Government as a Government official due to the post (“Public Officials Told to Stay Mum: Former SLASA President Explains How,” 2021). His post concerned the deforestation that was taking place in the Sinharaja forest reserve. His arrest was a warning signal to Government officials to refrain from criticising the Government, thereby alienating them from contributing to the promotion of good governance. Sedition laws such as Section 120 of the Penal Code seek to infringe on freedom of expression over and beyond what is permitted under international law. They are used by governments arbitrarily, in bad faith, to clamp down on dissent. Such laws must be reviewed alongside the constitutionally protected freedom of expression and the purpose of the restriction. One could also question the necessity for the offence of sedition in modern democracies. As Lord Denning stated, “The offence of seditious libel is now obsolescent”, but its definition “was found to be too wide. It would restrict too much the full and free discussion of public affairs” (Baron Denning, 1984, 295). PREVENTION OF TERRORISM ACT The PTA is another tool that has been weaponised by successive Governments to target dissenting voices. It has widely been used against the Tamils during and after the war ended in 2009. Furthermore, after the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna insurrection in 1989, the PTA was used to detain many Sinhalese youth. Recently, it was used to detain hundreds of Muslims after the Easter Sunday attacks in 2019, and in 2022, the Government targeted civil society activists during the Aragalaya by making arrests under the PTA. The PTA has also been used to target online expression in various instances. In 2020, Tamil journalist Murugupillai Kokulathasan was arrested under the PTA in Batticaloa for his social media posts about commemoration events related to the civil war (Human Rights Watch, 2022). Additionally, the PTA has been used to detain several people for social media posts that commemorated Tamil fighters who lost their lives in the civil war. In 2021, MP Shanakiyan Rasamanickam stated in Parliament that the PTA has been used to detain over 100 people over social media posts (Human Rights Watch, 2022). These are attempts by the Government to deny memorialisation under the guise of ‘national security’, and ‘glorifying terrorism’. The Anti-Terrorism Bill (ATB) that was gazetted in Parliament in September 2023 is set to replace the PTA. The Supreme Court in February 2024 determined certain provisions in the Bill to be inconsistent with the Constitution and that it must be passed with a special majority in Parliament if the amendments proposed by the Court aren’t given effect. Critics of the Bill are of the opinion that it is more draconian than the PTA itself (Anti-Terrorism Bill Version 2.0: Still Worse Than the PTA, 2023). It grants wide powers to the executive and contains a broad definition of terrorism that is not in compliance with international standards. Analysed in the context of the abuse of the PTA, one can only expect the ATB to enable similar violations of rights if not more. Further, Sections 10 and 11 of the ATB refer to offences ‘encouragement of terrorism’ and ‘dissemination of terrorist publications’ through the internet or electronic media. A person convicted by the High Court on these offences could be liable to rigorous imprisonment for a term not exceeding fifteen years or to a fine not exceeding rupees one million or to both such fine and imprisonment. In addition to these penalties, the Court may order the movable and immovable property of a convicted person to be forfeited. - 10 -