An appeal from all friends of Sri Lanka to come forward to prevent it from taking another wrong turn
History repeatedly teaches us how seemingly benign political
leaders turned dangerous autocrats by taking cover behind symbols of peace or
legal frameworks set in place to protect human rights. Swastika was a symbol of
peace in South Asia. Even this was used by Hitler to
recruit people en masse to commit crimes against humanity. Martin Luther King
said “remember, all what Hitler did was legal”, because he wrapped up repressive agendas in legal
frameworks that appeared to be humane on the face. This presses upon the fact that legality does not equate to morality in the test of time.
Who might suspect that Sri Lankan government would abuse the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR) Act to arrest media personnel who challenge the political status quo? Section 3(1) of the
ICCPR Act of 2007 states that no individual should advocate national, racial, or
religious hatred that incites discrimination, hostility, or violence. On the face of it this section appears to have good intention. However, since then authorities have used this section to selectively target their critics. For instance, when hate mongering monks led a series of anti-Muslim violent acts, this law was not used against them.
Bruno Divakara runs the SL VlogYouTube channel. It has 251,000 subscribers and they have been doing
very impactful interviews addressing some of Sri Lanka's pressing needs such as
innovation, entrepreneurship, transparency, rule of law of governance,
and the practice of democracy. No wonder Bruno's channel has been a
headache to some politicians. In the most recent case, SL Vlog released a video of a joke done by stand-up comedian Nathasha
Edirisooriya, about Prince Siddhartha who
later realised Nibbana and became Buddha. Buddha himself clearly
distinguished the character of Buddha from that of Prince Siddhartha accepting the emptiness of some of the things he did before realizing Nibbana. Being
a Buddhist myself, Nathasha’s
jokes did not upset me. In fact, this joke did not incite any violence in Sri Lanka. However, the authorities invoked Section 3(1) of the ICCPR
Act to arrest Nathasha Edirisooriya and Bruno Divakara for releasing Nathasha’s alleged "insult on Buddhism" on SL Vlog.
This continuous abuse of Section 3(1) of the ICCPR Act of 2007 to conduct repressive politics on critics needs to be stopped before it makes more damage. On the other hand, such abuse is not doing any good to Buddhism too. It just paints an extremist face to Buddhism in Sri Lanka.
President Ranil Wickremasinghe had been a respected politician who was trusted to lead the country out of chaos. To his credit, he is doing a good job so far. Even if Ranil as the president may not have been directly involved in directing the CID to make the above arrests, having known how Sri Lanka's law enforcement works, it is inevitable that the blame goes to Ranil as the president. This kind of backfires will only make him lose the liberal youth voters. Therefore, I beg true friends of President Ranil Wickremasinghe to come forward now to prevent him from falling prey to misleading advice from within his inner circles.
This is an appeal from all friends of Sri Lanka to come forward to use whatever the diplomatic channels you are aware of to urge Sri Lanka's top leadership to stop abusing Section 3(1) of the
ICCPR Act to silence political critics.
Please do so because Sri Lankans are working hard to build a better future, and it cannot be built
on a shaky political foundation. I heard that the next court hearing for
Bruno Divakara, who runs SL Vlog YouTube channel is on 21st June. We
must act fast. Please sign this Avaaz petition I created.
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