Sri Lanka police today questioned one comrade of Colombo Action Committee (CACPS) and later in the day took into custody its campaign material upon a court order.
CACPS members were engaging in a leaflet distribution campaign today (24) morning in Piliyandala town area. They were distributing CACPS latest statement (in Sinhala) titled “Defeat the state terror unleashed against the masses, including the oppressed youth, in the name of “Operation Yukthiya”! Around 9.45am in the morning, Piliyandala police stopped one comrade who was distributing leaflets to people and escorted him to the police station. Inquired as to why he was brought to the police station, the Officer in Charge (OIC), informed CACPS members that the leaflet contains material “insulting the police” and that the police want to conduct an investigation over and around the leaflet. Police recorded a statement from the comrade and was released within about an hour.
CACPS members campaigning in Piliyandala town on February 24, 2024
In the evening around 4.45pm, a team of police officers including the OIC of Kesbewa Police arrived at the residence of Comrade and journalist Shantha Wijesuriya, who is the Secretary of CACPS, along with a warrant from Kesbewa Magistrate Court to search the house for offences under Section 484 and 485 of the Penal Code. These purported offences respectively are intentionally insulting with intent to provoke a breach of peace, and circulating false reports with intent to cause mutiny or an offence against the republic or public tranquility. The police seized around 500 leaflets containing the CACPS statement and several dozens of posters and placards that had been prepared for use at the demonstration, to be held on February 27 in Kesbewa town, organized by the CACPS and Kesbewa Action Committee, on the theme of the statement.
Kesbewa Police encircle journalist Wijesuriya’s residence on February 24, 2024
Yesterday, Wijesuriya was also summoned by Piliyandala police by order of S. Wickremasinghe, ASP, to record a statement over two hours, as part of an “expeditd investigation” over a complaint lodged by him of alleged death theats by a police officer over a bribary complaint, and over another complaint made by his son’s fiancee in respect of an alleged sexual assault by police officers attched to the Kesbewa police. The ASP has already decided and told Wijesuriya that his allegations are false and that he knows that police officers did not engage in the alleged activities!
While the police have hurriedly initiated court proceedings in respect of CACPS activities, have delayed action against those accused of serious allegations.
These acts of police and of Wickremasinghe’s government are an attack against freedom of expression of CACPS and the oppressed masses, and are intended to intimidate and harass political dissent. Police and the government are attempting to block leaflets reaching the masses and stopping CACPS campaigns.
We call upon workers, oppressed masses and those who defend democratic rights to condemn this assault on political rights and fight for and demand the immediate halt of harassment of CACPS members and stifling of its political activity by the government.
Sri Lanka Speaker, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena last Thursday (01) signed into law the Online Safety Act (No 09 of 2024) (OSA), a piece of legislation long prepared by the ruling class to crack down upon freedom of dissent in the country. The law was approved by the Parliament late January, with a majority of 46 votes, including provisions not in compliance with even the limited amendments proposed by the country’s Supreme Court in its determination on the Bill delivered last October. Subject to such proposals, the Supreme Court found the law, as a whole, constitutional.
This law is patently anti-democratic. It empowers a government body, the Online Safety Commission (OSC), the sole power to determine and declare the “falsity of any statement“, which would be published on an online portal, and thereupon prosecute anybody who makes and communicates a statement contrary to such “truth” declared.
“False statement” is defined as “a statement that is known or believed by its maker to be incorrect or untrue and is made especially with intent to deceive or mislead”. This knowledge or belief is presumed to be shaped by what is declared as false by the OSC, or what the government authorities have claimed to be true.
