The Hindu : `Everyone has the right to protest'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 15, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

`Everyone has the right to protest'

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, MARCH 14. Everyone has the right to protest. Or so believes the noted human rights activist, W. J. Basil Fernando, who has come out with a new book, "The Right to Speak Loudly: Essays on law and human rights''. Brought out by the Asian Legal Resource Centre, the book consists of a collection of essays on law and human rights written by Fernando over a number of years, drawing of his deep and extensive experiences working as a lawyer and human rights advocate in different parts of Asia.

"We desperately need cross-cultural discussions on the rule of law and human rights," begins Fernando. "Much of the discourse is dominated by the West, as is the language of justice, which is associated with several centuries of struggle there. As a result, many of the problems faced by people in Asia are beyond the comprehension of those who are used to this discourse." Coming from a Sri Lankan fishing village and having worked as a lawyer in Sri Lanka, and among Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong, Fernando later became a senior member of the United Nations transitional authority in Cambodia. He returned to Hong Kong a decade ago to become director of the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and Asian Legal Resource Centre. Throughout his professional and personal life he has met and talked with thousands of people from all across Asia and the world. Those exchanges are the fuel for his essays. "Persons from the western tradition struggle to understand how a police officer may so readily resort to torture as his means for routine criminal investigation, or how he may spend more time making a living on the side than dealing with his official duties," he continues.

"They cannot easily accept that a prosecutor may belong to a powerless agency, or that a complete buffoon may sit as Chief Justice and make a mockery of the very institution he represents. An enlightened discourse on the rule of law and human rights will develop only when we break down the language barriers and understand the actual daily experiences of people throughout Asia." Fernando's book, it is being argued, is a bold and important step in developing that discourse. The right to speak loudly convincingly demonstrates that studies of human rights crises and social conflict must account for the institutional defects in the police, judiciary and prosecution agencies.

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