{"id":96158,"date":"2019-12-08T17:40:05","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T00:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=96158"},"modified":"2019-12-08T17:40:05","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T00:40:05","slug":"an-open-letter-to-british-prime-minister-on-conviction-of-brigadier-priyanka-fernando","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/12\/08\/an-open-letter-to-british-prime-minister-on-conviction-of-brigadier-priyanka-fernando\/","title":{"rendered":"An open letter to British Prime minister on Conviction of Brigadier Priyanka Fernando"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><strong data-rich-text-format-boundary=\"true\">By Rajendra Alwis<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>I\nwas deeply perturbed to note the judgment delivered by a UK court in absentia\nconvicting Brigadier Priyanka Fernando (Case No.1801273043) in which he was\nfined \u00a3 2400. Brigadier Fernando at the time of the incident was serving as the\nDefence Attach\u00e9 in the Sri Lanka High Commission in London.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since\nBrigadier Fernando was holding a diplomatic position in the Sri Lankan High\nCommission in London when this incident took place no doubt that he was\nprotected by diplomatic immunity as per Article 31 of the Vienna Convention on\nDiplomatic Relations of 1961. Accordingly, this judgment is a blatant violation\nof the Vienna Convention with serious procedural errors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In\n1967, Burma\u2019s (now Myanmar) Ambassador to, Sao Boonwaat murdered his wife in\nColombo, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). However, the Sri Lankan government couldn\u2019t\ntake any legal action against him due to diplomatic immunity and he was brought\nback to Burma to initiate legal action. This is a classic case in point to\nillustrate diplomatic immunity for those who are not conversant with the\nprocedural fairness in honoring and protecting it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brigadier\nFernando was convicted for cut-throat gestures displayed in body language that\nwas said to have intimidated some demonstrators who had staged a protest\nagainst Sri Lanka in front of the Sri Lanka High Commission, in London. It is\nwell known in Education Psychology that gestures and body languages always\nconnote and denote different shades of meanings according to the life\nexperiences of people which has no rational or objective base. Hence, this is a\nvery subjective judgment that is not cerebral under any measurement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In\nclosing, please let me quote the pathetic fate of the Englishman, Timothy\nEvans, falsely convicted by the British court and hanged him in January 1950\nsaying he murdered his wife and infant child at their residence at 10\nRillington Place in Notting Hill. Three years after Evan\u2019s execution, his\ndownstairs neighbor, John Christie was found to be a serial killer by the\nBritish court who had also killed Evan\u2019s wife and infant child. Later Evans was\ngranted a posthumous pardon. What else to say other than saying&nbsp;<strong>British\nLaw system is great\u201d.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rt.\nHonorable Prime Minister please instruct your legal authorities revisit and\nrectify the undue judgment in Brigadier Priyanka Fernando\u2019s case only to\nmaintain the reputation of the law system of your country. Surely the newly\nelected President of Sri Lanka will look after Brigadier Fernando in a fitting\nmanner to do justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Rajendra Alwis I was deeply perturbed to note the judgment delivered by a UK court in absentia convicting Brigadier Priyanka Fernando (Case No.1801273043) in which he was fined \u00a3 2400. Brigadier Fernando at the time of the incident was serving as the Defence Attach\u00e9 in the Sri Lanka High Commission in London.&nbsp; Since Brigadier [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}