J.S. Tissainayagam: Terror Suspect or Prisoner of Conscience?

April 1st, 2008

by Ameen Izzadeen

MY friend Jayaprakash Tissainayagam is in detention. A senior journalist and Tamil, he was arrested on March 7 by the Terrorism Investigations Department (TID) and he does not know why he is being detained. Yesterday, the supreme court took up a fundamental rights petition filed by him, challenging his detention.Is he a terror suspect or a prisoner of conscience?

In terms of the definition of the phrase ‘prisoner of conscience’, I believe Tissa, as he is known to his friends, qualifies to be one.

According to Amnesty International, the term refers to anyone imprisoned because of their race, religion, colour, language, sexual orientation, or belief, so long as they have not used or advocated violence.

Tissa never condoned terrorism or separatism. Neither do his writings exhort Tamils to take to violence. He only spoke and wrote with the intention of making the Tamils equal citizens of this country.

The issue at stake is not only Tissa’s detention but also the hallowed concept of freedom of expression, which is an essential ingredient in a vibrant democracy. If ours is a true democracy, anyone should be able to say that Tamil people have the right to self determination. Of course, I agree promoting violence to achieve this end is unlawful and should be dealt with legally in accordance with the law.

A budding intellectual, Tissa often had a stimulating counterpoint. Whenever I met him, I made sure that I spent some time with him over a cup of tea, so that I could learn something from him. Our discussions varied from constitutional matters and crises in politics to the media scene and movies.

A human rights activist for the past two decades, Tissa, through his writing, had also highlighted the plight of the Sinhala youth, most of whom were JVP sympathisers, when they were being hounded by government-backed goon squads in the late 1980s.

At the time of his arrest, he was running a news website funded by a German non-governmental organisation, FLICT (Facilitating Local Initiative for Conflict Transformation), which seeks to strengthen the capacity of Sri Lankan civil society to play a more effective and influential role in contributing towards a lasting and positive peace.

I was a regular visitor to the website and impressed by its content and presentations. His office was situated in Colombo’s Tamil-dominated Jampettah Street, an area that is regularly subjected to cordon-and-search operation by the security forces.

The building that houses Tissa’s office is owned by a Tamil nationalist writer who runs a printing press in the same building.

The police first came for the printing press owner and took him to the TID headquarters on the basis that the press was being used for the propaganda work of the LTTE, which, strangely, is not a banned group in Sri Lanka, though it is in many foreign countries, including India, Britain and the United States.

Tissa went to TID to inquire about the detention of the printing press owner but ended up being a detainee himself.

When I heard that he was arrested by the TID, about which many Sri Lankans know very little, the question that flashed across my mind was whether he was being tortured.

The government ministers may defend the country’s case before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, saying that since Sri Lanka has been a signatory to the torture convention, the abominable practice has long been abandoned. But I strongly believe that cops are cops, for whom international treaties make little or no sense.

Well, if the CIA, the intelligence arm of the United States, which touted itself as citadel of democracy, before the George W Bush era began in 2000, can practice waterboarding, why won’t our TID?

So each time, I spoke to Tissa’s wife who is allowed to see him twice a week or so, I wanted to know whether he was being treated well. She speaks to him in the presence of a police officer and therefore she says he is not free to talk.

But modern torture techniques like waterboarding won’t show any external wounds. We were worried. A mutual friend told me, “We should be relieved that Tissa was not picked up by the goons who come in the much-feared white van.”

A few years ago, another famous journalist, Dharmalingam Sivaram, a Tamil, was abducted by a gang as soon as he left a pub just opposite a police station in Colombo. His body with gun shot injuries was found the following day in the high security zone near the parliamentary complex.

Yes, Tissa should count himself lucky for not ending up like Sivaram. But why he is being detained is the question, to which his wife, parents and friends try to find an answer.

With emergency laws in force, friends and lawyers can do very little. On the one hand, we admit that the police, which were facing the daunting task of eliminating terrorism from this country, have every right to question him. On the other, we know there are more bad cops than good cops in the police.

COURTESY: Khaleej Times

Entry Filed under: transCurrents Commentary