A person could be prosecuted for the offenses, among others, of “communicating a false statement” online and (a) posing “a threat to national security, public health or public order” or “promoting feelings of ill-will and hostility between different classes of people” (Section 12); (b) where such statement amounts to contempt of court; (c ) giving “provocation to any person or incites any person intending or knowing it to be likely that such provocation or incitement, will cause the offence of rioting to be committed”; (d) voluntarily causing “disturbance to any assembly lawfully engaged in the performance of religious worship or religious ceremonies”; (e) insulting or attempting to insult “the religion or the religious beliefs of that class” with “the deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of persons”; (f) inducing “any other person to commit an offence against the State or against the public tranquility” with “intent to cause any officer, sailor, soldier, or airman in the navy, army or air force of Sri Lanka to mutiny” or with “intent to cause fear or alarm to the public”. A person, “who wilfully makes or communicates a statement”, either true or false, “with intention to cause harassment to another person” (“target person”) by publishing any “private information” of the target person or a related person and causes such person “harassment”, also commits an offence. All such statements are “prohibited statements”.
Attempting, abetting and conspiring to commit these offences are also crimes.
The punishments for these offenses range from three to five to seven years imprisonment and in some instances may be doubled in the event of a subsequent offence, coupled with fines up to one million rupees.
The OSC has sweeping powers to order any internet service provider or internet intermediary (which provide the service of social media platforms) to disable access by end-users to an online location (such as a website, webpage, chatroom or forum), which contains a prohibited statement. It can also order removal of such statements. It can blacklist a website, social media account or a platform as a “declared online location”. The commission is also empowered to seize “property movable, and immovable and to sell, lease, mortgage, exchange, or otherwise dispose of the same”.
Criminalizing “fake news” has been the demand of the ruling class for some time. It was on the agenda of successive governments during the recent past – a draft law was on the table during the former Sirisena-Wickremasinghe government in 2019, following the Easter Sunday bomb attacks, and then under former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was ousted by the mass struggles of April-July 2022, mainly organized through social media. These attempts were defeated temporarily by wider objections raised by civil society groups and international organizations, and right-wing political parties who demanded a social media and internet regulatory law that is in line with the “international standards”.
Sri Lanka’s President Ranil Wickremesinghe salutes military parades at the the government’s 76th Independence Day celebrations in Colombo, on February 4, 2024. | Photo Credit: Reuters
Presenting the Bill in the Parliament, Public Security Minister Tiran Alles claimed that this law is required to fight online harassment against women and children. This is only a pretext. He also revealed the intention to curb “misinformation” that damaged the reputation of parliamentarians. This is a reference to the extensive social media activism during mass struggles of 2022 that rejected the whole parliament.
Every opposition party in the parliament agrees with the government for a social media regulatory law placed in their hands.
During the parliament debate, National People’s Power (NPP) Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake concurred with Alles declaring that “things that should not happen also are taking place [in social media]”.
Main opposition party Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) member of parliament, Harsha de Silva worried that international tech giants would abandon Sri Lankan online space. His is the concern of the tech profiteer capitalists, whom de Silva wants to confer unbridled freedom to attract investment. Around the world, these companies have already been complicit in government censorship of free speech.
If and when in power, these parties will also ruthlessly employ these laws against the working class and political opponents, particularly from the left, to meet the demands of international financial capital.
Pseudo-left FrontLine Socialist Party (FSP) Education Secretary Pubudu Jayagoda told media, the proposed law is redundant because, “there are already laws to deal with situations of this nature [those covered by the new law]”, and conveyed FSP’s subservience to the oppressive legal system of the bourgeois state and the parliament. Its “People’s Council” programme is an appendage of the parliamentary system.
Another view among the middle class has been vocalized by Gamini Viyangoda, writing in the pseudo-left paper “Anidda” on Sunday (04). Viyangoda says that the Bill is politically maneuvered for the government “to prepare an environment to safely face the upcoming critical elections”. President Ranil Wickremasinghe, who himself knows to have a rare chance for him to gain a presidential election win, is not making these laws for himself, but for the capitalist establishment, all of whom, including NPP and SJB, have affirmed their readiness to go ahead with the austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), on the back of the people. This is the very truth that these radicals conceal from the people.
