Sri Lanka: State of civic space remains ‘repressed’ as governments in Asia Pacific cracked down on protests and criminalised human rights defenders.
The CIVICUS Monitor announced in a new report Wednesday that the main civic space violations across the Asia-Pacific were the crackdown on protests and the criminalisation of human rights defenders.
The report, People Power Under Attack 2024, assesses civic space conditions in 198 countries and territories, looking at citizens’ ability to exercise their freedoms of assembly, association and expression. In the Asia-Pacific region, CIVICUS Monitor researchers found the majority of countries seriously restricted civic space.
In Sri Lanka, where the state of civic space is rated by the CIVICUS Monitor as ‘repressed’, there was a systematic crackdown on protests. Police used tear gas and water cannons in January 2024 to disperse an opposition protest. in the capital, Colombo, against increasing taxes, as well as hiking prices for electricity and fuel. In February 2024, security forces shot tear gas and fired water cannon at Tamil students as they marched on Sri Lanka’s 76th Independence Day, with Tamils across the North-East launching demonstrations to mark it as a ‘Black Day’. In the same month, police used water cannon and tear gas to disperse a protest organised by the Inter-University Students’ Federation (IUSF) aimed at highlighting and seeking solutions to the challenges confronting the state university system.
In May 2024, human rights groups documented arrests and threats around commemorations marking the 15th anniversary of the end of Sri Lanka’s internal armed conflict. The authorities also obtained court orders to prevent some relatives of forcibly disappeared people and others from attending events. In June 2024, police attacked a protest involving around 10,000 teachers outside the Fort Railway Station and adjacent roads in Colombo. Three teachers were hospitalised and others were injured in an assault involving water cannon and tear gas.
Human rights defenders also faced reprisals. Asanka Abeyrathna, a human rights activist and a member of the Movement For People’s Council, was arrested in February 2024 during a protest and awareness campaign calling for justice for enforced disappearances, organised by the “Families of the Disappeared.” The trial of the human rights lawyer continued in 2024. Hizbullah is a lawyer and human rights defender known for advocating for the members of the minority Muslim Community in Sri Lanka.
Journalists were also targeted. Three Tamil journalists, Prabhakaran Dilaksan, Sundarampillai Rajeskaran, and Chinnaiya Yogeswaran, were threatened in February 2024 by the Sri Lankan army as they attempted to cover a gathering of civilians visiting a temple within the ‘High-Security Zone’ in Palali Vasavilan, Jaffna.
Freedom of expression remains at risk. Sri Lanka’s lawmakers passed the Online Safety Act in January 2024 regulating internet use among its citizens. The Online Safety Act provides broad powers to an ‘Online Safety Commission’ including deciding on what constitutes “prohibited statements” and making recommendations to internet service providers to remove such content and disabling access for those deemed offenders.
There are concerns that a proposed Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) (Registration and Supervision) Act of 2024 (which currently remains a Bill) to replace the Voluntary Social Service Organisations Act of 1980 (VSSO), could curtail freedoms available and pave the way for the governmental authorities to unjustifiably interfere with their work.