I have a confession to make. A visit to the local constabulary reduces me – never the bravest of scribes, anyway (because I have far too much imagination to be sanguine about such things) – to a gibbering wreck. Of course, to be fair, I have never had to face any kind of choler at my friendly neighbourhood cop shop – in case you’re reading this, dears. It’s just that I know of (ok, heard of) too many folks who’ve marched into PC Plod’s amphitheatre of the aggressor feeling quite phlegmatic – and been frogmarched out of complacency into lock-up (or worse) coughing up all that phlegm (or worse). Makes one rather melancholic to hear that one’s worst waking fears about the state of low-level law-enforcement may be a nightmare to many if not most of the common or garden law-abiding citizenry.
The situation today has not improved my trembling mood any. Once upon a time, under the rule of men not entirely great – and I’m trying to be nice enough, here – the Police Department was the idle plaything of idolatrous despots and idiosyncratic dictators. IGP Goon, who sat somewhere near the top of a power pile in a de facto police state, was only diminished in eminence by the type of tin-pot tyrants who would proudly declare “L’etat, c’est moi” – if only they knew what it meant.
When the powers that once were came to be justifiably displaced by a new dispensation who spoke and acted as if they knew what peace and justice meant, the populace understandably breathed a sigh of collective relief. Taxes may remain the same, they reasoned (and they were proven right in this pessimistic prediction) – but death in the local cop shop shall reign no more… sadly, still a consummation devoutly to be wished.
Be the previous regime as brutal as it was, the status quo policing the state has neither recanted nor repented. In 2015 alone, the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka recorded over 400 complaints of torture made by people in police custody. To add insult to injury, in a position reminiscent of that infamous motto of a bygone military regime (“zero civilian casualties”) a senior police spokesperson has nonchalantly admitted to “zero cases of police torture” being recorded. So something is still rotten in the state of Denmark, wouldn’t you agree, dears?
Part of the problem is that the rot starts at the top. The previous two or three regimes were bad enough, unabashedly embracing the Prevention of Terrorism Act like a long lost lover needing some friendly reassurance that the fires of passion hadn’t died. But the incumbent administration hasn’t gone all Platonic on this Draconian bit of legislation either. Even though the corpse of terrorism lies a-smouldering in the grave. On the contrary, to judge by the raft of proposed counterterrorism laws being mooted, the awful majesty of the law is having its screws tightened. What this will do to the um, nuts and bolts, of a people-friendly Police Department remains to be seen.
Sorry to come down so heavily on you this early in the morning (thank God it’s Friday), but there is more to the Peace With Justice which was implied in the new social contract we signed with your government than this!
For one, as in (I almost wrote ‘other’) civilised countries, suspects arrested under any law – leave alone a heavy-handed one like the counterterrorism legislation being mooted at present – have the right to legal counsel … Importantly, before making a statement to the police recording officer. (In a sop to Cerberus, the new laws will allow a lawyer to access his or her client after the event.)
For another, if the statement made sans legal advice sounds something like a confession in the officer’s ears, it can be made admissible in a court of law. The rub, of course, is that ‘zero cases of torture’ is as much a figment of the imagination as ‘zero civilian casualties’. For too many difficult, er, cases have been cracked for the Justice Minister to rest easy.
Last but by no means least, let it please the court to note the proposed counterterrorism laws – which sound suspiciously like a shortly abandoned agenda to tweak the Criminal Procedure Code, and which ignore counterproposals made by the Law Commission – are egregious in one other respect. They leave no room for manoeuvring by wily lawyers or clever lawbreakers keen to tweak their local constabulary’s nose… by dint of defining written or spoken words that threaten the unity, stability, etc., of the blessed State Of Peace in our justly policed domain.
I have another confession to make. I ache and yearn for the good old days… It was a time when I wasn’t good, I wasn’t old, and I wasn’t up to anything worthwhile being copped for during the day at least! Be that as it may, to start your weekend off on a happier note that when you started reading this column, here are some anecdotes from the gonzo journal of yours truly. Enjoy them… TGIF (if that’s the right word under the proposed new laws)!