Time to build bridges

Dr. Ruwantissa ABEYRATNE
 

A peace that will not only be the mere absence of war but also be one that would ensure that we live free of fear and the security of our families will not be threatened. I am sure we all have waited long for this moment.

The seemingly never ending war tried the range of our patience and kindled the depth of our curiosity, as to when it will all be over. Some of us left our shores not to run away from a seemingly sinking ship but rather to seek a safe haven to start a family and rear our children.

Efficient government

It has taken long, for an efficient government under a courageous and visionary leader to rectify the blundering buffoonery of past governments and bring hope to all of us who one day planned to return to our shores again. We cannot but help offer our enduring gratitude to our brave soldiers and their sage leaders who guided them.

This is not a time for recrimination. Nor is it a time for punishment. It is time for rebuilding our fractured hopes and restoring our faith in the power of a united nation. Anyone with a modest helping of common sense would agree that this is a two way process. We must not wait for the State to take the entire burden of rebuilding. This is a job for the entire nation and not just the State.

We should stand as a bridge Picture by Saman Sri Wedage

First thing we do is shed the notion that we belong to different species of the human race purely because of our race, colour or creed separates us. There will be no lasting peace if the attendant differences that go into human conflict is not eradicated and obviated. Inherent in any process of racial or national segregation is a certain intellectual abdication of the values instilled in a society, through a democratic process, encompassing legal, philosophical and epistemological principles.

A cornerstone of this rebuilding process lies in our inherent right to freedom of speech.

Safeguards should be entrenched in a legislative structure in a ‘post peace’ social setting so that the law will essentially distinguish between the classic dichotomy between speech and conduct, to arrogate a definitive place to speech that would tantamount to conduct based on the injury that the speech causes.

Principles

Principles of causation must be identified in order to ensure that boundaries between speech and conduct are not obfuscated and purveyors of hate speech are not exonerated of their overall responsibilities to society.

Social consciousness must transcend parochial considerations of legal dogma and embrace the compelling need to recognize and envision ‘clear and imminent danger’ that hate speech may cause. A certain curative logic based on imputation must be ingrained in the legislative minds of a post-peace era. In a sense, this approach can analogically be likened to the preventive reasoning of risk management that is capable of conceptualizing possible harm to national harmony.

Truth and justice are unhappily mutually exclusive. While in legal terms, legislative parameters will define acts and qualitize their reprehensibility, in truth, speech and conduct that ingratiate themselves to a society have to be addressed politically.

Ethical question

This is the dilemma that legislators will face in dealing with racial a post war racial disorientation. Racial and cultural primarily erode ethical boundaries and convey an unequivocal message of contempt and degradation.

The operative question then becomes ethical, as to whether societal mores would abnegate their vigil and tolerate some members of society inciting their fellow citizens to degrade, demean and cause indignity to other members of the very same society, with the ultimate aim of harming them? Conversely, is there any obligation on a society to actively protect all its members from indignity and physical harm caused by racial segregation? The answer to both these questions lies in the fundamental issue of restrictions on racist speech, and the indignity that one would suffer in living in a society that might tolerate racist speech.

Social equality

Obviously, a society committed to protecting principles of social and political equality cannot look by and passively endorse such atrocities, and much would depend on the efficacy of a State’s coercive mechanisms. These mechanisms must not only be punitive, but should also be sufficiently compelling to ensure that members of a society not only respect a particular law but also internalize the effects of their proscribed acts.

When I was a young lad attending school, it was a common occurrence to hear a boy calling another by the derogatory term Ado Demala! (hey you Tamil) or Ado Thambiya (hey you Muslim). Although these terms were sometimes used among friends as terms of endearment, it does not derogate from the fact that at most times they were used to denigrate the self esteem of an individual. No race was spared including the Sinhala race. It would be appropriate in this context to cite the first verse of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, which, in the children’s’ edition says: “One day, a large number of people gathered together. They came from different places and they were quite different from one another. Some were men, and some were women. Their skin, their hair and their eyes were different colours. Their bodies and faces were different shapes. Many people had been hurt or killed because of their religion, their race or their political opinions. What brought those people together was the wish that there should be no more war, that nobody should ever be hurt again and that people who had not done other people any harm should never be punished again. So, all together, they wrote a document. In this document they tried to make a list of rights that every human being has, and that everyone else should respect.”

It is as though a long, wicked and unforgiving storm has passed and the nation is catching its breath. We stand at the crossroads of our own destiny, trying desperately to rediscover ourselves. It is at a time such as this that we can truly salute our President, who, at the celebrations of our 61st independence called the expatriates of Sri Lanka to come back, saying: “We are now building a country where people will not die through terrorism. Similarly we should transform this into a country where the social and economic expectations of the people are not shattered.”

Perhaps I will return to Sri Lanka after all.

(The writer is Coordinator of International Civil Aviation Organization, Canada.)