While OSA is made law, the government placed on the pipeline a new anti-terrorism law, surpassing the powers of arrest, administrative detention or custody and prosecution under the existing draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) of 1979. More than 35 parties challenged the proposed law last month in the country’s Supreme Court. Poet Ahnaf Jazeem, who is a former torture victim of PTA, petitioned the court and submitted that “this authoritarian law… is essentially designed to be used as a weapon of collective punishment against the working class… It is driven by class hate.“
Soon after his appointment as president, Wickremasinghe declared his government’s class war against the working people and the poor, poised to implement harsh austerity measures dictated by the IMF. In this backdrop, these laws are the new arms of Wickremasinghe’s armory to be used against political dissent, especially left-wing political ideas and movements, journalists and activists, to intimidate, harass, question, arrest, and imprison them, and block websites and social media accounts. Sri Lanka police is notorious for employing draconian anti-terrorism, public security and hate speech laws against social media activists, artists, protesters and ethnic-minorities.
Recently, Alles deployed special police forces to “fight drug menace” and arrested over 56,000 since December 17. This operation, falsely named “Yukthiya” (Justice), is intended to terrorize urban and rural impoverished areas, intimidating working people and youth throughout the country. Last month, the government commenced using facial recognition technology, according to Alles, as part of plans to “eradicate” the under-world and drug-trafficking.
Wickremasinghe has come a long way toward a police state, with dictatorial powers conferred to him under the country’s communal constitution. He has deployed tri-forces as strikebreakers and used essential services laws to witch-hunt worker leaders.
The global imperialist crisis, however, has not left Wickremasinghe alone in this onslaught against the masses. Just one month before OSB was tabled in parliament, the United Kingdom passed a similar law targeting social media freedom. In India, websites and social media platforms are now required to remove content about the Union Government, when notified by the Press Information Bureau (PIB) as “fake”.
The trade union leaders have succumbed to Wickremasinghe’s IMF “economic restructuring” plans and have no political programme to fight against austerity, nor to defend democratic rights. It is only the working class, which can and should fight to abolish these repressive laws and defend democratic rights. This requires organizing in their own independent organizations, united across ethnic divisions and industries, to bring about a government of the working people, free the economy from the siege of international financial capital and restructure the economic life on socialist lines.
Statement of the WSWS International Editorial Board
We post below the Statement of the World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board, published in WSWS.org on January 13, 2024. We, theSocialist.LK endorse this statement in its entirety and invite our readers to carefully peruse it and grasp it for actions ahead.
The World Socialist Web Site unequivocally condemns Thursday’s attack by the United States and United Kingdom against Yemen. With no popular mandate, with no congressional or parliamentary authorization, without even an attempt at a serious explanation, the Biden administration in the US and the Sunak government in the UK have carried out an illegal act of war against an impoverished nation.
The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the fast combat support ship USNS Supply transit the Strait of Hormuz, Dec. 14, 2023. [Photo: Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Keith Nowak ]
The attack on Yemen is a major escalation of the developing war in the Middle East. Since the beginning of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the US and its imperialist allies in NATO have overseen a massive militarization of the region, directly targeting Iran. This is itself part of an expanding global war, including the US-NATO war against Russia and the developing economic and military conflict against China.
US President Joe Biden did not even see fit to go on national television to explain the launching of a new war, under conditions in which there is overwhelming popular opposition to the expansion of war in the Middle East. As the Pentagon was planning to attack Yemen, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was admitted to the intensive care unit of Walter Reed Hospital, with the knowledge of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but unbeknownst to the president. This bizarre episode underscored the reality that US war-making is operating on autopilot, increasingly outside the pretense of civilian oversight.
As always, the rationale provided to justify the war is a pack of lies. Biden declared that the missile strikes were “defensive” and “a direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks.” The American media, with the same breathless reporting that has accompanied every US military operation, proclaims that a country with a gross domestic product 700 times smaller than the United States is carrying out “intolerable” actions, against which the American military is “forced” to defend itself. Overnight, Yemen’s Houthis have been turned into a new bogeyman, requiring urgent military action without any discussion or explanation.
In coordination with the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the United States has dispatched to the Middle East a massive military armada, consisting of two aircraft carrier battle groups, multiple guided missile destroyers, an unknown number of submarines and dozens of warplanes. These forces have provided logistics, reconnaissance, and target selection to Israel in a deliberate effort to provoke retaliation from Iran and its allied forces such as the Houthis.
