Saturday, 12 October 2002  
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Amending the PTA

The continuing unrest among some of those detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act in our prisons highlights the need for a review of this piece of legislation, regarded by some as highly controversial. It must be admitted that many an abuse could have been committed in the enforcement of the PTA. Accordingly, the Government is doing right by seeking to modify or amend some of its provisions.

The majority of the public is likely to agree that the time is ripe for such a review, given the changed political realities of the country. Today national reconciliation and peace top the State agenda. Much remains to be done before we could rest back satisfied that the peace process is flourishing, but all bottlenecks along the way need to be taken up systematically and cleared for the purpose of putting the process on a firm foundation. A review of the PTA is one such undertaking.

When the PTA was brought into the Statute Book in the early Eighties the State may have been well-intentioned. It was aiming at arresting a fast deteriorating law-and-order situation and it was felt among some that the arm of the law enforcer needed to be strengthened. Although such thinking looked fine on paper, many abuses occurred in practice. Rather than quell the North-East rebellion, it was felt that the PTA only aggravated it. This is mainly because many an innocent youth ended up in detention. Consequently, popular disaffection in the North-East in particular only increased in proportion to which the PTA was inconsiderately enforced. This should only be expected in a situation where force was met with force. Legal niceties tend to be shunted aside when brutalization takes its toll on the moral conscience of warring groups.

We hope all this would be history. Now that the process of reconciliation has been launched every effort needs to be made to end distrust and suspicion among the parties to the conflict. Removing PTA provisions which are seen as repressive and controversial or modifying them suitably, could be essential for the acceleration of the peace process.

We know for a fact that many a Tamil youth has been languishing in prison for many years after being held under the PTA. If any person is made to suffer silently behind bars without being brought to justice, this is a blatant injustice which is being done to the person concerned. The same stricture holds in cases where persons have been detained arbitrarily with no charges being levelled.

It is not our aim to argue that all those held under the PTA are innocent or that they are being detained arbitrarily. However, it is a fact that many are being held without being subjected to the due process of law. It is only right that such persons are speedily released if no cases can be brought against them.

A review of the PTA should aim at achieving the above objectives. Essentially, the PTA should be made to operate on a rational basis. It is vitally important that the law should be structured in a manner that would ensure the legitimate rights of both the arresting authority and the arrested. If the law is seen as unjust the State would be delegitimised in the eyes of those who are affected by its enforcement. The PTA was seen as such by some and this helped in fuelling terror and rebellion.

Hopefully, the current opportunity would be seized to restructure the PTA in the ways suggested above. It is also our hope that these issues would form part of the debate on law reform.

An important lesson to be learnt from the faulty conception and implementation of the PTA is that two wrongs do not make a right. This self-evident maxim should be applied to all situations involving law enforcement.

HEMAS MARKETING (PTE) LTD

HNB-Pathum Udanaya2002

Crescat Development Ltd.

www.priu.gov.lk

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