An Appraisal on Sri Lanka’s Freedom of Opinion and Expression with Special Reference to General Comments No. 34 of ICCPR

Human rights are inherent to all human beings and they are primarily stand on protecting human dignity. Among the other human rights, freedom of opinion and expression plays a vital role in order to realization of other human rights effectively and more meaningfully. The ICCPR as the main treaty based mechanism of civil and political rights, general comments on No. 34 is highly important with regard to the effective realization of Freedom of opinion and expression in the domestic level protection of a country. It is very important to ensure the freedom of expression in order to uphold the foundation of the free and democratic values of any society. The Sri Lankan perspective on ensuring this right is highly debatable with regard to its operationalization and application when it comes to the practical situations. Though this right is protected as fundamental right in Sri Lanka, many restrictions are arbitrarily imposed beyond the protection of constitutional safeguard and all the situations of state intervention were justified with the whims and fancies of the authority. This approach is evident by several incidents occurred in the country during the very recent past. The adherence to General comments No.34 is fairly treat on safeguarding inappropriate restrictions of freedom of expression by state party. Therefore, this paper examines the importance of adherence to the general comments no. 34 with regard to the effective realization of freedom of expression based on present stance of Sri Lanka. Further, the author applies and analyzes the drawbacks of Sri Lanka’s situation of undermining the importance of freedom of expression.