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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

 

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