Image: A pro-Palestinian protest in Colombo. Several JVP youths also took part in pro-Palestinian protests.
Ameen Izzadeen.
Where free speech is denied or curtailed, democracy is either flawed or does not exist. This universally embraced description of democracy declares that free elections alone do not make a democracy, but free speech, among other democratic principles, also matters.
The emphasis on free speech imbues freedom with its fullest meaning. However, freedom is not the freedom of the wild ass to be brayed about. It needs self-discipline for its own preservation. The old adage “my freedom ends where your nose begins” has a profound meaning. This is why states too intervene, imposing rules to safeguard national security and communal harmony, among other state objectives.
While recognising such conceptual and constitutional restrictions to free speech, this column today raises serious concerns regarding the government’s commitment to democratic values following the questionable arrest of a youth activist in Colombo on March 22.
He was arrested on March 22 after a couple of stickers critical of Israel appeared in a Colombo mall. While laws on vandalism would have provided sufficient grounds for arrest, law enforcement officers overreacted to the stickers’ content.
They arrested the youth activist under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act, a law widely condemned in democracy promotion circles as incompatible with democratic values.
While the government appears to be going to great lengths to defend the police action on national security grounds, as seen in the replies of Cabinet media spokesman and Minister Nalinda Jayatissa, the arrest raises a serious question about the thin line between free speech and terrorism.
Can the minister explain clearly where free speech stops and terrorism begins? A reasonable doubt arises in the minds of pro-justice activists and peace-loving people that the police are now trying to fabricate evidence to charge the youth with terrorism and justify detention under the flawed PTA.
A backgrounder on the arrest of the youth is necessary to understand the context of the controversy. It is rooted in Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023.
This genocide has provoked worldwide protests—as it should—and resulted in multiple cases being filed in the International Court of Justice, along with the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its then-defence minister, Yoav Gallant. Even in Sri Lanka, several protests were held, with youth activists from the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna—the main constituent party of the ruling National People’s Power—taking part in many of them.
The JVP’s pro-Palestine stance certainly won it votes, especially the votes of Sri Lanka’s Muslims, who make up 9.7 per cent of the country’s population.
The suspect, Mohamed Rushdie from Colombo, is in his early twenties. He was employed at a shop in the mall. The stickers he is alleged to have pasted bore the words ‘F… Israel’. An anonymous person has taken the pictures of the stickers and sent them to the Kompanna Veediya police station, calling for action. Upon inspecting the CCTV footage, police arrested the youth under the PTA.
Police officers who made the arrests may not be erudite enough or sufficiently familiar with English literature to understand that the four-letter F-word does not solely refer to copulation or profanity. The word has multiple meanings. Its use is highly and essentially context dependent. According to the Google AI tool Gemini, it is also an expression of strong emotion: it can express anger, frustration, disgust, or even surprise. It is also used as an adjectival intensifier. Among some native English speakers, every other word they utter is an F word. The word is part of English liberative literature, has long been normalised in usage, and no longer creates the same shock as T.E. Lawrence’s works did in Lady Chatterley’s Lover during the 1920s.
The F word has long penetrated international relations, too, with US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in 2014 famously heard expressing her anger at the European Union by saying, ‘ F… the EU.’ Despite being Israel’s genocide partner, the then US President Joe Biden called Netanyahu a ‘f…ing liar’ when he breached the pledge not to invade Rafah in southern Gaza.
Theses can be written on the use of profanity, especially the now-normalised f-word, in international politics.
Having explained the use of the F-word as political dissent, we hope the police hierarchy will consider the context of dissenting language, including the F-word, and refrain from hastily arresting activists on terrorism charges.
If expressing pro-Palestinian sentiments is terrorism, then all those who have taken part in rallies and protests to condemn Israel’s genocide in Gaza are also committing terrorism. This includes the JVP youths.
However, the minister says the sticker suspect is different and adds that investigations were continuing to ascertain whether he has extremist views. Such a stance amounts to ethnic profiling, similar to what happened in the US in the years after the 9/11 attacks.
Some may argue in favour of racial or ethnic profiling, given the Easter Sunday massacres carried out by Islamic extremists. But does that mean that all Muslims are potential terrorists? It is here that the intelligence apparatus requires sophistication and vigilance. After all, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Mind you, anyone could be a terrorist, irrespective of his or her ethnic origin.
The JVP was once a banned terrorist group.
The stance that every Muslim is a potential terrorist does not augur well for national harmony and democratic pluralism. The Muslims are an integral part of Sri Lanka. It is the state’s democratic duty to empathise with the pro-Palestinian feelings of its citizens. Whom should the Sri Lankan State side with—with genocide-committing Israel or its own Muslim citizens? When faced with this question, President R. Premadasa in 1989 took the side of the Muslims, saying they were “my people”.
Does the police action suggest that there is no room within Sri Lanka for criticism of Israel? If so, it constitutes a serious affront to the government’s democratic credentials.
How can exercising free speech to condemn genocide become terrorism? A country where the authorities believe free speech promotes terrorism, then that country is a fascist state. The arrest of the youth draws appalling parallels with the Trump administration, which is turning the US into a fascist state and arresting pro-Palestinian activists for deportation.
In Sri Lanka in the recent past, the police detained a Muslim lawyer and human rights activist on yet-to-be-proven terrorism charges.
It is the same police that detained a Muslim doctor on trumped-up charges. It is the same police that in recent weeks questioned youths for sharing pro-Palestinian video clips and another youth for writing a poem in support of Palestine. The Police Minister must tell the Police that pro-Palestinianism is not terrorism. If not we may need to ask: Is the ruling coalition veering away from its pro-Palestinian policy which it championed while in opposition and now embracing Israel? Adding to such fears is the lack of government action to check mushrooming Zionist centres and businesses in the country.
A true socialist state is a humanitarian state. If a socialist state sides with a terrorist state like Israel, which has no remorse for killing children, then such a state is a pseudo-socialist state.