13 December 2018 12:00 am
In the afternoon of December 10, 2018, at the Jasmine Hall, BMICH, the organizers lined up an array of charismatic speakers to address an audience comprising religious leaders and human rights activists.
First up was Philip Dissanayake, Executive Director of the Right to Life Human Rights Centre. “This year we have gathered to celebrate International Human Rights Day as an anarchic state without a government,” he began. It only seemed apt that the line of discussion for the evening examined the current political crisis of the country which was controversially threatening civil rights. He went on to identify the driving force of the human rights movement, which was to defeat this ‘political coup.’
He described how the 19th Amendment enabled the judiciary to rise to its present status of power, allowing it to have taken the decisions it did with regard to the constitutional crisis. This, he stated, allowed the people to restore their faith in the legal institution. Furthermore, he said that over time the amendment had dispensed a level of independence among government servants. The intervention of the Police Commission to prevent the arbitrary executive action of transferring 54 policemen was the example he provided.
The forum accommodated the views of several human rights defendants representing institutions like the ‘Uva Shakthi Foundation’ and the National Trade Unions’ Front. They presented issues about the rights of female government workers, maternity leave rights that have been denied to them, the disregard of employee reports made to commissioners etc.
It is a dissipation of hesitation and fear in the common man that these speakers claimed they strive for. Their goal is to conquer the unlawful, which according to Mr. Dissanayake, is a battle won “by over 80%.” Having even engaged in over a fortnight of silent protesting at the Viharamahadevi Park, they expressed their determination to withstand these political obstacles, keeping in mind that according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all men and women are entitled to “the right to life, liberty and nationality, to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, to work, to be educated, [and] to take part in government.”
Pics by Nimalsiri Edirisinghe