By Kurulu Koojana Kariyakarawana   

Condemning the recent remarks by Public Security Minister Tiran Alles on eliminating underworld and drug operatives on sight, legal experts of the bar yesterday said Sri Lanka is not a police state to eliminate criminals when a legal system is in place.  

  President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) Attorney Kaushalya Nawaratne told the Daily Mirror it was a very serious statement made by the country’s Public Security Minister and they strongly oppose it.   
“How can a senior minister make such a statement in public when there is a governance system in the country held by the executive, legislature and judiciary. This is not a police state to shoot and kill persons on sight when a legal system is in place,” the BASL President said. He pointed that this will lead to instances in future where even innocent people would be framed with drugs for being mere political opponents and eliminated.   
“We are discussing at the BASL to take strong measures for this statement and also for his remarks on lawyers appearing for drug lords. It is a globally accepted norm that the lawyers in the nature of their profession could appear for any suspect,” Attorney Nawaratne said.   

Meanwhile, ex-BASL President Saliya Pieris PC told the Daily Mirror that encouragement of extra judicial killings by any Minister or official cannot be condoned. The danger in permitting or encouraging police officers to commit unlawful killings is that corrupt police officers and politicians will do so to target their opponents and to hide their own criminal activities. “Time and again the Supreme Court has strongly condemned extra judicial killings. Police officers responsible for custodial deaths have been ordered by courts to pay compensation for fundamental rights violations. Sometimes police officers involved in custodial deaths have been jailed or even sentenced to death. I have come across police officers who obeyed illegal orders of their superiors and fell into trouble. When that happens the superiors and the politicians whose illegal orders they obeyed are not around to save them,” Counsel Pieris said. 

Minister Tiran Alles at a Community Police meeting held in the South  over the weekend warned all underworld and drug operatives to surrender  or face death by police as a special mission was launched to eradicate  the on going crime wave.