By S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole –

Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole

Letter to the President, Prime Minister, Minister of Justice, Judicial Service Commission, Human Rights Commission, Police Commission and the Bar Association

A couple of years back, the police came to my home in Jaffna attempting to arrest me on an arrest warrant that had been recalled. The President, then the Prime Minister, sent me a message apologizing and assuring me that it would not happen again. But it seems to be happening again. These are critical times, especially as the TNA and the President are negotiating on full implementation of the 13^th Amendment in which Tamil was declared the language of Court in the North and East by Article 24 of the Constitution. This right is in jeopardy as will be shown below.

This letter is also copied to anyone who can help because here in Sri Lanka there is generally a great reluctance to engage with those whose rights are trampled. For example,

1. I had a major complaint filed at the Judicial Service Commission against Hon. A. Judeson, Presiding Judge then of Mallakam Court. The matter related to case No. 25/2018 under Judeson. My complaint was investigated  and the finding was firmly against the judge. But the JSC (that is, the then Chief Justice) suppressed the report.

2. In the year 2019, my wife and I hosted a family from Afghanistan who had sought refuge in the South, and when Sinhalese mobs turned on them, at the request of the Anglican Church we took the family of four into our home. The police and the Governor ordered their removal and I filed with the Human Rights Commission my complaint HRC/2496/19. I sought to assert my right to host anyone in our home with a valid visa. I saw the HRC to be a complete joke. I would go all the way to Colombo for their inquiry and the Respondents (the Governor and the Police ASP) would either not turn up or send an excuse on the morning of the inquiry after I had come to Colombo. The HRC did nothing except fix another date. The matter has now been dead for some 3 years!

3. While at the Election Commission, when I reported a complaint about the Tamil Congress holding an unlawful meeting on the premises of Maviddapuram Temple, V. Manivannan, the present Mayor of Jaffna, threatened to assault me – “attacks will begin on 11 Feb. 2018. You do your attacks. You be ready to face them.  … You pull us into your dirty work, we too will not let you be,” he boasted on a video. As directed by the Election Commission I filed a complaint at the Magistrate’s Court  Jaffna. I went several times. I was directed to go for arbitration/reconciliation. Although the law says I cannot be forced to go for arbitration, I was forced to go. There was no progress when anivannan failed to turn up. I believe I was being harassed by forcing only me to go. Manivannan had special privileges in court, turning up in his lawyer’s kit to stand in the dock. Then he joined the EPDP (which was and is a government party) and became the Mayor. The Attorney General for no credible reason asked to study the file and is still sitting on it. The Magistrate said he cannot set the hearing date without the file. The matter died there. The AG, now on the Supreme court, as far as I know, is still studying the file on Manivannan!

3. At the end of the last General Election, Ali Sabry warned Muslims that they would face violence unless they voted for Gotabaya Rajapakse. That threat was on a widely circulated video clip.  There was enough evidence to send him to jail. The Election Commission suppressed the complaint. He became Minister of Justice. The EC Chairman because the Chairman of the Delimitation Commission. I was out of a job.

As you, the addressees can see, the highest organs charged with dispensing justice, do nothing except when the culprit is insignificant in society. Big folk get away with anything.

Trincomalee

In Trincomalee our hard-won right to deal with the courts in the Tamil language is jeopardized by a lawyer by the name of S. Chandrasiri and the District Judge of Trincomalee, Mr. M. Ganesharajah who is alleged to be soft on lawyer Chandrasiri’s cases. I am aware that there are ongoing inquiries based on complaints by some 4 lawyers against Ganesharajah’s integrity – the allegation involve giving a judgement in open court and then rewriting it in chambers, keeping cases down for Chandrasiri to turn up late, etc. 

Unfortunately, my lawyer, Mohan Nagarajah, is one of the complainants and gets verbally lambasted in court. A lawyer defending my wife against a plaint filed by Chandrasiri, withdrew saying the judgement will be against my wife if he appears. I will stick to my personal experience without getting into details that court needs to sort out.

Client-affidavits filed by Chandrasiri are unlawful and attempt to confound court. For example, the three clients who accuse my wife, are the Rev. Tharmalingam Rames and Rev. Ronald Thileepan who are self-declared pastors, and the Rev. Velu Joseph Jeyaseelan whose title has some status because it is from the Dutch Reformed Church, now renamed the Christian Reformed Church. They have all three filed affidavits, a serious part of any plaint, that are untruthful on the part of the Commissioners of Oaths administering their oath, and have their forged signatures as demonstrated here.

