Counter Terrorism Act, Why Now? Evil Forces Coming Here?
Latheef Farook
On Tuesday 11 September 2018, the Cabinet endorsed the “Counter-Terrorism Bill” (CTL) to be enacted by the Sri Lankan Parliament repealing the Prevention of Terrorism Act, PTA, applied during the wartime in dealing with the LTTE.
The draft bill was presented to the Cabinet by Foreign Minister Tilak Marapana with Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe and Minister Champika Ranawaka, both known for their hostile mindset towards Muslims reportedly grumbling at the Cabinet meeting that the law was not tough enough!
President Maithripala Sirisena, known for his indifference towards Muslims had agreed to the amendments proposed by Mr. Rajapaksa.
I do not want to go into details of the draft Bill. However it is proper to ask why now this bill, as Ministers Champika Ranawaka and Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe possibly believe that this law if enacted can be used against the minorities and keep the communities divided to achieve their political objective, though it has already been pointed out that in Sri Lanka CTL must necessarily be enforced against Sinhala Buddhist extremists. It is well known that Muslims were subjected to frequent extremist attacks both under the previous and also under the present government.
Ever since the LTTE was militarily defeated in May 2009, terrorism was crushed. Right now there is no terrorism in the country and there is no sign of LTTE raising its head. The only terrorism is the organized Sinhala racist attacks on Muslims involving some elements from the police and Special Task Force-STF- while the government turned a blind eye.
The question is under such circumstance what is the need for CTA? This is because the country passing through a period of worst political and economic crisis while numerous burning issues which deserve urgent attention and solution remain ignored.
Muslims were subjected to violent upheavals under former president Mahinda Rajapaksa. Muslims island wide trusted and voted for President Maithripala Sirisena after he assured the restoration of law and order, justice, security, peace and harmony to all. However within months, Muslims, to their shock, began to realize that the two governments were the same.
For example dismissing the sentiments of Muslim here and abroad and peace loving people worldwide, President Sirisena visited the Jewish holocaust museum, during his official tour to Germany, at a time when the real holocaust world- wide were against the Muslims! The visit means rewarding Israel’s barbarity towards Palestinians who have the support of peace loving people everywhere.
Srilankan Muslims were shocked and deeply disappointed. Adding insult to injury the government invited as guest of honor the war criminal former British Prime Minister Tony Blair who, together with US President George Bush, invaded under false pretext and destroyed the ancient country of Iraq, killed millions of innocent Iraqis and destroyed the entire infrastructure besides looting the country from its oil resources to museum.
Of course Muslims have not forgotten that pro-western Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was perhaps the only third world prime minister who refused to condemn the US-UK invasion of Iraq. He has even reported to have told Muslim parliamentarians who wanted to condemn the invasion to leave the government and do so.
During the visit, Blair also met President Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, the darling of US led UK, European and Israeli war mongers
Shameless state of affair was such that Blair was even given the honor of addressing the Lakshman Kadirgamar International Centre demonstrating that the country has no care for human values. It is no more the fearless respected country with a fiercely independent foreign policy of the 1960s and early 1970s.
In the midst there began sporadic violent attacks on Muslims. When these attacks intensified, a joint delegation from the Sinhala and Muslim civil society led by Prof Sarath Wijesuriya met President Sirisena, during latter part of Ramadan in June 2017, and appealed to him to stop these attacks. President Sirisena dismissed their plea saying these attacks were the works of Mahinda Rajapaksa to topple the government.
