The Dompe conflagration

The Police have been in the eye of another storm of civilian unrest and the indications are that a host of unresolved issues concerning Police-civilian ties is exploding to the surface all over again. The gory public unrest in Dompe, which was sparked off by the death of a man in Police custody, is currently under investigation by the authorities and utmost care should be taken by all concerned in commenting on the incident, lest premature conclusions are hastily arrived at. In other words, we would prefer to leave the issue of what led to the detainee’s death open, for the time being.

However, it must be observed right away that the circumstances surrounding the detainee’s death are only one among the many troubling questions that the Dompe violence is throwing-up. A human life has been lost and this is a most painful moment for reflective and law-abiding persons but the civilian unrest itself is bound to utterly discomfort the civic-conscious observer. If homicide has been the cause of the detainee’s death, then, his killers must be swiftly brought to justice, but the Rule of Law and public order have been dangerously breached and brought asunder once again by the unsettling phenomenon of a public veritably taking the law into its hands, and this is not the least of the anxieties of the state and the law-abiding citizenry.

Just a few months back, the Police were found to over-react and act brashly when they opened fire on a workers’ protest in Katunayake, which claimed the life of a young FTZ employee. We cannot pre-judge the Dompe incident, as said before, but it is worrying that the Police have not made much headway in addressing the issue of improving their relations with the public, since the fatality in Katunayake. The question of improving Police-civilian ties should receive top priority and the recurring clashes between these parties should underscore the point that this important task cannot be postponed any longer.

On the other hand, it is abundantly clear that the public is abounding with lawless elements who would be only too glad to vent their rage on the Police in the face of what they see as a grave provocation. While the law enforcers need to always act within the bounds of the law, the same applies to the civilian public. The Rule of Law should be the sole guide to both sections and this should ideally be deeply ingrained in their consciences. One of the gravest issues facing present day Sri Lanka is that this sensitivity to the Rule of Law and the norms of civilized living has been steadily undermined in all significant sections of society over the decades.

The history of the brutalization of sections of our society is quite well known and a detailed account of how this came about is inessential here. Generally, it is the violence which enveloped Sri Lanka over the past few decades and which permitted sections of our society to unleash criminal force on each other with a degree of impunity, which is accounting for much of the criminality around us.

This, in the terms of some our sociological experts, is ‘structural violence’ and it stands to reason that if we are to contain this species of violence, the ‘systemic causes’ that lead to it must be neutralized. In other words, Sri Lankan society needs to undergo some ‘structural changes’. That is, the nature of our society must change. With the conflict coming to an end, this great opportunity could now be availed of by all people of good will and humanity.

The endeavour of the government, under President Mahinda Rajapaksa, is to ‘begin at the beginning’ and re-establish Sri Lanka on new, solid value foundations. In this new order of things, consensus and dialogue will replace coercion and violence as dispute-settlement mechanisms.

Along with this fresh new approach to conflict settlement, would go a finer appreciation of the Rule of Law and the legal underpinnings of a society where criminal force would be outlawed.

No doubt, this is an uphill challenge but one which needs to be accepted and overcome, regardless of how long it would take. If sections of the public are easily taking the law into their own hands and going to the extent of even unleashing violence on institutions of law and order, such as Police stations and Police personnel, it is proof that disregard for the most respected institutions of the state, is now deeply ingrained in the consciousness of some sections. While the necessary respect for law enforcement institutions must be fostered anew among the citizenry, it must be clearly demonstrated by the state that lawlessness and criminality would under no circumstances be tolerated. That is, lawlessness must be made to carry a heavy price.