By Udara Soysa –

Udara Soysa

The Foreign Employment Bureau (FEB) at Sri Lanka’s Bandaranaike International Airport is under fire for subjecting first-time travelers to invasive and humiliating checks, often reducing excited travelers to distressed victims of bureaucratic power plays. The ostensible purpose behind these checks is to prevent unauthorized employment abroad, but in reality, these practices target innocent passengers on visit visas, stripping them of their dignity and treating them as though they are presumed criminals. This troubling trend has only worsened, with mounting calls for the new government to urgently step in and restore travelers’ rights.

A Lawyer Humiliated: No Respect for Professionals

In one particularly jarring recent incident, a young lawyer—herself a professional committed to upholding the law—was reduced to pleading her case before airport officials. She was on her way to Dubai, excited for her first international visit to see friends. Yet, despite having a valid visa and presenting her identity as a member of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL), she was detained and interrogated under the FEB’s arbitrary policies for first-time travelers. Shockingly, despite her credentials, her age, and her professional standing, authorities forced her to call her mother to write a letter “approving” her trip, simply because she was unmarried and a first-time traveler.

This demand was not only unnecessary but demeaning—implying that, as a grown adult and a legal professional, she still needed a family member’s approval to travel. The lack of respect shown to her as a capable individual, coupled with the baseless suspicion cast upon her, encapsulates the Kafkaesque treatment that many first-time travelers face at the airport.

Human Rights Violations: Turning First-Time Travelers into Suspects

These incidents represent more than bureaucratic overreach; they are violations of Sri Lankan citizens’ fundamental rights to freedom of movement, respect, and dignity. The FEB’s policy of screening all first-time travelers without clear, published criteria is inherently discriminatory. It assumes that anyone without a prior travel record is likely to be attempting illegal employment abroad. But the process is also arbitrary: it lacks transparency, leaving travelers unsure of why they are being detained or what “suspicious” criteria they supposedly meet. The net effect is that travelers, many of them simply excited for their first overseas journey, are publicly humiliated, treated as suspects, and stripped of their right to privacy and autonomy.

A Call for Urgent Reform: New Government, New Approach

With Anura Kumara Dissanayake now leading Sri Lanka’s government, citizens are looking to his administration for swift reform to address these abuses of power at the airport. FEB’s policies need a complete overhaul, with clear, transparent criteria and strict limits on interrogations. Targeting travelers, especially professional women, under outdated and discriminatory assumptions is simply unacceptable. If the new government is committed to protecting the rights and dignity of all Sri Lankans, then it must ensure that no one—lawyer or layperson—will face such invasive, disrespectful treatment while traveling.

The freedom to explore new opportunities, experience different cultures, and visit friends or family abroad is a fundamental right. For the FEB to weaponize bureaucracy against innocent travelers is not only a dereliction of duty but a deep moral failure. The time has come for Sri Lanka to rise above such humiliating practices and restore dignity to its citizens who seek only the chance to explore the world freely and confidently.

*Udara Soysa is a practising attorney at law and a law lecturer based in Sri Lanka