| by Basil Fernando
( November 11, 2012, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka Guardian) Humankind has at least a few millenniums of experience in keeping prisons. It is part of the unfortunate predicament of humanity that there is this need to have prisons. However, over these long years, through bitter experiences, humanity has learned to lessen the suffering involved for the inmates of prisons and to make the whole experience within the bounds of humane limits and within the framework of human cooperation.
The killing of prisoners, who are in the protective custody of the state, is the worst act that any civilized people could ever do. In Sri Lanka that has happened now and it is no surprise then that, at the same time, the final blows are dealt on the independence of the judiciary.
The art of governance is the art of achieving cooperation
among disparate factions. Perhaps the hardest aspect in
achieving that cooperation is when certain aspects of
liberty are removed from some individuals as a matter of
punishment for whatever wrong they may have done. Achieving
cooperation under these circumstances requires enormous
human ingenuity, where people who are confined into a
position of having limited freedoms understand that it is
for their own good under the given circumstances to adjust
to certain rules within the prisons. In this difficult
endeavor, humanity has made enormous progress.
A hallmark of such progress was when the philosophy of
governance changed with the influence of enlightenment
thinkers in Europe. Among so many intellectual
contributions, what stand out are the approaches of John
Locke and Jean-Jaques Rousseau, who laid the foundations for
rules of governance that were adopted after the French
Revolution and in the drafting of the American constitution.
Through a completely different path, Britain too has
developed its own principles of governance.
It was those principles and the philosophies on which
they were founded that created the groundwork for dealing
with the problem of prisoners through a completely different
perspective. While, out of necessity, certain restrictions
were brought upon persons who were found to be guilty of
crimes, at the same time there was the development of
methodologies within which they could cooperate with the
authorities with as limited amount of coercion as
possible.
With the arrival of the British in Sri Lanka, these
philosophies and principles found their way into the Sri
Lankan administration of justice. It was to the credit of
the talent and the ingenuity of generations of Sri Lankans
who were able to grasp these principles and establish the
rules and procedures within which cooperation with the
prison population and the prison authorities were
established.
This came to an abrupt end with the introduction of the
1972 and 1978 constitutions, which changed the principles of
governance from the fundamental ideas of the enlightenment
into crude manipulations by local politicians, who forgot
the ideas of cooperation and reduced governance to direct
control of the population for their own ends. This same
philosophy spread into the prisons. The first, the most
inhumane and barbaric treatment of prisoners, took place on
a large scale in July 1983, when a large number of Tamil
prisoners were killed inside prison.
The incidents of this weekend are the second most
barbaric act, which was a result of a rejection of the
principles of governance on which the behavior of
authorities were based. Like all authorities in the country,
the prison authorities today are manipulated by the
authoritarian system and the inner structure of the prison
system has broken down.
Instead of a system of cooperation, a system of crude
coercion has been introduced and this is now done under the
tutelage of the Ministry of Defense. A former Executive
President, DB Wijetunga, once said that wherever DIG
Udugampala went, there were complaints about disappearances.
It can now be said that wherever the Ministry of Defense
enters, there are killings and other forms of cruelties
perpetrated on the population. This is manifest in the way
that the people of the North and East are treated now. It is
the same kind of manipulation that has entered into the
control of prisons and the large scale killings of the
prisoners during this weekend, which were a direct result of
STF interventions, which are done under the control of the
Ministry of Defense.
Like the entirety of the country, which has lost the
system of governance on the principles of the enlightenment,
now the prison authorities have been dragged into a similar
type of chaos as that exists throughout the country.
It is this same kind of chaos that is reflected in the
impeachment proceedings. Under the kind of coercive
methodologies that are now employed, the crushing of one
individual, a woman who is now the Chief Justice, may be a
simple task. However, what is being destroyed is not just
one individual but whatever that remains from an old
structure of governance, where the protection of the dignity
of the individual was kept in the hands of the judiciary
alone. Perhaps the greatest Chief Justice in Sri Lankan
history, Sir Sidney Abraham, epitomized this role by his
historic judgment in the Bracegirldle case, where an order
of the representative of the Queen, the governor of Sri
Lanka, was declared null and void and quashed by the court.
It is that structure of governance and the principles of
independence of the judiciary that is being destroyed
now.
The despicable cruelty in the prisons and the arrogant
interference into the independence of the judiciary are all
a part of the sinking of the foundations on which Sri Lankan
civil administration and administration of justice are
based.
The Executive Presidential system is the greatest danger
to the nation and the greatest danger to the Sri Lankan
people to remain as a civilized people.
The killing of prisoners, who are in the protective
custody of the state, is the worst act that any civilized
people could ever do. In Sri Lanka that has happened now and
it is no surprise then that, at the same time, the final
blows are dealt on the independence of the judiciary.
 Humankind has at least a few millenniums of experience...){kind=link}