Two international human rights bodies have now intervened against the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill within a day of each other, and both say the problem starts with how the bill defines terrorism.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has given the government a set of recommendations urging substantial revision of the draft, NewsFirst reported. Amnesty International issued a statement the following morning warning that the bill risks re-entrenching the abuses of the law it replaces, Hiru News reported at 8.15 a.m.
What the OHCHR asked for
In its executive observations, the OHCHR called for a narrower and clearer definition of terrorism and related offences, warning that broadly framed provisions could see ordinary criminal conduct, speech, peaceful assembly and association treated as terrorism-related activity.
Terrorism offences, it said, should be confined to serious acts of violence committed with a terrorist purpose — acts causing death, serious injury, or hostage-taking.
Its other recommendations, as reported:
- Every arrest and detention should be subject to prompt, independent and effective judicial oversight, with judges able to review detention orders, grant bail and order release — regardless of whether the arrest was made by the Police, the Armed Forces or the Coast Guard.
- Detention decisions should not rest on executive authority alone, without meaningful judicial scrutiny.
- Stronger safeguards are needed against torture, ill-treatment, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance — including confidential and timely access to a lawyer, independent medical examination, contact with family, and oversight by the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka.
What Amnesty added
Amnesty’s statement, as rendered in Hiru’s Sinhala report, makes a narrower but sharper point about time.
The organisation says the bill would permit a person accused of terrorism to be held in detention for up to a year, and for a further year before the trial begins — meaning someone could spend two years in custody before their trial has even started. Amnesty calls that a serious violation of human rights and of the right to a fair trial.
It also says that although the gazetted text contains some amendments to the draft circulated in late 2025, it still carries excessively broad and vague definitions of terrorism. Amnesty notes that counter-terror law in Sri Lanka has periodically been turned against government critics, people expressing controversial views, and minorities — which is why replacing it demands close scrutiny.
Its framing is that a new bill should move the country away from past violations, not hand the authorities fresh instruments of repression.
The two interventions converge
The bodies arrived at the same place by different routes. The OHCHR’s objection is structural — definitions and oversight. Amnesty’s is concrete — the number of months a person can be held. Both land on the same two features: a definition wide enough to catch ordinary conduct, and detention powers that the courts cannot effectively check.
That is also, almost exactly, what domestic critics have been saying. The Bar Association of Sri Lanka demanded the withdrawal of this bill and the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill on Wednesday and has gone to the Supreme Court. Transparency International Sri Lanka called for withdrawal a week earlier. At least 22 petitions had been filed against the bill in the Supreme Court by 20 October.
The bill was presented to Parliament on 6 October. The BASL’s own nominees to the review committee have said the gazetted text departs from the draft that committee approved.
Update: Amnesty’s English wording, and a clause-level comparison
An EconomyNext explainer published at 2.11 p.m. on Thursday carries Amnesty’s analysis in English, which closes the caveat recorded below about this account relying on a Sinhala translation.
Amnesty’s South Asia Director Smriti Singh is quoted directly. Any attempt to revise “a counterterror law which has time and time again been weaponized” requires scrutiny, she said, calling on parliament to “withdraw this bill and reform the law in line with international human rights law.”
EconomyNext’s framing of the organisation’s conclusion is that the bill “threatens to institutionalize arbitrary executive powers” rather than dismantling the legacy of abuse it is meant to replace.
The detention arithmetic, confirmed
The filing confirms the two-year figure from the Sinhala account and separates its components: up to one year of administrative detention without formal charges, plus up to a further year of pre-trial detention — a combined maximum of two years’ deprivation of liberty before a trial begins.
What changes, and what does not
The explainer is more useful than the statements alone because it sets the new bill against the old law rather than assessing it in isolation.
Under the PTA, in force since 1979:
- administrative detention for up to 18 months on a ministerial order, without charge;
- confessions to senior police officers admissible in court;
- broad immunity for security personnel.
The PS-TB does make changes. It introduces judicial oversight of decisions to proscribe organisations, and it removes the vague national-sovereignty clauses. EconomyNext’s assessment, following Amnesty, is that significant grey areas and structural deficiencies survive.
The definition problem, made concrete
The sharpest point is on scope. The definition of terrorism remains, in the explainer’s phrase, “dangerously elastic.” The bill does not explicitly exclude peaceful protest, trade union action, civic advocacy or humanitarian assistance.
It also penalises acts causing the “mere likelihood of substantial economic loss.” That wording is what gives the definition its reach: a strike or a blockade could, on its face, be treated as a terrorism offence. This is the specific mechanism behind the general warning the OHCHR and Amnesty both gave.
The bill is moving through constitutional review at the Supreme Court and towards parliamentary debate.
Not reported
- Neither filing says whether the government has responded to the OHCHR’s observations, or whether it will.
- Neither gives a date for the OHCHR submission itself, as distinct from the date it was reported.
Hiru’s report does not link to or quote Amnesty’s statement in English— closed by the update above: EconomyNext carries Amnesty’s English wording and names Smriti Singh as the source of the quoted remarks.- None of the three filings gives the bill’s clause numbers, so the provisions described above cannot be checked against the gazetted text from the reporting alone.
