A Climbdown, Not a Cure: What the Government Has Conceded on Its Security Bills — and What It Has Not

The first week of November 2026 was the most difficult week yet for the National People’s Power government’s plan to replace the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Two bills sit at the centre of the dispute: the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill, gazetted on 6 October, and the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill, published on the same day and tabled in Parliament on 20 October, according to the Daily Mirror.

By 9 November, the government had moved. The Solicitor General told the Supreme Court that several amendments to the organised crime bill would be brought at the Committee Stage in Parliament, Sri Lanka Mirror and Newswire reported. Two days earlier, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake told a national trade union conference that neither bill would be pushed through Parliament without consulting the public and the groups that have objected, Newswire reported.

Both moves matter, and Lanka Witness records them fairly. But a careful reading of what has actually been offered shows a gap between the tone of the retreat and its substance. The most serious powers identified by the Human Rights Commission, the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and the Bar Association are not yet on the list of changes.

A week of pressure

The pressure came from several directions at once. On 3 November, the Deputy Speaker told Parliament that the Speaker had received copies of 20 petitions filed under Article 121 of the Constitution against the organised crime bill, Newswire reported. By the next morning the number had reached 26, according to the Daily Mirror, and Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena named a three-judge bench, sitting with Justices Achala Wengappuli and Sampath Abeykoon. Petitioners include the Bar Association of Sri Lanka. Newswire reported that lawyers for the petitioners made submissions until late on the night of 4 November.

On the same day, Newswire reported a 31-page communication, dated 30 October, from five United Nations special mandates covering torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and violence against women and girls. The experts accepted that the state needs tools against organised crime, but said several provisions could breach Sri Lanka’s international obligations, and asked the government to clarify 15 points. According to Newswire, the communication also recorded that the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka had described the bill as potentially more draconian than the PTA and had recommended withdrawal and substantial revision.

On the streets, a march near the Parliament complex on 4 November was organised by the People’s Struggle movement with trade unions, rights defenders and journalists, Latin Times reported; the size of the crowd was reported inconsistently. On 6 November, the Associated Press reported a further rally of trade union members and activists in Colombo. One union activist told AP that the government itself had protested against such laws when it was in opposition, and warned that protests would continue until the bills were withdrawn. Those are claims by the protesters, and Lanka Witness reports them as such.

What the government has offered

According to Sri Lanka Mirror’s report of the 9 November hearing, the amendments the Solicitor General described include: cutting the maximum period a suspect can be held before being produced before a magistrate from 72 hours to 48 hours; removing provisions about tattoos and body marks as evidence of gang membership; removing offences under the Excise Ordinance and certain copyright offences from the bill’s scope; and withdrawing the clause that required prior court permission before publishing information about cases involving serious crime.

These are real concessions. The tattoo provision, which Human Rights Watch had listed among membership indicators alongside dress, hand signs and association, risked turning appearance and acquaintance into evidence. The court-reporting clause was the single provision most directly aimed at journalism, and both the UN experts and Human Rights Watch had flagged it. Removing excise and copyright offences narrows a law that had stretched far beyond the gangs and drug networks the government says it is targeting.

The President’s promise of consultation is also significant. Human Rights Watch said on 29 October that the government did not appear to have consulted anyone while drafting the organised crime bill. A government that now commits to consulting civil society, unions and lawyers before a vote has accepted, at least implicitly, that the process so far fell short.

What has not changed

The central objection to both bills has never been tattoos. It has been detention. Human Rights Watch described a system in which the Secretary to the Ministry of Public Security could issue detention orders for two months at a time, up to a total of one year, with no power for a magistrate to set them aside, and with bail available only from the High Court in exceptional circumstances. The UN experts, as reported by Newswire, raised the same one-year detention power, including detention for questioning at police stations.

