Enforced Disappearances And An Unjust Republic
September 3, 2012
By Basil Fernando -
Basil Fernando
Forced disappearances have left quite an impression on the psyche of the Sri Lankan people living in all parts of the country. Since 1971, there has been continuous use of enforced disappearances as a tool by the state, for what they referred to as the maintenance of “law and order”. The result is a negative mindset, arising from what the people have seen and heard over several decades, due to so many incidents and stories about enforced disappearances. The shocking news has obviously been borne deep into the psyche of the people of all the people, living in all parts of the country.
Such deep impressions alter the views of people on many issues. One of the great changes in the minds of people, due to the impressions that are left in their minds of enforced disappearances, is to change their ideas about all those in authority; about the police, the military, the intelligence services and also the political leaders. The people now in their inner minds have different ideas as to what these things meant in the past before these large scale enforced disappearances happened.
Today, the police and the military are often seen by the people as abductors who may come in any guise, at any time. What the people expect from the police, the military or anyone else who represents a lawful authority and exercises such things as arrests has undergone a fundamentally deep change. The expectation of what might happen in the event of abduction or arrest is now very different. People have lost the legitimate expectation that they might have in the event of dealing with their law enforcement agencies; the expectation that whatever happens will be within the limits of the law and rationality no longer exists. Now the expectation is that the law will be flouted, that anything might happen, and that if anyone were to come out of the situation safe and sound it would his or her great luck.
