Right to protest

Protests play an important part in the civil, political, economic, social and cultural life of all societies to engage and direct policy. Therefore it is extremely disheartening when reports of the Government attempting to restrict protests to one a week surface. 

While it is true that the public is inconvenienced almost daily by protests, their value cannot be dismissed. If the Government is sincere about reducing protests, then it must listen to the grievances of the public and respond to them proactively. For example, many of the current protests revolve around the infamous SAITM College that has been festering for years, and indeed was created by powerful ministers bending laws and regulations to their whim for the benefit of their loyalists, and disregarding numerous warnings by the Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC). 

SAITM was allowed to be set up when President Maithripala Sirisena was the Health Minister and a member of his Government S.B. Dissanayake was the Higher Education Minister. As such the present Government members have a direct responsibility to resolve the issue and end daily street protests. This and other protests are largely caused or contributed to by policy decisions and if the Government is not made aware of them, then how else can they be addressed?    

Historically, protests have often inspired positive social change and the advancement of human rights, and they continue to help define and protect civic space in all parts of the world. Protests encourage the development of an engaged and informed citizenry. They strengthen representative democracy by enabling direct participation in public affairs. They enable individuals and groups to express dissent and grievances, to share views and opinions, to expose flaws in governance and to publicly demand that the authorities and other powerful entities rectify problems and are accountable for their actions. This is especially important for those whose interests are otherwise poorly represented or marginalised.

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

The principles are intended to be used by civil society organisations, activists, human rights defenders, lawyers, judges, elected representatives, public officials and other stakeholders in their efforts to strengthen the protection of the right to protest locally, regionally and globally. The Sri Lankan Government cannot go before the international community or more importantly its own citizens and attempt to restrict or reduce these rights.