A member of parliament and representative of the opposition, Dayasiri
Jayasekara, was assaulted by a group of supporters of the ruling party
when he attempted to erect a facilitation board for the president and
the commanders of the three armed forces. He is now undergoing
treatment in a private hospital in Colombo and is reported to have
received facial injuries. Jayasekara is a member of the opposition
United National Party. In an interview to the National Rupawahini,
the army commander, Sarath Fonseka, stated that: As we had closed the
terrorist within a one metre distance, one person said that, ’if we
are asked to come to fight in the war we will come immediately.’
Earlier he was criticising the war. I saw in the TV yesterday [this
person] having suffered assault is in a hospital bed. I do not know
whether the people have treated him for what he said. (A translation
from the original Sinhala).

The board that he was trying to exhibit consisted of images of all of
presidents of Sri Lanka to date. The ruling party supporters took
offense at this because it goes contrary to the claim of the ruling
party that the military victory over the LTTE was solely the
achievement of incumbent president Mahinda Rajapaksha. This poster
with pictures of other presidents seems to have caused grave offense
and offset a massive propaganda campaign, which claims that where all
presidents and politicians have failed, the incumbent president alone
has been able to defeat the LTTE. All the former presidents and even
a prime minister are blamed for the continuous failure to eliminate
the LTTE.

In a separate incident, newspapers reported that Ranil
Wickramasinghe, the opposition leader and a former prime minister,
who signed a ceasefire agreement with the LTTE a few years back, when
returning from a journey abroad last Saturday, was almost a victim of
a planned mob attack. Perhaps being warned of the situation, the
opposition leader who had previously arranged his arrival for the
evening and had even booked the VIP lounge, changed his schedule to
arrive in the morning.

When the news appeared, there were commentators who posted their
comments expressing disappointment that they were prevented from
’giving a treatment with stones’ to the opposition leader. They
consider his peace agreement as treachery.

Thus, heavy propaganda is being used by utilizing the defeat of the
LTTE, signaled by the killing of its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran,
in order to attack opposition politicians and those who express
dissent. In the interviews given by the government leaders, with
promptings also by those who conduct the interviews, there is
constant reference to those who have been portrayed as persons who
are unpatriotic, either because they belong to the opposition, the
media or to non-governmental organizations. Clearly the indications
are of an attempt to organize the mobs and use them for violence to
intimidate anyone who may not fall in line with the regime. A myth
with black and white characters, traitors and great patriots, is in
the making. This myth is being repeated constantly with the intention
of settling it as truth in the public consciousness. This repetition
is based on an advertising theory followed by all authoritarian
regimes. Deliberately provocative and racist language and gestures
are being used for this purpose, particularly in the telecast
interviews. Everyone who is not with the government is against it and
are portrayed as unpatriotic. The president himself, in his victory
speech to the parliament, mentioned that there are only two races in
the country: that is, those who love the country and those who don’t.
Disagreeing with the government has been now raised to the position of
absence of love for the country.

Sri Lanka has undergone a virtual collapse of public institutions.
The vacuum created by this is now being utilized to bring in the mobs
to support the ruling party, and this is rapidly becoming the form of
governance in the country. The president on the one hand as the sole
leader of the system with the mobs to back him, and the armed forces
to stand by, is the political system that is rapidly developing.

The studies into authoritarian systems in Europe in the twentieth
century provide examples similar to the development that is taking
place in Sri Lanka. The fascist movement in Germany, the one country
socialism of Joseph Stalin, and other dictatorships in Italy and
Spain, all had similar characteristics - the party based on the mobs
following a single leader and standing opposed to all other political
parties and democratic institutions. The 1978 constitution, which
virtually created a president who is not bound by the constitution
and who can undermine the parliament and the judiciary, paved way for
the political developments taking place in the country now. During the
31 years to follow, all the basic institutions have been seriously
damaged and even the memory of democratic institutions have faded
away from the minds of the people. The politicization of all the
institutions has generated a whole class of bureaucrats and officers
who know the rules of the new political game. The initiatives of all
have been suppressed to give way to direct commands from the top on
all matters.

It is in this light that the human rights situation in general and
the situation of minorities in the future need to be contextualized.
Under the formula that there does not exist races such as Sinhalese,
Tamils, Burghers and the like, as declared by the president in his
speech to the parliament, a political ideology is being created to
have no identity other than allegiance to the ruling party. Within
this context there is, in fact, no place for human rights and there
is also no place for freedom of the media.

The attack on the Member of Parliament representing the opposition is
just an indication of things to come. The opposition political
parties, the trade unions, all organizations that represent various
sectors of society, such as farmers, businessmen, professionals and
others, could ignore this development only at their peril. The
rhetoric about human rights if not associated with the understanding
of real politics developing in the country will be little solace as
the repression deepens.