Protecting protests

The anti-Government protest organised by the main Opposition, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), on Tuesday has caused quite a bit of consternation in many quarters – but for varying reasons.

For the SJB themselves, the fact that the Government seemingly went out of their way to hamper the protest, with Police officers seen throwing spikes on the road to prevent busses loaded with SJB supporters from entering Colombo, seemed to confirm their belief that this Government is anti-democratic.

For the Government, the protest was seen as an inconvenience that needed to be quashed, and the fact that it was organised amidst a pandemic, the blatant flouting of COVID guidelines – hordes of people were seen congregating with social distancing completely absent – gave them the ideal pretext to attempt to halt the congregation.

Amid all this, the public – not the thousands that were bussed in, rather those watching on, either through news and social media or merely cos they were caught up in the traffic caused by the protest – took a mixed view of events. 

Some bemoaned the inconvenience caused by the protest, others countered this view putting forth that protests by their very nature are meant to ‘inconvenience’ so as to draw as much attention to the issue at hand, while others were rather apathetic in the movement as many now view the SJB – and indeed, most anyone involved in politics regardless of party – as part of the problem rather than the solution.

See, trying to gauge the political pulse of the people through protests can be a complex task. This is largely because protests should ideally be the result of a strong grassroots movement; however, in present day Sri Lanka, rallies are manufactured by political parties on both sides of the divide. This means that their success or failure can only be seen as a semi-reliable estimate of the genuine thoughts of the masses.

Tuesday’s protest in Colombo is a prime example of this fundamental contradiction. Ultimately, there was nothing new in the protest march, during which the Opposition charged that the Government was so threatened they were trying to ban the protest altogether – incidentally, it was this very same charge that was levelled by the then Joint Opposition in 2018 against the ‘Yahapalanaya’ Government. It is unsurprising this merry-go-round of the same individuals coming in at out of power, with little effectual change to show for it, is starting to wear thin on certain sections of the public.

That said, there is something to be said for the overarching need for these sorts of protests, regardless of effectiveness, to go ahead and for the Government to not be allowed to simply douse them under the guise of COVID protocols.

The Government and public too often treat protests as either an inconvenience to be controlled or a threat to be extinguished, but the reality is the right to protest formally involves the exercise of numerous fundamental human rights and is essential for securing all human rights. 

Participating in protests enables all people to individually and collectively express dissent and seek to influence and strengthen governments’ policymaking and governing practices, as well as the actions of other powerful entities in society. The right to protest embodies the exercise of a number of indivisible, interdependent and interconnected human rights, in particular the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, the right to take part in the conduct of public affairs, the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, the right to strike, the right to take part in cultural life, as well as the rights to life, privacy, liberty and security of the person and the right to freedom from discrimination. It’s high time we remembered that.