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 Basil Fernando’s newest edited book, Recovering the authority of public institutions: A resource book on law and human rights in Sri Lanka (Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong, 2009) consists of two parts. In the first there is a study on the drift of Sri Lanka from a rule of law system to a non-rule of law system. This part studies the loss of the binding character of the law, the loss of the prestige of the constitution as the paramount law and the loss of respect for treaty obligations. It also examines the weakening of investigative mechanisms, undermining of the prosecutorial system, and the impunity
eating away at fair trial and the judiciary. It includes a point-by-point review of government actions and, for the most part, inactions on the recommendations of several UN agencies. The second part consists of about 200 complaints of torture out of about a thousand researched for the purpose of this book.
The book is the product of nearly 15 years of work of many persons.
Literarily, thousands of persons were interviewed and hundreds of
cases were pursued in this time. This journey went to magistrate’s courts, high courts, the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court and on some occasions, the United Nations Human Rights Committee. Each
occasion afforded opportunities to observe how the government of Sri
Lanka and its agencies acted in the face of the serious complaints raised in these cases. The basis of this book is the detailed records of these cases.
The book is available from the AHRC, 19/F, Go-Up Commercial Building, Mongkok, Kowloon, Hong Kong, tel. +852 2698 6339, fax +852 2698 6367, email: books@ahrchk.net, and can be obtained through the website: http://www.ahrchk.net/pub/mainfile.php/books.
Posted on 2009-03-13
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