{"id":6206,"date":"2010-06-10T10:50:05","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T15:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=6206"},"modified":"2010-06-10T15:40:26","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T20:40:26","slug":"so_thats_the_do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/10\/so_thats_the_do\/","title":{"rendered":"So THAT’S the Domain of the Sri Lankan Police"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last September, the Asia Society held a talk<\/a> by Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, who was then Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. It was around the time of the United States General Assembly session – you know, the one during which all talk was about Gaddafi setting up a tent on Donald Trump’s property<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Although he had attended and addressed the General Assembly at its three previous sessions, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse ducked this one – the first after the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009 – and sent his Prime Minister instead.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Anyway, back to the Asia Society. Sitting front and center in the audience were members of the Sri Lankan delegation, including Secretary of Defence Gotabaya Rajapakse, and Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama.<\/p>\n\n

During the question and answer session, the moderator pushed Wickremanayake on the issue of foreign aid organizations’ restricted access to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (specifically the Red Cross). After evading the questions as much as he could, the Prime Minister eventually referred aid organizations to “the Ministry of Defence, which is in charge of maintaining law and order” (40:50 in the video linked above), glancing frequently at and gesturing toward Gotabaya Rajapakse.<\/p>\n\n

Friends, when I heard him say that, my ears nearly jumped off my head. In every democratic state with which I’m familiar, law and order is the domain of law enforcement and civil judiciary, not the military. If the Ministry of Defence is in charge of maintaining law and order in Sri Lanka, I thought, what exactly is the role of the police? Well fear not, for that question has been answered!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lankan police have rounded up hundreds of young lovers for kissing in public following complaints that the overt displays of affection caused embarrassment to others, an official said Thursday.<\/p>

Nearly 200 couples have been briefly detained in the districts of Matara and Kurunegala over the past two weeks, police spokesman Prashantha Jayakody told AFP.<\/p>

“We have taken them into custody for indecent behaviour at a public place,” Jayakody said. “Usually we free them after informing their parents. Charges are not pressed” (AFP<\/a>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

BBC, however, reports<\/a> that 22 couples from Matara were ordered to appear in court after their horrendous crimes of affection. Kurunegala<\/a> and Matara<\/a> are pretty far apart. Was this some coordinated crackdown on kissing? If so, it’s good to know that the police and judiciary are being put to good use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last September, the Asia Society held a talk by Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, who was then Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. It was around the time of the United States General Assembly session – you know, the one during which all talk … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6206"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}