Yet, supposedly it is Yemen that is the “aggressor,” carrying out “unprecedented attacks” on US military forces deployed in the Red Sea, thousands of miles from the US border. American imperialism, which has a military larger than that of the next 10 countries combined, claims to be waging a “defensive” war on the other side of the world against a small, oppressed and impoverished country.
“We’re not interested in a war with Yemen,” asserted the Pentagon on Friday, “We’re not interested in a conflict of any kind.”
In fact, the imperialist powers have been waging a war against the population of Yemen for nearly a decade. The Houthis in Yemen have been subject to ruthless slaughter, waged by Saudi Arabia but armed and financed by the United States. According to the United Nations, 377,000 people have been killed in a genocidal campaign that has involved blockades resulting in mass starvation and disease. First under Obama and then under Trump, the US financed this assault with more than $54 billion in military equipment, aided and abetted by its imperialist allies, including the UK.
The devastation of Yemen is part of more than 30 years of unending and expanding war, spearheaded and led by American imperialism, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990-91. This included the first Gulf War in 1990; the dismantling of Yugoslavia, culminating in the war against Serbia in 1999; the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001; the second war against Iraq in 2003; the war against Libya in 2011; and the CIA-backed civil war in Syria that began the same year.
Every single administration since that of Bill Clinton has authorized military operations, airstrikes, and destabilization operations in Somalia, across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, seeking to control the critical waterway leading to the Suez Canal.
The launching of military strikes against Yemen marks a new stage in the deepening imperialist military offensive throughout the Middle East and beyond. The US and its imperialist allies are waging a de facto war against Iran, working to eliminate Iran’s military allies throughout the Middle East. The strikes against Yemen are directed at encircling Iran and provoking it into retaliation against US forces, which could be used to justify a full-scale war against Tehran.
The immediate antecedent for the escalating war in the Middle East, of which the genocide in Gaza is a part, is the collapse of Ukraine’s “spring offensive.” But the imperialist powers are doubling down. “Backing Ukraine is key to the West’s security,” declares The Economist, while Foreign Affairs asserts that “Victory Is Ukraine’s Only True Path to Peace.”
Overriding all of this, the United States is involved in a struggle to fend off the challenge posed by China to its global hegemony, which threatens to trigger a shooting war in the Pacific. In the US media and political circles, there is growing talk of a new “axis of evil” involving Iran, China and Russia.
Each one of these conflicts cannot be understood in isolation. The bombing of Yemen is part of a global counter-revolution, in which the imperialist powers are seeking to reestablish direct control over their former colonies.
The countries carrying out this agenda are the old imperialist powers: the US, UK, France, and Germany. The British ruling class, unable to carry through its policies independently, seeks to exploit the so-called special relationship, that is, Britain’s role as the principal ally of American imperialism, to advance its own interests on a global stage.
Every war launched by the US and its imperialist allies has ended in one bloody debacle after the other, with millions of people killed. But each disaster only reinforces the determination of US imperialism to use war as a means to secure its global hegemony.
American Imperialism, to paraphrase the words of Leon Trotsky, is “tobogganing towards disaster with eyes closed.”
Over the past three months, millions of people all over the world have marched in protest of the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. The US strikes on Yemen occurred on the same day as the International Court of Justice heard devastating evidence that Israel, and by extension the United States, were responsible for genocide in Gaza.
The response of US imperialism to these mass popular protests and exposures of its war crimes has been to accelerate its war plans. This is because the eruption of war, genocide and political repression is not an aberration. Imperialism, as Lenin explained, is not merely a policy, but rather a specific historical stage of capitalist development. Opposition to imperialism is, therefore, a revolutionary question.
It is not a matter of appealing to the capitalist governments responsible for these crimes to alter course, but rather mobilizing the working class, fusing the struggle against war with the developing struggles of workers all over the world against inequality and exploitation. The logic of these struggles requires the conquest of political power by workers all over the world, the expropriation of the capitalist oligarchs and war criminals, and the socialist reorganization of economic life on a world scale.
