undermining Israel and the of pluralist Sri Lanka

Israel and the undermining of pluralist Sri Lanka

- TisARANEE GUNASEKARA.

ANGUNUGALLE Sri Jinananda thero is yet to achieve the notoriety of a Galagoda-Atte Gnanasara or an Dayaratane. He deserves to. To him belongs the distinction of turning the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) from a law aimed at safeguarding individual rights to an instrument of persecution.

In February 2019, the monk wrote a letter to the IGP urging him to use the ICCPR to incarcerate a young Lankan (Sinhala-Buddhist) writer, Shakthika Sathkumara for penning a short story ‘defaming Buddhism’. Previously the same monk had lodged a complaint — unsuccessfully — against director Malaka Dewapriya and his radio drama series ‘Kanata Parak’. This time, the IGP paid heed. Sathkumara was summoned to the Polgahawela police on 1 April 2019, arrested, and held in the Kegalle prison for 130 days. No preliminary inquiry was carried out and the B Report just contained the complaint by the monk, the writer claimed.

Other arrests under the ICCPR followed, the most infamous being the incarceration of comedian Nathasha Edirisooriya for remarks considered “lese majesté” towards King Suddodana (father of Prince Siddhartha). Akmeemana Dayaratane thero of Sinhala Ravaya and other monks who lodged the complaint against Edirisooriya went so far as to demand that audience members who laughed at her ‘blasphemous’ jokes should also be arrested.

That particular spate of witch-hunting ended with the landmark bail order in Edirisooriya’s case by Colombo high court judge Aditya Patabendi. He pointed out the illegality of using Section 3 of the ICCPR Act against individuals for making statements considered hurtful to a racial or religious group. “Especially, just because a complaint is made by a Buddhist monk or another religious leader or an influential person in society, it is not the task of an investigator to arrest a person based on that alone,” he emphasised.