The Dompe conflagration
The
Police have been in the eye of another storm of civilian unrest
and the indications are that a host of unresolved issues
concerning Police-civilian ties is exploding to the surface all
over again. The gory public unrest in Dompe, which was sparked
off by the death of a man in Police custody, is currently under
investigation by the authorities and utmost care should be taken
by all concerned in commenting on the incident, lest premature
conclusions are hastily arrived at. In other words, we would
prefer to leave the issue of what led to the detainee’s death
open, for the time being.
However, it must be observed right away that the
circumstances surrounding the detainee’s death are only one
among the many troubling questions that the Dompe violence is
throwing-up. A human life has been lost and this is a most
painful moment for reflective and law-abiding persons but the
civilian unrest itself is bound to utterly discomfort the
civic-conscious observer. If homicide has been the cause of the
detainee’s death, then, his killers must be swiftly brought to
justice, but the Rule of Law and public order have been
dangerously breached and brought asunder once again by the
unsettling phenomenon of a public veritably taking the law into
its hands, and this is not the least of the anxieties of the
state and the law-abiding citizenry.
Just a few months back, the Police were found to over-react
and act brashly when they opened fire on a workers’ protest in
Katunayake, which claimed the life of a young FTZ employee. We
cannot pre-judge the Dompe incident, as said before, but it is
worrying that the Police have not made much headway in
addressing the issue of improving their relations with the
public, since the fatality in Katunayake. The question of
improving Police-civilian ties should receive top priority and
the recurring clashes between these parties should underscore
the point that this important task cannot be postponed any
longer.
On the other hand, it is abundantly clear that the public is
abounding with lawless elements who would be only too glad to
vent their rage on the Police in the face of what they see as a
grave provocation. While the law enforcers need to always act
within the bounds of the law, the same applies to the civilian
public. The Rule of Law should be the sole guide to both
sections and this should ideally be deeply ingrained in their
consciences. One of the gravest issues facing present day Sri
Lanka is that this sensitivity to the Rule of Law and the norms
of civilized living has been steadily undermined in all
significant sections of society over the decades.
The history of the brutalization of sections of our society
is quite well known and a detailed account of how this came
about is inessential here. Generally, it is the violence which
enveloped Sri Lanka over the past few decades and which
permitted sections of our society to unleash criminal force on
each other with a degree of impunity, which is accounting for
much of the criminality around us.
This, in the terms of some our sociological experts, is
‘structural violence’ and it stands to reason that if we are to
contain this species of violence, the ‘systemic causes’ that
lead to it must be neutralized. In other words, Sri Lankan
society needs to undergo some ‘structural changes’. That is, the
nature of our society must change. With the conflict coming to
an end, this great opportunity could now be availed of by all
people of good will and humanity.
The endeavour of the government, under President Mahinda
Rajapaksa, is to ‘begin at the beginning’ and re-establish Sri
Lanka on new, solid value foundations. In this new order of
things, consensus and dialogue will replace coercion and
violence as dispute-settlement mechanisms.
Along with this fresh new approach to conflict settlement,
would go a finer appreciation of the Rule of Law and the legal
underpinnings of a society where criminal force would be
outlawed.
No doubt, this is an uphill challenge but one which needs to
be accepted and overcome, regardless of how long it would take.
If sections of the public are easily taking the law into their
own hands and going to the extent of even unleashing violence on
institutions of law and order, such as Police stations and
Police personnel, it is proof that disregard for the most
respected institutions of the state, is now deeply ingrained in
the consciousness of some sections. While the necessary respect
for law enforcement institutions must be fostered anew among the
citizenry, it must be clearly demonstrated by the state that
lawlessness and criminality would under no circumstances be
tolerated. That is, lawlessness must be made to carry a heavy
price. |
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