The Frontline Socialist Party has warned that the government’s proposed Protection of the State from Terrorism Act could be used to crush political dissent, and that parts of it are more repressive than the Prevention of Terrorism Act it is meant to replace, Tamil Guardian reported.
The party’s education secretary, Pubudu Jayagoda, set out the objections at a media briefing in Nugegoda.
The definition
Jayagoda’s central argument concerns how the bill defines terrorism. On his account the definition turns on attempts to compel a government or an international organisation to act or refrain from acting, rather than being confined to serious acts such as killing, causing grave injury, abduction or deliberately spreading terror. Framed that way, he said, ordinary political mobilisation could be treated as terrorist activity.
He also said the bill would shift power from the judiciary to the executive, and would extend powers of arrest, investigation and detention to the armed forces alongside the police.
The consultation
Jayagoda questioned why the government had pressed ahead after inviting public submissions on an earlier draft. Submissions closed on 28 February, he said, but the version later gazetted was largely the same draft with provisions mostly rearranged.
He pointed to the letter sent on 6 October by Saliya Pieris, a former president of the Bar Association who sat on the review committee chaired by President’s Counsel Rienzie Arsecularatne. Pieris has said the bill placed before Parliament departs from the committee’s recommendations on bail and detention, and that committee members were not told who made the changes.
The 2023 comparison
The FSP drew a comparison with the Anti-Terrorism Bill brought by the previous government in 2023, which the National People’s Power challenged in the Supreme Court while in opposition.
“If the NPP opposed that Bill then and is now bringing the same legislation before Parliament, the government must explain its position.”
Jayagoda called on NPP members of parliament to vote against the bill, urged trade unions and other organisations to build a wider campaign, and challenged the government to an open debate on it.
Where the bill stands
The government presented the bill to Parliament on Tuesday 6 October against mounting objections from journalists, rights groups and Tamil political parties. Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara has said a new anti-terror law is a necessity. More than 240 civil society groups have called for the PTA to be repealed without any replacement. The PTA has been used for decades to detain Tamils, many of them held for years without charge — and it remains in active use: police have opened a PTA investigation into the installation of the Thileepan statue in Nallur.
Objections on narrower grounds are already on record, including from the Independent Media Alliance over the bill’s treatment of publications and over a clause creating an offence for certain media publications.
Not reported
Tamil Guardian does not date the Nugegoda briefing, quote the bill’s definition clause directly, or identify which provisions the FSP says are more repressive than the PTA’s. It carries no government response to the party’s specific claims, and does not say whether the FSP intends a Supreme Court challenge of its own. The party has no seats in the current Parliament, and the filing does not say which trade unions, if any, have joined its call.
On sourcing: The Island also carried the briefing, under the headline “PSTA worse than PTA: FSP”, but its site returned an HTTP 307 redirect with no retrievable body to both of this desk’s fetch routes, so its publication date could not be verified and it has not been cited. No other verified newsroom was found to have filed on the briefing.
Sources: Tamil Guardian.
