President Anura Kumara Dissanayake indulged in a two-step dance with opponents of the Organized Crimes Bill (OCB), when he pronounced this Thursday that his Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) led Government was open to consultations and amenable to reasonable revisions to the draft. A breathtakingly bad Bill I say ‘two-step’ in that, despite the appearance of [...]
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President Anura Kumara Dissanayake indulged in a two-step dance with opponents of the Organized Crimes Bill (OCB), when he pronounced this Thursday that his Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) led Government was open to consultations and amenable to reasonable revisions to the draft.
I say ‘two-step’ in that, despite the appearance of major concessions being made in a familiarly choreographed presidential performance, this is not the case in reality. The President said that, the period of time that a suspect is permitted to be kept in police detention would be decreased from 72 hours to 48 hours.
He also declared that given the outcry over tattoos as one way of identifying a suspect, that reference can be removed if it is ‘not relevant’ to Sri Lanka. This was to contradict his excitable Minister of Justice who vehemently protested in the House a few weeks ago that there was nothing wrong with this.
Thirdly, offences under the Excise Ordinance will be removed. That said, let us hold back from issuing ‘rapturous cries’ or to cheer in response, as famously attributed to the ranks of Tuscany. In truth, these Presidential ‘concessions’ are not comforting when the rest of the Bill is so breathtakingly bad.
Defiling of constitutional safeguards
The 2003 OCB limited the period of police detention to 24 hours. On that measurement, the Presidential concession of 48 hours in the 2026 OCB is no ‘concession.’ This is rather like a home invader who threatens to kill the terrified occupants and later, scales that down to torturing and raping his victims.
On the same day that President Dissanayake made these comments on Sri Lanka’s OCB, the Indian Supreme Court issued a ruling of constitutional significance imposing constraints on the 24 hour timeline prescribed to produce an arrested person before a magistrate in that country.
This timeline begins from the moment he is detained, and not from the time that the arrest is formally made, the Court ruled. In other words, this begins from the time that a police officer ‘touches the body’, the Bench said. The Court held that there can be ‘no artificial distinction between arrest and detention.’
No peculiar status given to ‘special statutes
Public discussion of this ruling in India has pointed to the salutary impact that this will have in preventing torture in police custody. We have had similar cautions issued by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court. Interestingly, the Indian Supreme Court also ruled that this right to life and liberty cannot be ‘curtailed by special statutes.’
Last week, it was pointed out that the JVP was among the first to go to the Supreme Court against the 2003 OCB’s replication of abusive provisions in the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). Confessions made by suspects to senior police officers were made admissible. Suspects had to ‘prove’ they were ‘involuntary.’
As practice under the PTA shows, this is an impossible burden to discharge. A suspect is hardly tortured with witnesses around. ‘Voir dire’ inquiries by court to test the voluntariness of confessions are routinely mechanical. The collusion of medical professionals with state agents in covering up torture is documented.
The unreliability of confessions obtained through torture is well tracked. That clause was cleared by the Supreme Court in defiance of copious jurisprudence establishing rights violations. But leaving the Court aside, why did President Dissanayake cannily omit Clause 47 of the 2026 OCB from his ‘concessions’?
That is phrased in substantially the same manner as the 2003 OCB in permitting confessions to police officers and the PTA under which, the members of his own party were horrifically abused by state agents in the 1980’s. To reproduce this in a draft law originating from the JVP requires brazen political nerve.
I wonder what excuses may be offered by politically fractured Colombo’s ‘public intellectuals’ who asked what the fuss was over the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution? Ruling politicians yap (there is really no other fitting word) that the Bill only deals with ‘organised criminals’ and there is no reason for public concern.
Police impunity and magisterial helplessness
This would be funny if the potential impact of the 2026 OCB was not so deadly. If our constitutional jurisprudence teaches us anything, it is that the line between ‘terrorist’ or ‘organised crimes’ suspects and ordinary citizens is invariably blurred in the eyes and actions of a deeply corrupt police force.
Judicial officers who reprimand police officers who cross that line are helpless. The Gampaha magistrate who cited the head of police for contempt in failing to issue a nationwide circular prohibiting his officers from the filing of ‘false cases’ and has now been transferred from his post, is a case in point.
As extraordinary as this is, it illustrates the frustration of judges when confronted with endemic patterns of impunity. So let us not hear nonsensical protests by the Government asking why the public is concerned. And it is no answer to say that, ‘well, let us work at making this draft better.’
To be clear, the 2026 OCB should not have been presented at all in the first place. It is a mockery of the National Peoples’ Power (NPP) party’s pledges to Sri Lankans in 2024. It is also no answer to point to anti-democratic credentials of sundry political riffraff in the Opposition, objecting to the Bill.
This includes the delightful spectacle of a retired Chief Justice of Sri Lanka taking to the political platform in opposition thereof. That was to quote the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in opposing the twin draft Protection of State from Terrorism Act (PSTA) and the OCB.
This invokes mirth given that his term in office was particularly distinguished, (I use the term ironically), in undermining the working of the ICCPR. That included a judicial ruling that the ICCPR’s Optional Protocol was unconstitutional in the critiqued Singarasa case (2006).
But to return to the OCB, this catches up the media in its reach in a manner that is both bizarre and perturbing. A smidgen of polish is reflected in the NPP version of the PSTA in the manner in which an exception to being swept up in the definition of ‘terrorist acts’ are provided for bona fide reporting.
This, by the way, was reflected in Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe’s counter-terror drafts as well, contrary to what NPP political propagandists say. Regardless, such exceptions are of limited use as they will be tested in a court of law by which time, the target of that state reach has already been ‘terrorised.’
But even that degree of polite rectitude is missing from the OCB. Clause 14 prohibits the printing and publishing of ‘the name, or any matter which may make known the identity of any person against whom a serious crime under this Act is alleged or found to have been committed (the victim) ‘ by ‘any person.’
Upon being convicted after summary trial, the punishment is imprisonment of either description for a term not exceeding two years or to a fine or to both. The unforgivably lax wording of this section is startling. What is meant by ‘any matter’ for example?
The only allowance is when the police, ‘acting in good faith for the purposes of such investigation’ permits the publication or when the victim or next of kin authorizes the publication. Even more seriously, open court reporting on court proceedings in relation to ‘a serious crime’ under the OCB is prohibited.
Thus, ‘any person who prints or publishes any matter’’ must first obtain permission of the court. If not, the reporter is liable to imprisonment of either description not exceeding two years or to a fine or to both.
What path will Sri Lanka tread when the OCB becomes law?
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