States of Emergency - Centre for Policy Alternatives

nationalist political ideology (mirroring the monolithic political
and militaristic standpoint of the LTTE) that has, outside the
theatres of battle, institutionalised a worldview that has little
patience for the assumptions regarding human rights, the rule of
law and constitutional government during states of emergency at
the heart of this book. A corresponding and massive arrogation of
an extraordinary array of emergency powers by the State has been
the formal and legal result. The more informal, in the sense of
‘political’, consequence has been the entrenchment of an
epistemological discourse of ‘patriot or traitor’ that has
legitimised a culture of impunity and immunity against even the
most egregious human rights violations and violators. Civil society
in general, and journalists in particular, have borne the full brunt
of this dreadful political ideology.
This book is dedicated to one of them, J. S. Tissainayagam, in the
fervent hope that he will regain his freedom from incarceration
sooner rather than later. Tissa is a friend with whom the author
enjoyed many and unapologetically didactic disagreements on
questions of politics, but it is plain that Voltaire’s dictum on the
freedom of expression is a value that is nowadays wholly
subordinate to the paranoid nostrums of the ‘National Security
State.’
The basic framework of analysis and many of the ideas expressed
in this book were Lirst presented, inchoately and informally, at a
seminar organised by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) at
the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute in Colombo on 5 th April 2007. A
panel chaired by Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu (Executive
Director, CPA), and comprising Mr. Desmond Fernando, President’s
Counsel; Mr. K. S. Ratnavale, Attorney at Law; Mr. M. A.
Sumanthiran, Attorney at Law; and Mr. Rohan Edrisinha (Senior
Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Colombo, and Director &
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