall dead like ten
pins each time a bomb is rolled at them by a Tamil Tiger who managed
to dodge a security check point because of the Supreme Court Order to
reduce such security checks.”
If such an engagement with the Law is good for the UK to safeguard
national security, then it should be good enough for Sri Lanka that
is facing the wrath of the marauding Tamil Tigers terrorists, and we
cannot watch or have our hands tied because of the Supreme Courts decisions
or being intimidated by the bleeding heart do-gooder Human Rights activists.
And I don’t want to see, as so would many other expatriates, the
young and the innocent snuffed out over and over again with crass impunity,
nor of the peasant farmers and their families, because the police and
armed forces were unable to check the suspicious vehicles which may
been carrying bombs and other explosives to Colombo, nor terrorists
who carry bombs and other explosives or materials to make bombs. With
the recent carnage, *there should be NO reduction of security checks
but there should be an increase of security checks by the armed forces
and police at check points.
The fact is that the legitimate government of Sri Lanka is at war with
an illegitimate gang of terrorists whose practice is to kill anyone
and everyone to achieve their goal of wanting their mono-ethnic, racist,
separate state, Eelam. And it should be acknowledged that the President
as the Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces has the authority to
take those measures he deems necessary to secure the country and the
lives of his peoples against the enemy. With such implied powers, he
has every right to order security checks of suspicious vehicles or people
who they think are inimical to the security of the people of Sri Lanka.
It should be noted that the courts have relatively few tools to superintend
military policy, especially during war time, and Sri Lanka is at war.
I believe that the Supreme Court erred as a matter of law when it interfered
with the President’s wartime authority to impose checks on suspicious
lorries and people when they ordered a reduced security checks. The
issue here is to safeguard the ‘right to life’ of the person
which should trump any other the human rights violation.
*The parliament cannot and should not abdicate its responsibility
to uphold the ‘right to life’ of its citizens and should take
immediate measures through legislation to prevent the courts interfere
in matters of national security.*
*The Supreme Courts Order to reduce security checks and barriers
should be annulled immediately before we witness another parade of caskets
with our innocent youngsters dead in them, killed by a Tamil Tiger terrorist
suicide bomber who had managed to dodge a road side security check and
got through with a bomb or a package of bomb making material.*
*The Human Rights Act should be revised and, if necessary, repealed
if it is there to frustrate the armed forces to safeguard the lives
of all Sri Lankan citizens.*
*Migrating to Colombo from Killinochchi or Vauniya is not a right
if it is deemed to harm and kill people, and staying in lodging-houses
carries with it a duty. That duty is to ensure and support the values
that sustain the Sri Lankan way of kinship and civilized life.*
Sincerely
Asoka Weerasinghe
Ottawa, Canada
|