When a Commissioner of Oaths certifies that 3 deponents signed in his presence and there are no three signatures, he or she is lying to and misleading court. When Chandrasiri submits these forgeries to court, he too is party to misleading court.

These forgeries were pointed out by Mohan Nagarajah in court today (14 Dec.). Witnesses described that Chandrasiri objected that Nagarajah should not be allowed to make these submissions, without saying on what grounds he was objecting. Ganesharajah was silent.

That silence betokens Ganesharajah’s own guilt  in not noticing these flaws. After all, he is a senior judge and is expected to read the record. There is no escaping the lies of the Commissioners of Oaths in saying all three were present before him in signing. But not all signature discrepancies can be put down to forgeries. Nagarajah, has called for these to be sent to experts for handwriting testing.

Language Rights

It should be clear from the extracts above that Ganesharajah has been very accommodative of Chandrasiri in allowing court submissions in English, although many lawyers are not versatile enough in English to capture all shades of meanings. In fact, he has accepted affidavits in English by one reverend who failed his GCE O. Levels.

However, Ganesharajah  has gone a step further – leaps further in fact, in undermining Tamil rights. He is accepting plaints in Sinhalese and even serving notices to Tamils in Sinhalese. Two persons I know personally, Dr. Muraleetharan and Dr. Sam Thevabalasingham of Every Home Crusade, were told not to hold the board meeting of a college where they were Assistant Secretary and President. The merits of Chandrasiri’s case are not at issue here. What is at issue is that they were both out of Trinco. Muraleetharan’s notice was pasted on Muraleetharan’s door by Chandrasiri himself. Dr. Thevabalasingham also did not get his copy as his house in Colombo was flooded and he had to move residence out of Colombo. But Chandrasiri’s party kept calling Mrs. J. Muraleetharan (Secretary of Provincial Health, Eastern Province) and issuing several threats. As a result, Dr. Thevabalasingham and Dr. Muraleetharan heard of the stay order and did not hold the meeting. But Narahenpita Police have been going to his home and telling people there that they have come to arrest Dr. Thevabalasigham for a matter he knows nothing about. I think the Narahenpita Police are being paid to harass Dr. Thevabalasingham. He is so scared that he fears to return to Colombo. After his experience, Secretary Muraleetharan is also terrorized. When a Secretary feels terror from these court tactics, what of ordinary folk in our democracy?

The second incident involves me. Today when I returned from Trinco I had an e-mail letter in Sinhalese signed by Chandrasiri and countersigned by Ganesharajah. I have no clue about what it says. If I go to a translator, it will compromise my right to deal with the courts in the Tamil language, a right conferred on me by the constitution. If I do not go, I could have the police calling on me as they have done to Dr. Thevabalasingham.

Is this a Democracy? A call for Action

You, the addressees, and I may have political differences but I think we are agreed that our democratic structures should be preserved and strengthened. This is a call for assistance from you in that noble pursuit.

I therefore call upon the President to strengthen the language laws concerning the 13^th Amendment as he negotiates a peace deal. I call upon the Minister of Justice to issue suitable advisories to ensure that Tamils like me are not put in a quandary when a judge is so accommodative of his friends and flouts the language laws of the country to make the Tamil people face problems as when they receive court notices they cannot read. Here such notices have come from lawyers instead of the fiscal or registrar. Such notices have no standing. 

What is happening now to Dr. Thevabalasingham (a respected Christian leader close to 80 years of age) and me in being terrorized by a lawyer with the help of the District Judge is simply wrong and must not happen to anyone.

When put in a quandary, between the devil and the deep blue sea as I am in having to choose between my language rights and being terrorized like Dr. Thevabalasignham has been by the Narahenpita Police, I have a right to protest publicly instead of going into hiding. I call upon the Police Commission and the Human Rights Commission to save him and to save me too.  

I am also mindful that in writing this, Ganesharajah may try to charge me with contempt of court. Yet I write because it is my duty to my country. I ask for the protection of the Judicial Service Commission to intervene and rein in a judge who flouts all the language laws. As a senior judge with a master’s degree, he cannot feign ignorance of my rights, rights that I know despite being a layman. 

I also call upon the Bar Association to hold inquiries and strip all these unscrupulous Commissioners of Oaths who sign anything put to them by unethical lawyers like Chandrasiri whose actions too need to be looked into with suitable punishment.

If out laws and constitution are not safeguarded, our democracy will die. Surely that is something that we must work together to preserve and feel good about.