PSTA: The NPP’s 1984 Moment?

Tisaranee Gunasekara

Courtesy of Amnesty International

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” George Orwell (1984)

Some fates are written in broken promises.

The UNP’s 1977 election manifesto acknowledged the existence of a Tamil ethnic problem, enumerated some of its root causes, promised to resolve it politically and highlighted the nexus between national economic development and the peaceful resolution of the grievances of the Tamil-speaking people.

“The United National Party accepts the position that there are numerous problems confronting the Tamil-speaking people. The lack of a solution to their problems has made the Tamil-speaking people support even a movement for the creation of a separate state. In the interests of national integration and unity so essential for the economic development of the whole country, the party feels that such problems should be resolved without the loss of time. The party, when it comes to power, will take all possible steps to remedy their grievances in such fields as Education, (2) Colonisation, (3) Use of Tamil language, and (4) Employment in the public and semi-public corporations. We will summon an All-Party Conference as stated earlier and implement its decisions.”

The UNP came to power on a wave of popular support unprecedented in its scale. It also had a four-fifths majority in parliament. It could have summoned an All-Party Conference and come up with a comprehensive package of political reforms to address the legitimate grievances of the Tamil people. True, the SLFP (and maybe sections of the old left) would have opposed any such move. But the Jayewardene government could have withstood such opposition, since the SLFP was weak inside and outside parliament.

Unfortunately, the UNP opted to forget its promise, resorting to repression. The PTA was a direct consequence of this choice, as was Black July and the Eelam War. Most Sinhalese had no problem with this repressive option until, and inevitably, it became their turn.

Today, Sri Lanka is standing on the threshold of a similar dystopian moment. A government with a two-thirds majority is about to break a solemn election promise.

In its 2024 election manifesto, the NPP promised the “Abolition of all oppressive acts, including the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and ensuring civil rights of people in all parts of the country” (p 127). Instead of abolishing the PTA, the NPP government is on the verge of replacing it with a new anti-terror law, which is startlingly similar to the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) that President Ranil Wickremesinghe unsuccessfully tried to bring in.

In 2024, 31 petitions were filed in the Supreme Court against the Wickremesinghe government’s Anti-Terrorism Bill. Amongst the petitioners were three NPP heavyweights, Vijitha Herath, Wasantha Samarasinghe and Eranga Gunasekara. Mr Herath explained the stance of his party: “The anti-democratic, constitutional violation act should be withdrawn immediately.

A major problem area highlighted by him and other petitioners was the vague, uncertain and unclear nature of the definition of terrorism. A case in point was the categorisation of causing serious risk to the health and safety of the public or a section thereof as terrorism in a country where Muslims were accused of spreading COVID-19.

In 2020, not only did the Rajapaksa administration look the other way while online commentators accused Muslims of birthing the virus and called Muslim patients suicide bombers. The head of the presidential task force against Covid-19, Army Commander Shavendra Silva, appearing on Hiru TV, proclaimed, “Yesterday a patient was discovered from Akurana… Then we discovered another person from Puttlam. He has also associated with a lot of people. He is a Muslim. In both places, they are Muslims.” During a panel discussion on Derana (of the cobra infamy), Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage stated, “…today 20 patients were identified. Of these, 19 were of Muslim faith. 19!” (Incidentally, the SJB and the JVP/NPP representatives on the panel did not counter the minister’s hate speech. Subsequently, Mangala Samaraweera, Karu Jayasuriya and the UNP issued statements condemning attempts to instigate racial and religious divisions.

The ATA’s clause categorising causing serious risk to the health and safety of the public or a section thereof is present in the NPP’s own Protection of the State from Terrorism Act (PSTA). Has the NPP taken ownership of the dystopian future it correctly warned against in 2024?

Sinhala tigers

The first Sinhala tigers were activists handling the Railway union’s paper, Akuna. They were arrested in January 2007. Others arrests followed; altogether 25 Sinhala men detained under the PTA.

The Rajapaksa administration claimed that these 25 men belonged to an organisation called the Revolutionary Liberation Front, a Sinhala counterpart of the LTTE. The men confessed to everything, from obtaining arms training from the LTTE to planning terrorist attacks in the South. Journalists were even shown video clips of these confessions. “6kg of explosives hidden by the suspects were found after the arrests,” the military spokesman revealed. When rights activists claimed that the confessions were obtained under torture, the authorities were shocked. “Police do not torture detainees,” DIG Prathapasinghe, the head of the CID, said.

The TID had a hair-raising tale to tell when the first detainees were produced before the Colombo Magistrate. These Sinhala Tigers “had received 1.1 million rupees from the LTTE to carry out massive violence, like bomb blasts in the country.” Their plans included “attacks on Kolonnawa oil tanks and Sapugaskanda oil refineries…” Their objective was to “lure youths with behavioural and personality disorders and to organise them into a militia to attack innocent civilians in the South.” They had already “carried out 13 operations, including several bomb blasts in the South…”

It all sounded like the truth and nothing but the truth.

The saga continued. In 2008, for instance, the Sinhala Tigers were accused of “….at least two bus bombings, assassination of Minister DM Dassanayake, transportation of explosives and firearms to Colombo, providing cover for black tigers and various other smaller incidents…”

The men continued to be detained until some of them filed fundamental rights cases in the Supreme Court. In February 2009, the AG informed the court that no charges will be filed against ten of the detainees. The court ordered their immediate release and gave the AG a month to indict the rest. The month passed; no charges were filed. In March, the Supreme Court gave the AG another month, either to charge or to release the detainees. Eventually not a single Sinhala tiger was charged in a court of law of even a minor misdemeanour let alone the heinous crimes they were periodically accused of by the state. The government and the state lied not just to the public but also to the courts.

