Amnesty International has called on the Sri Lankan government to withdraw the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill “in its entirety”, saying the draft grants the authorities “sweeping arbitrary powers” and reintroduces the worst features of the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

The organisation published its statement on Tuesday afternoon. The Daily Mirror carried it about an hour later, reproducing the text substantially as issued — the two accounts are therefore the same document rather than independent reporting.

Amnesty is the first international human rights organisation to intervene in a debate that has so far been domestic. The Bill was gazetted on 6 October and tabled in Parliament the same day; the Centre for Policy Alternatives called for its withdrawal on 8 October, the Bar Association on 21 October, and the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka on 23 October.

What Amnesty objects to

The statement lists provisions that would make confessions extracted under duress admissible in court, permit detention for up to two years without trial, bar the media from reporting court proceedings, allow searches without a warrant, and make it an imprisonable offence to withhold information from the authorities.

It also says the Bill lets police obtain subscriber identities, call records and device location data from telecommunications, satellite and digital service providers without a court order — creating, in Amnesty’s account, a surveillance risk for journalists’ contacts, lawyers’ communications and the organisers of lawful assemblies.

“This extraordinary bill is the most alarming in a string of repressive laws proposed by the National People’s Power (NPP) government. It reintroduces most of the very worst elements of the PTA and applies them to a wide range of offences.”

— Smriti Singh, Amnesty International’s South Asia Director

Singh said the Bill “entrenches impunity”, allows “what effectively amounts to secret trials”, and “removes virtually all the safeguards designed to prevent the abuse of police power.” She added: “The international community, which saw and decried the abuses under the PTA, should shudder.”

Two tests, not one

Amnesty’s account keeps separate two provisions that are easily conflated.

The first is the definition of an organised criminal group — “a structured group of three or more persons, existing for a period of time and acting in concert… in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit”. To decide whether a person belongs to such a group, courts may weigh circumstantial evidence including “style of dress, hand signs, language or tattoos used by known members”, whether the person visits places the group is known to use, and past conduct and association.

The second is the threshold that triggers the Bill’s police powers, which is a “serious crime” — a far wider category. Amnesty notes the Bill reaches conduct already criminalised elsewhere in Sri Lankan law, including intellectual property violations and Penal Code offences such as obstructing a public servant and secret wrongful confinement, but strips away due process safeguards when the offence is attributed to an organised criminal group.

Amnesty also objects that statements made before a magistrate by people who cannot be cross-examined — because they are dead or cannot be found — would be admissible as evidence of criminal conduct, and that an offence of knowingly doing “any other act… in furtherance of a common criminal object” is too vague to be safely enforced.

Where the two-year figure comes from

Amnesty’s “up to two years without trial” is higher than the one-year figure reported when the Bill’s text first became public, and the clause structure explains the difference rather than contradicting it. Under clause 21, the Secretary to the Ministry in charge of the Police — an executive official, not a judge — may order detention in police custody in two-month blocks up to a maximum of one year. Under clause 23, a suspect may then be held on remand for up to a further year before indictment, with bail available only from the High Court. The two periods run consecutively.

Not the same bill as the terrorism statement

Amnesty issued a separate statement this month on the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill, the proposed PTA replacement, warning that its definition of terrorism is broad enough to criminalise dissent. That is a different piece of legislation travelling through Parliament alongside this one, and the two should not be read as a single intervention. The Bar Association has sought the withdrawal of both.

Not reported

Neither Amnesty’s statement nor the Daily Mirror’s report carries a government response. No minister had replied publicly at the time of writing, and no date has been announced for the Bill’s second reading.