Daily News Editorial

Maintaining law and order amid the health crisis

Tuesday 31, March 2020

As we enter the third week of lockdown in the whole country, we are keenly aware that the country’s police and security forces are proceeding with numerous regular duties in addition to the multiplicity of new tasks dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

After all, the enforcers of law and order must continue to deal with the entire set of normal crime, social violence and misbehaviour. Criminal investigations must proceed. Round-ups of narcotic dealers are done. All kinds of other misdemeanours by citizens must be dealt with – from domestic violence to smuggling to cybercrime.

Yesterday, Police sleuths probing last year’s Easter bombings announced their capture of a key suspect in that extremist terror attack – the main accomplice of the suicide bomber who attacked the Zion Church in Batticaloa city. With nearly a year passing since the Easter terror campaign, our police investigators can be seen to be doggedly pursuing the perpetrators without let up, whatever the other, momentous, national distractions.

Meanwhile, the Navy, earlier last week, announced the apprehension of a large stock of narcotics on board some fishing craft off the south Eastern coast. The smugglers were also caught.

At the same time, the national cyber network monitors have identified and warned the public regarding certain new computer software being offered on the Internet that are actually invasive malicious programmes aiming to invade computers, steal data and, sow a little digital mayhem for the benefit of a cyber criminal ring.

The nation must certainly appreciate the sheer hard work of our guardians of law and order and national security who must undertake all these routine tasks over and above the taxing new labours in response to the ongoing health crisis.

Tried and tested emergency response systems in the country are now in overdrive as they cope with a sudden, new, emergency that is of an entirely new nature and of an unprecedented scale.

At the same time, the continuous curfews across the island mean that, due to severe restrictions on social interactions and physical movement of people, there is less opportunity for certain types of crime, especially crime in the public sphere. Robberies are less, although it is likely that, as the curfew regime drags on, petty criminals will get tempted to venture out in less monitored neighbourhoods. While drug peddling on the street is not viable, that will still not completely deter illicit ‘delivery’ to addict customers.

The general public is, thus, challenged to both rigorously practice the social hygiene measures while, at the same time, remaining alert for other social threats in the form of not only petty crime and human misbehaviour, but also subversive activities by extremists whenever they arise.

These are indeed testing times and, while our various contingency response agencies are ultra busy, we must steadfastly maintain our own composure and step up to the challenge of patience in the face of new hardships and inconveniences. And we do this even as we grittily and rigorously practice those ‘must’ social hygiene requirements – washing hands and staying apart.

As our medical community (as well as the world’s medical authority, the WHO) now exhorts constantly, we must stay apart to stay alive – as individuals and as a society.

There is no doubt that little Sri Lanka, despite its relative poverty, has already done better than most of the rich countries in meeting the COVID-19 threat. This success has already been noted by global health monitoring agencies.

The Government, no doubt, still faces the challenge of providing more and more Novel Coronavirus test kits to test as much of the population as possible. Hopefully, we will get more outside help in this expensive exercise. China, Japan and South Korea have already stepped forward to help with generous gifts of this equipment. We must hope that our private sector will also contribute by helping make this equipment domestically.

As at yesterday evening, the death toll from COVID-19 had risen to two persons and the count of infected cases to 122. Nearly a dozen COVID-19 patients have successfully been treated and have completely recovered from the disease. While over two thousand ‘suspect’ cases remain in quarantine, and many more are likely to be added to that number as and when fresh infection cases are detected and their contact persons are identified and corralled for quarantine.

Amid all this, our police and Security Forces work to maintain the peace and law and order in order to provide us with the socially stable foundation to devote our energies to fight this potentially devastating biological menace. Ultimately, however, it is us, all Sri Lankans, who must make it work.

Given the untiring labours and sheer bravery of our healthcare community and security agencies, the citizenry must not betray that whole endeavour by a mediocre laxity in doing its part to defeat COVID-19.