Saturday, July 7, 2012

Serious questions on the ‘legality’ of the raid – X news site etc



The raid on Friday June 29th at the offices of both Sri Lanka Mirror and Lanka X news was not legal. The Police stated that those people were taken into custody under Section 118 of the Penal Code. But, since this Section on the Law of Criminal Defamation has been repealed under Act No. 12 of 2002, the Magistrate ordered to release them all on Police bail.

This was stated in Parliament by Ranil Wickremasinghe a master of the law, and he is usually exact in what he says, but does not get the needed press coverage with headlines, for his careful study of what is legal and what is not. Whilst the Police were violating the law, they also violated the police code of discipline. The Charter resolved at the 107th Convention of the World Inspectors’ General of Police held in 1997 states that the first duty of a Police Officer is to execute the law. Acting outside the law is also a contravention of that Charter. 

Reading the proceedings in Parliament, Nimal Siripala de Silva in reply gave a lame excuse of them breaking another law of slander or some such, but the above law was used in the execution of the order, and as the law is not in force it is clearly an unlawful act, for which the Police have not been prosecuted.

It is obvious that there is no real check to see if what the police does is legal as they seem to be blindly taking orders, not knowing if they are actually legal. What kind of country is this for the police to act in this way? A banana republic perhaps.

Is there a police commission that looks into the illegal activities of the police? I hope so, and I hope they will be brought to book, so that next time round they will be more careful before they break the law of the land with impunity.

I trust the reader can judge for him or herself that most of what this govt. is engaged in is either illegal or against the spirit of the law or both. It is important that these acts are brought before the public’s attention. It is important the public agitate for accountability instead of their current passive acceptance of gross violation of the law by both the Govt. elected representatives and all the govt. servants including the forces who habitually break the law of the land, as if it does not apply to them.

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