The Bar Association of Sri Lanka has called on the government to withdraw both the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill and the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill in their present forms, and has filed a Special Determination application in the Supreme Court against the first of them.
The two bills have been gazetted and placed on Parliament’s Order Paper. In a statement issued on Wednesday, BASL President Rajeev Amarasuriya and Secretary Nalin De Silva said they would confer extraordinary powers of arrest, detention and surveillance on the Executive while restricting freedom of association, expression and movement, the Daily Mirror reported at 7.37 p.m.
The association said it recognises the State’s responsibility to protect the public from terrorism and serious organised crime, but that those objectives cannot justify weakening constitutional safeguards or depriving people of liberty without effective and timely judicial oversight.
The most serious allegation is procedural
The BASL’s sharpest claim is not about any clause. It is that the gazetted PSTA Bill differs significantly from the draft approved by the committee appointed to review the existing law — and that the changes were never referred back to that committee before publication.
The association’s own nominees to that committee, President’s Counsel Saliya Pieris and President’s Counsel Chanaka de Silva, informed it of the departures.
That matters because the committee process is the government’s stated justification for the bill: a reviewed, consulted replacement for the Prevention of Terrorism Act. If the published text is not the text the committee signed off, the consultation cannot be cited in its defence.
The BASL says it wrote to Justice and National Integration Minister Harshana Nanayakkara on 8 October, asking that the changes be rectified, including by amendment at the Committee Stage. It says no response has been received from the Ministry. Thirteen days later, the bill is on the Order Paper and the association is in court.
What the PSTA Bill would change
On the terrorism bill, intended to replace the PTA, the BASL objects to four things in particular:
- Magistrates would be required to remand suspects, sharply restricting their discretion to assess whether detention is justified.
- Bail only through the High Court, with exceptional circumstances required for offences punishable by life imprisonment.
- The removal of the requirement that a Magistrate approve extensions of detention beyond the initial two-month period.
- Narrowed safeguards for access to legal advice.
It also raises concerns about restriction orders, the proscription of organisations, an expanded range of offences and immunities, and the creation of criminal liability through subordinate legislation and executive directives — that is, by regulation rather than by statute.
Hiru News, filing in Sinhala at 6.08 p.m., carried the same statement about 90 minutes earlier and adds the association’s historical argument. The PTA was introduced in 1979 as a temporary measure and has lasted more than four decades, used under successive governments to hold people for long periods without trial and against political opponents, activists, journalists and students. The BASL’s example is the lawyer Hejaaz Hizbullah, arrested on 14 April 2020 and held 22 months — 662 days — before being released on bail.
The organised crime bill: no consultation at all
On the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill, the BASL’s complaint is broader. It says there was no public consultation during preparation, that it was neither consulted nor informed about the drafting, and that the composition of the body that prepared the bill has never been made public.
Its substantive objection is to breadth. The bill classifies as “serious crimes” any offence punishable by four years’ imprisonment or more, together with roughly 50 offences listed in its First Schedule. And a “structured group of three or more persons” acting together for financial or other material benefit could fall within the definition of an organised criminal group — even without formal roles, continuity of membership or a developed structure.
Three people, one shared purpose, no structure required. That is the threshold the association says is too low.
The tattoo clause
A separate Daily Mirror filing 40 minutes later sets out how membership of such a group could be established, and it is the detail most likely to be read by people who will never read the bill.
Wearing certain tattoos or styles of dress associated with organised criminal groups could itself be an offence, the Daily Mirror reported. The bill provides for identifying a person as a member of an organised criminal group on the basis of characteristics including tattoos and dress associated with such groups.
Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara, responding to concerns, said the bill would not restrict anyone’s right to choose their hairstyle or style of dress — then said that adopting hairstyles or wearing clothes associated with organised criminal groups would be an offence under the proposed law.
Those two sentences are the whole difficulty. The right is affirmed and then qualified by the same characteristic, and nothing in the reported account says who decides which haircut is associated with which group.
Also listed in the First Schedule: wearing the uniform of a soldier, sailor or airman, assisting military deserters, and obstructing public servants. Other offences classed as organised crime include those under the Financial Transactions Reporting Act No. 6 of 2006, offences under the Forest Conservation Ordinance, illegal gambling, advertising unlawful gambling, gambling involving underage persons, payment device fraud and computer crimes.
The surveillance powers
The bill would let a police officer not below the rank of Superintendent apply to a Magistrate for an order directing a person to unlock a data storage device and provide access to what is stored on it.
It also allows applications to intercept, read, listen to or record postal messages, emails, telephone communications, voice and video conversations or conferences, and to access analogue and digital data and transfer systems.
Context: the second professional body to say this in a week
This is not the first such call. Transparency International Sri Lanka made its own call for the PSTA Bill’s withdrawal and the PTA’s repeal on 15 October, reported here in TISL urges withdrawal of the PSTA Bill — six days before the Bar Association’s.
The BASL’s intervention is heavier in two respects: it represents the lawyers who would have to operate the Act, two of its members sat on the review committee whose draft it says was altered, and it has now moved the Supreme Court.
A caution on searching this story. The 2026 PSTA Bill is routinely confused with the 2023–24 Anti-Terrorism Bill, which was also a PTA replacement and was also challenged in the Supreme Court. Reports naming an “Anti-Terrorism Bill” or “ATA” are the earlier round. Outlets use both names loosely for both bills.
Not reported
Neither filing says when the Supreme Court will take up the BASL’s Special Determination application, or which specific clauses it challenges beyond the grounds listed — equality, personal liberty, freedom of expression, assembly, association and movement, and access to information. Neither reports when the bills are scheduled for debate, whether the government intends Committee Stage amendments, or whether the Ministry has any response to the claim that it did not reply to the 8 October letter.
Neither gives the composition of the body that drafted the organised crime bill, or names the review committee whose PSTA draft the BASL says was departed from. No government response to the BASL statement itself had been filed at the time of writing — Minister Nanayakkara’s remarks answer the tattoo provision, not the association’s procedural allegation.
Sources: Daily Mirror — BASL calls for withdrawal, Daily Mirror — tattoos, dress styles and military uniforms, Hiru News (Sinhala).