On this point, Sri Lanka Mirror reported that amendments on detention of arrested persons and the issue of detention orders would be considered at a later stage. In plain terms: the most serious power in the bill has been deferred, not dropped. No text has been published showing what that later change would be.

The same is true, on the public record so far, of other provisions criticised by Human Rights Watch and the UN experts. Statements made to senior police officers would remain admissible as evidence, with the burden on the accused to show coercion. Police would still be able to obtain subscriber, call and location records from telephone companies without a court order. Officers could stop, search, arrest and enter premises without a warrant on reasonable suspicion. And the UN experts warned that the definition of organised crime could, in some circumstances, reach trade unions, student bodies and protest groups. None of these points appears in the list of amendments reported on 9 November.

This matters because Sri Lanka has been here before. The PTA was presented in 1979 as a temporary, targeted law. For more than four decades, rights groups documented its use for long detention without charge and convictions based on confessions given to police. The test of any successor law is whether it closes those doors. A bill that keeps police confessions and executive detention orders, even with a shorter first period in custody, does not yet pass that test.

The promise on the record

The National People’s Power did not stumble into this debate. Its 2024 manifesto pledged to abolish oppressive laws and repeal the PTA, as both Human Rights Watch and the Associated Press have noted. The President told Parliament in June 2026, according to the Daily FT, that the PTA would be repealed within the year and replaced with a narrowly defined organised crime law aimed at criminal networks.

The bills now before Parliament do repeal the PTA in name. But Human Rights Watch argues that they reproduce many of its powers in two parallel structures outside ordinary criminal law. The Carnegie Endowment, in an October analysis, said the government had kept the IMF programme and tightened some anti-corruption rules but had not repealed the PTA, and that a replacement terrorism bill first proposed in December 2025 had still not passed. That is the context in which overseas observers will read this week’s concessions.

There is also an international dimension. Human Rights Watch says repeal of the PTA is a commitment Sri Lanka made to the European Union under the GSP+ trade scheme, which gives Sri Lankan exports tariff preferences. A replacement law that the EU judges to carry over the same abuses would put that commitment, and the jobs that depend on it, at risk.

The government’s case

The government’s position deserves a fair hearing. Cabinet spokesman Nalinda Jayatissa rejected claims that the laws would harm trade unions or media freedom, AP reported. Transport Minister Bimal Rathnayake said on 1 November that the country needs a law to protect the State, while adding that the government was open to discussion on specific provisions, according to Latin Times. The organised crime bill’s stated purpose, the Daily Mirror reported, is to give effect to the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and to support national and international cooperation against serious offences.

Sri Lanka does face real organised crime, including drug networks and contract killings, and the public expects action. The President also told the trade union conference that his government does not intend to stay in power through laws, and would leave office if voters removed it, Newswire reported. Lanka Witness takes those statements at face value. They are commitments that can now be checked against the final text.

What happens next

The Supreme Court finished hearing the 26 petitions on 9 November and will send its confidential determination to the Speaker and the President, Sri Lanka Mirror reported. Under the Constitution, the determination is read out in Parliament before the bill can proceed. If the Court finds that any clause is inconsistent with the Constitution, the government will have to amend it, pass it with a two-thirds majority, or in some cases put it to a referendum. The NPP holds more than two-thirds of the seats in Parliament, which means that the Court and public consultation are the main practical checks.

Three questions should now be answered in public, not only in court documents. First, will the government publish the full list of Committee Stage amendments before the debate, so that citizens and Parliament can read them? Second, what exactly will happen to the one-year detention order power, and will a judge, rather than a ministry secretary, decide whether a person stays in custody? Third, what does consultation mean in practice: a published draft, a time-bound period for written submissions and a public response to them, or a series of closed meetings?

The same standard applies to the terrorism bill, which has drawn a separate set of challenges, including a Supreme Court petition by two Free Media Movement journalists, joined by the Centre for Policy Alternatives, according to Latin Times. Promises of consultation on one bill should not become a reason to rush the other.