Chaining the Man Who Is Born Free

By?N Sathiya Moorthy

After domestic stake-holders, the UN Human Rights Office has also taken exception to ?an overly broad definition of terrorism? in the proposed Anti-Terrorism Bill. Likewise, it has also opposed the ?unfettered discretion to label and restrict expressions? the authorities disagree with as ?false statements? in the Online Safety Bill, which too is up on the anvil.

There cannot be any disagreement on the basic premise that all citizens of every nation under the sun should enjoy maximum or maximised freedoms, if laws are required to ensure as much. What then is the reality?

As the French political philosopher Rousseau said as far back as the 17^th century, ?Man is born free but everywhere is in chains?. Nation-States have been increasingly resorting to laws that limit or curb human freedoms as they deem fit under their circumstances.

The question is if there can be any global definition of ?terrorism?, which is what the UN Human Rights Office is now driving at. There is none in existence, not even after the very same UN sought out one in the post-9/11 global scenario. That the UN too did not find the need for seeking such a definition earlier should show how the international body too has been biased towards a certain hemisphere in the world, ignoring the gory cries from the other side, until then.

The pity is even afterward, the UN has not as strongly commended on the post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws in the West, beginning with the US. Nor has it found any words to condemn the US and its NATO allies, among other participants, when they targeted tens of thousands of innocent civilians in nations like Afghanistan and Iraq, in the name of ?fighting terrorism?.

My terrorists, your terrorists

The world is an uneven place has been known all along. The use of such philosophical phraseology used to be confined to the socio-economic status of nations and individuals thereof. But in the 21^st century, more than in the past, you get to see its application to terrorism laws, of all things. It?s this century that coined the phrase, ?My terrorists and your terrorists?, in relation to the US-led West?s approach to global terrorism.

Thus, there is no UN report on the human rights records pertaining to the US-led anti-terrorism war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But a UN Secretary-General in former South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon found it expedient to suo motu seek a report on allegations of ?war crimes? and ?accountability issues? in Sri Lanka. For this, the Secretary-General did not seek the clearance either of the UNGA or even the UNSC. He did all this, including what followed, under what should pass for the Executive order of the Secretary-General.

Ki-moon did not stop there. By not ordering an investigation into the ?leak? (?) of the three-member Darussman Report, which he said was meant only for his understanding, he may have made himself culpable for breaking one or other provision under the anti-terrorism law in any country. It should include Sri Lanka, but cannot exclude any of the other nations that are now going after the former in the UNHRC and elsewhere.

Better or worse still, the Darusman Report was leaked, not once but twice. First, it was the Interim Report that got into the western media first and later flowed down to the local media in this country. Either Ki-moon was callous or contriving still that even after promising to investigate the ?first leak?, he allowed the ?second leak? to happen. If they were anything to go by, the entire UN building should be declared ?leaky?.

If nothing of the kind happened and not even victimised Sri Lanka raised a hue and cry, it owed to the prevailing Colombo?s conviction that the UN and the UNHRC were biased against the nation and its government of the days ? but not for the reasons cited but for a larger geo-strategic cause.

Largest open prison

It is here that the West has not learnt its lessons, not yet, not enough. They wanted President Mahinda Rajapaksa out, and got it ? but did not get what they wanted on war crimes probe and the like. That is if that was what they were really looking for. Today, when successive governments in Colombo have their jobs cut out, to suit the nation?s domestic and geo-political priorities, the West does not know what to do next, or which direction to move next.

Thus, there was initial confusion over the continuing or born-again Palestine problem. First, the global strategic community was stunned and shocked to know that the Hamas had browbeaten the most-respected and even more feared Israeli intelligence / counter-intelligence agency, Mossad, to the latter?s game. Then came the condemnation of the Hamas missile-attack on innocent civilians, and also the short and sharp video-footages of their allegedly killing, maiming and raping Israeli children and women, even in the early hours of that attack.

Now, the table is turning against Israel. The very same governments that had condemned the Hamas? brand of ?terrorism? are even more concerned about the inherent Palestinian rights, the imminent implementation of the two-nation solution, and of course, the basic rights of the innocent people of Gaza, which possibly was/is the world?s largest ?open prisonl?, and whose residents are being forcibly ordered to evacuate into nothingness, by the Israeli defence forces because they wanted to avenge ? this time, the humiliation of being caught unawares.

Irreplaceable institution

Juxtapose the situation to the post-Aragalaya Sri Lanka and the picture is complete. It is not about President Ranil Wickremesinghe or any other wanting to check against his own downfall and exit. It will be decided one way or the other, only in a democratic election that is due next year. It is about the Sri Lankan State as an irreplaceable institution that is seeking these laws.

The State apparatus has a duty to secure not only sovereignty and territorial integrity. It also has the responsibility to check against political instability of a manipulated or militant kind. The Aragalaya was the former, coming close to the latter. Imagine what if President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had not quit office after having his duly-elected Prime Minister brother Mahinda Rajapaksa too to lay down office.

As for the Online Safety Bill, the nation will recall how the Yahapalanaya or Reformist government of which Wicrekemsinghe was the Prime Minister, could defuse communal riots in Kandy and Batticaloa in quick succession by shutting down the social media. And how soon after incumbent Mahinda R had gloriously lost the presidency in 2015, Dr Rajitha Senaratne, the poll-time spokesperson of successor Maithripala Sirisena, gloated how they had beaten the government?s intelligence agencies by communicating only on satellite phones.

That?s where to begin, not end ? as is being sought, though definitely, there are reasons to have more review clauses and bodies, including the higher judiciary, to check against misuse and abuse. For more than the political leadership, it is the police enforcers of such laws who end up misusing those laws, until it becomes a second nature for them ? and a regular occurrence for the rest of the nation!

(The writer is a policy analyst & political commentator, based in Chennai, India. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)