Obviously, the entire tale about the Sinhala tigers was a fabrication to further the political interests and needs of the Rajapaksa regime. Equally obviously, without the PTA this horrendous violation of justice by the powers that be could not have been effected. The fate of those 25 men would have been much grimmer had they not been Sinhalese. A Tamil or a Muslim (especially after 2013) would have had to spend many more years in detention.

The demand for the abolition of the PTA (including by the JVP/NPP) was sourced in its capacity to turn anyone into a terrorist. The opposition to Ranil Wickremesinghe’s ATA too stemmed from this reason. As Vijitha Herath correctly stated, “J.R. Jayewardene brought the Prevention of Terrorism Temporary Measures Act No. 48 of 1979 saying it was for a short period of time. Although it was mentioned as temporary measures, it was not temporary. This act was used to arrest and detain various political activists, progressives, journalists and various civil activists who criticized the government. Using this act, thousands were arrested and illegally detained for years. Some of the detainees were detained illegally without being prosecuted in a court of law… Every government in power used this act to suppress the voices against them”.

Now the NPP is set to join that infamous list. Why else should it try to enact a new anti-terrorism bill which includes some of the worst features of the PTA and the (aborted) ATA?

The saga of two young Muslim men, detained under the PTA for the non-crime (even under the PTA) of criticising Israel, constitutes a forewarning of how the NPP government might abuse the PSTA in the future. Mohamed Suhail, a 21 year-old student, was arrested on October 23, 2024 first under the normal law and then under the PTA for the crime of loitering outside an Israeli-owned premises. In March 2025, 22 year-old Mohamed Rushdi was arrested for pasting an anti-Israeli sticker. Both had to be released subsequently without charges. This could be the fate of many a Sri Lankan if the PSTA becomes the law.

Normalising abuse

In 2007, the Rajapaksa regime made an unsuccessful attempt to arrest Lasantha Wickrematunge. When questioned about it, Minister Keheliya Rambukwella mentioned a report in the Sunday Leader titled, President to get Rs. 400 million luxury bunker. He said that if the report “was to divulge security sensitive details relating to the weight of the metal plating to be used for such a bunker, it would educate the LTTE on the weight of explosives needed to successfully target the bunker. ‘It may not be direct but it may aid terrorism’” (Lanka e newspapers, 3.1.2007).

The PSTA too could be used to accuse some investigative journalist of the crime of encouraging terrorism defined as, “directly or indirectly encouraging or inducing the public or any section of the public to commit, attempt, abet, conspire to commit or prepare to commit an offense of terrorism, publishes or causes to be published any statement, or speaks any word or words, or makes any sign or visible representation.”

According to the PSTA, terrorism includes provoking a state of terror, if it, for instance, causes the destruction of, or serious damage to, religious or cultural property. It is not hard to imagine how this particular concoction could be used to arrest any Northern or Eastern Tamil protesting against the setting up of new Buddhist religious structures in areas without a single civilian Buddhist.

According to the PSTA, dissemination of terrorist publications is a crime. And a terrorist publication is defined as a publication capable of being understood

1. As direct or indirect encouragement or any other inducement to them to commit, attempt, abet, conspire to commit or prepare to commit the offense of terrorism; or
2. As being useful in the commission of, or attempt, abetment, conspiracy to commit or preparing to commit, the offence of terrorism.

It is not hard to imagine how this clause could be used to create several more Ahnaf Jazeems in the future because the TID believes that a book of poetry or fiction promotes terrorism.

According to the PSTA, any OIC can issue directives not to congregate in any particular location, not to hold a particular meeting, rally, or procession, or not to engage in any specified activity subject to approval by a magistrate within 24 hours. In the meantime, anyone believed to be violating these orders can be sentenced to a maximum of one year imprisonment and/or a fine not exceeding 1million rupees. It is not hard to imagine how this clause would be used to suppress democratic protests.

The PTSA permits the secretary of defence to declare any area a prohibited place and to obtain an order of a magistrate within 72 hours. Had the PTSA been the law in 2022, what would have happened to GotaGoGama?

Most of the positive features in the PTSA such as having to notify the Human Rights Commission within 72hours of an arrest were present in President Wickremesinghe’s ATA. The NPP opposed the ATA despite these positive features because the act, in its totality, contained tremendous repressive potential. The NPP was right then. It is wrong now.

When the PTA came into being in 1979, the LTTE was capable only of isolated acts of violence. Just four years later, by 1983, despite a severe internal schism, it was able to wipe out an entire army patrol. The PTA was equally unsuccessful in preventing the Easter Sunday massacre. The PTA was helpful not in prevention of terrorism but in subjugating citizens.

The desire for an anti-terrorism law with a wide latitude for abuse is, like the executive presidency, akin to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ring of Power. You oppose it only when it belongs to another. When it is yours, it becomes your Precious. The NPP seems to be in the throes of that transformation.

But there is a price, always a price, often paid in loss of freedom, blood and lives. If the NPP enacts PSTA, the resulting dystopian future will eventually, and inevitably, consume its authors as well. In a world turned 1984; there are no winners, only losers. The difference between the one and the other is just a matter of time.