By the Executive Committee of the CACPS and the Editorial Board of theSocialist.LK
“The death toll in Gaza is staggering. More than 30,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed in just 150 days; 5% of the population is dead, injured or missing. It is impossible to adequately describe the suffering in Gaza”
Philippe Lazzarini, Head of UNRWA (Tweet on X on February 5, 2024)
Colombo Action Committee for People’s Struggles (CACPS) and theSocialist.LK yesterday (05) launched a public online Petition titled “Stop Gaza Genocide Now! No to Zionism! No to Imperialism!”. The significance of this political act to mobilize the working class, in Sri Lanka, South Asia and internationally, and all those who want to stop the massacre in Gaza, is expressed by the statement of Lazzarini, quoted above.
The Petition calls upon masses to reject the reactionary appeals to imperialist warmongers to stop the massacre. “Crisis ridden, these powers are planning a war with China, and are waging a war against Russia in Ukraine, as part of a global nuclear war that would entail Iran, the Middle East and the rest of the world. In these imperialist centers too, the war abroad has brought social counter-revolution at home,” Petition states.
Pointing out the necessary relationship between war on the one hand, and debt and austerity on the other, over billions of people around the world, the Petition states, “Manifestation of the hold of imperialism takes different forms: it may be war, it may be debt and austerity. Therefore, there is no fight against debt and austerity without a fight against war, and vice versa.”
It calls upon mass solidarity with the Palestinian people and to fight till their demands are met. These demands are expressed in the slogans the Petition fights for. These include, Stop Gaza Genocide Now! No to imperialist Barbarism! Punish War Criminals!
Refuting the imperialist political trap of the two-state solution, it calls upon to fight for a socialist programme to build a Jew-Arab Unified Socialist State, which would be part of a Federation of Socialist Unified States of the Middle East and the World.
In the backdrop of traditional working class organizations, the trade unions and their pseudo-left bckers, being lined up with imperialism and the capitalist state of austerity and international finance capital, the CACPS and theSocialist.LK call upon working class of Sri Lanka, united with the Israeli and US working people, to “unleash our enourmous power to fight for political power, independent of the State-Company-Trade Union alliance, to call general strikes, to stop war funding and military aid, and stop the Genocide and the world war.”
This Petition was launched as part of the wider campaign by the CACPS and theSocialist.LK against the long oppression of Palestinian people by the imperialist-backed Zionist Israel.
We invite fellow workers and our readers to sign the Petition today, share it widely and fight to stop the Gaza Genocide Now and halt to the impending neuclear war.
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.
