Rule of law eroded in Sri Lanka - UN

The impeachment and sacking of Sri Lanka’s chief justice Shirani Bandaranayake has further eroded the rule of law in the country, the UN’s human rights office has lamented.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay was “deeply concerned” by Bandaranayake’s removal, her spokesman Rupert Colville told reporters in Geneva on Friday.

“The removal of the chief justice through a flawed process ... is, in the high commissioner’s view, gross interference in the independence of the judiciary and a calamitous setback for the rule of law in Sri Lanka,” he said.

Bandaranayake, the first woman to hold Sri Lanka’s highest judicial post, was sacked by President Mahinda Rajapakse on Sunday two days after parliament voted to impeach her.

Despite a supreme court ruling that the parliament had violated the constitution, and a chorus of international criticism and threats of a legal challenge, Rajapakse swiftly filled the vacancy on Tuesday by appointing the government’s senior legal adviser Mohan Peiris as her successor.

“Sri Lanka has a long history of abuse of executive power, and this latest step appears to strip away one of the last and most fundamental of the independent checks and balances, and should ring alarm bells for all Sri Lankans,” Colville was quoted as saying by AAP.

He also voiced concern that the impeachment process had “caused bitter divisions within Sri Lanka, and that it sends an ominous signal about the government’s commitment to accountability and reconciliation.”

The move, he said, flew in the face of strong commitment within the country to rebuild the rule of law after decades of devastating conflict.

Colville also voiced concern at reports from Sri Lanka’s bar association that lawyers who had supported Bandaranayake were facing “death threats, acts of intimidation and even a couple of reported murder attempts.”