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Curbing crime

The cold-blooded, daylight murder of a female Russian medical practitioner in Kirullapone on Tuesday draws the attention of the public once again to the relentlessly continuing crime wave in the country. Reports indicated that the victim was brutally and repeatedly stabbed by her assailant while the public helplessly looked on. Such is the degree to which the country has been disfigured by violent crime.

Meanwhile, a plethora of other crimes continued. There was, for instance, news of the rape of a mother and her twelve-year-old daughter in the provinces. The country would have been also jolted by the busting of a pornographic ring in Negombo, involving male adult paedophiles and several schoolboys between the ages of twelve and fourteen. Consternation was also caused by the disclosure that a 17-year-old promising cricketer was involved in the theft of a car.

These incidents, needless to say, are only the tip of the giant iceberg which is crime in Sri Lanka. However, the above sample should suffice to indicate not only the mounting crime rate but its multiplying varieties and dimensions.

Needless to say, all this should prove highly disturbing to sections such as, the Government, the law enforcers and the general public. The Government has done well to attach priority to the task of resolving the ethnic conflict and needs to be commended on its deft handling of negotiations with the LTTE but the crime rate at home also needs its urgent attention. We do not accuse the State of complacency on this score but, obviously, more needs to be done to stem the crime rate which, at present, should be no second to that of some crime capitals of the world.

In fact, a symbiotic link should be seen between the North-East war, which has happily been halted, and the crime rate and its scope in Sri Lanka. This is mainly because the North-East war played a pivotal role in brutalizing Sri Lanka. If domestic crime has risen to unprecedented proportions in Sri Lanka, it is principally because decades of bloodshed and violence have bred a culture of death in the country. In other words, killing and bloodshed is being resorted to with little hesitation and restraint by emotionally - volatile sections of the public. The gradual desensitization of the Lankan conscience over the past decades of conflict and war, seems to have facilitated this process of exercising savagery and bloodshed, sometimes at the least provocation.

The Government, therefore, needs to look at the task of bringing healing and peace to Sri Lanka holistically. The wider peace endeavour cannot be separated from the urgent exercise of curbing lawlessness and violence everywhere in Sri Lanka.

The immediate causes of common crime are numerous and diverse. Mounting social discontent and frustration, for instance, incite murders and suicides. Crumbling discipline and morality trigger sexual violence and rape. However, the wider backdrop to this ugly rash of crimes is the relentless brutalization of society over the years. Violence and bloodshed has been allowed to take precedence over civilized methods of conflict resolution. To facilitate the latter process, even agencies of the State have, in the past, been allowed to ignore the due process of law.

The Government, therefore, should consider resolving the ethnic conflict and democratizing Sri Lanka, as two sides of the same coin. Firm law enforcement and enthroning the Rule of Law, it must be remembered, are vital aspects of democratization. Every man, woman and child, in other words, must feel free to exercise his or her rights and freedoms and must be fully and consistently protected by the State. These are the essential preconditions for the control of lawlessness. Our earnest appeal is that the Government cracks down hard on crime, empowers law enforcers and enshrines once again, the Rule of Law.

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