Human Rights & Humanitarian Law

Sri Lanka & the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

International Human Rights Day
52nd Anniversary of the UDHR 

Rajan Sriskandarajah, USA
10 December 2000

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“Do you want to be governed from London or do you want, as Ceylonese, to help govern Ceylon? ... On behalf of the Congress and on my behalf, I give the minority communities the sincere assurance that no harm need you fear at our hands in a free Lanka.”- Don Stephen Senanayake, Sinhala leader at the State Council of Ceylon (Sri Lanka); November 1945, who 3 years later went on to disenfranchise a million Tamil inhabitants of the island.

The tenth day of December 1948 was a historic day. It was a day of one of the greatest achievements, indeed a landmark, in human history. This was the day the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Fifty-two years on, on the 10th of December 2000, it is well for Sri Lankans to look back and reflect on what their government has done for human rights. What have they achieved?

The most significant is that Sri Lanka has achieved the ignoble distinction of being ranked number two among countries with the worst human rights record, next only to Iraq. As a matter of fact, Sri Lanka being such a small country, on a per capita basis, it should have been ranked number one.   

Over ninety thousand deaths, mass graves and disappearances, rapes and torture,, massive displacement of people and flagrant deprivations of basic human needs – all in the name of a war for ethnic and religious superiority. How did they get to be this way?

1948 is also significant for Sri Lanka as the year it gained independence from colonial rule. So, it is fitting that we start the history of human rights in Sri Lanka in that year.
Within a few months of the twin events of 1948, independence and the historic UN declaration, Sri Lanka enacted two laws to disenfranchise over a million people; the first direct violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 15.)

Article 15
1. Everyone has the right to a nationality.
2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Over one million Tamils were deprived of their hitherto enjoyed citizenship rights. They lost all their civic rights, including their right to vote.

This action, that was racially motivated to reduce Tamil representation in parliament, also violated Article 2, which states,

Article 2
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

From then on, it was a straight downhill ride for Sri Lanka. Emboldened by the lack of protest from the international community (except for some feeble efforts by India), Sri Lanka, with a government dominated by one racial group (Sinhalese), went on to enact a series of racially motivated laws, statutes and regulations, to oppress the numerically smaller ethnic groups.

The resultant protest by the oppressed, with its natural progression from parliamentary to extra-parliamentary, and from peaceful demonstrations to armed revolt, evoked not measures to redress grievances but further oppressive laws, which further violated the UN Declaration.

The worst cut of all was the Prevention of Terrorism Act. This 1979 Act, which has been condemned as an ‘ugly blot on the statute books of any civilized country’ by the International Commission of Jurists, violates many of the articles of the Universal Declaration. For a side-by-side comparison, see Table below. What is shown in the table are just a few examples of how the Sri Lankan PTA violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

The International Commission of Jurists in two separate reports condemned this act in no uncertain terms.

“The South African Terrorism Act has been called ‘a piece of legislation which must shock the conscience of a lawyer.’ Many provisions of the Sri Lankan Prevention of Terrorism Act are equally contrary to accepted principles of the Rule of Law.”- Virginia Leary: Ethnic Conflict and Violence in Sri Lanka - Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists, July/August 1981 

“These provisions (in the Prevention of Terrorism Act) are quite extraordinarily wide. No legislation conferring even a remotely comparable powers is in force in any other free democracy operating under the Rule of Law, however troubled it may by politically motivated violence. Indeed there is only one known precedent for the power to impose restriction orders under section 11 of the Sri Lankan PTA, and that - as Professor Leary rightly pointed out in her report - is the comparable legislation currently in force in South Africa… such a provision is an ugly blot on the statute book of any civilised country."- Paul Sieghart: Sri Lanka: A Mounting Tragedy of Errors - Report of International Commission of Jurists; 1984

However, these stepwise oppressions, and especially the Prevention of Terrorism Act and its application, evoked no voice of disapproval from the UN or its members who signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

Numerous appeals by elected representatives of the Tamils to a number of international bodies have gone unheeded. 

What is worse, the international community when it did finally move, responded only to the effect (the actions of the oppressed) and not the causes.

There can be no doubt that the Prevention of Terrorism Act was primarily designed and implemented as an instrument of war against the Tamils in that island.

Its effect on the Tamil people has been devastating. Tamil people, and only the Tamil people, are subject to arbitrary searches, arrests, and incarceration in unauthorized places of detention, torture, sexual abuse, murder and burials without inquests in Sri Lanka, under this ‘law.’ 

At present over three thousand Tamil political prisoners are languishing in Sri Lankan jails for prolonged periods without charges or trials, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Prisoners under this act have been butchered on several occasions within the prison grounds and all remaining prisoners are in danger of such violence in the future.

As a first step, it is the duty of all countries that are signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to condemn the human rights record of Sri Lanka and its Prevention of Terrorism Act, and campaign for its repeal.

It is also imperative that any and all Sri Lankan nationals who care about human rights, should commit themselves to work unrelentingly for the repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act - an enactment which is ‘an ugly blot on the statute book of any civilized country.’

Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
Sri Lankan Prevention of Terrorism Act

A side-by-side comparison