States of Emergency - Centre for Policy Alternatives

situations, it is not merely the legal transgressions of
constitutional rights that result: it also debases the moral
judgement of society, and devalues notions of justice and fair play
that would otherwise prevail.
This in turn leads to minority alienation and with it support for
anti‐government forces. This entrenches the dynamics of conLlict
in a way that eventually de‐legitimises the State. Thus, for
example, as Gross and Ní Aoláin observe, “…it is widely accepted
that the internment campaign initiated by the British in Northern
Ireland on August 9, 1970, led to the revival of the IRA and the
creation of the Provisional IRA. Similarly, there is little doubt that
the repressive measures taken by the French army during the
Battle of Algiers ‘proved to be the most effective recruiting
sergeant for the FLN which managed…to transform Algerian
political life into a military situation thereby alienating the
previously quiescent Muslim population against the French
state.’” 169
All of this is all too familiar in the Sri Lankan experience, where in
the context of ethno‐political conLlict going to the heart of the
State’s legitimacy, the use of emergency powers by the
government has become almost completely ethnicised. Generally,
even if the Sri Lankan State has failed to address the substantive
anomalies at the root of the conLlict and minority grievances, it has
claimed to represent all Sri Lankans regardless of ethnicity in its
counter‐insurgency measures against the LTTE. The broader
political and constitutional dimensions of the matter are beyond
this discussion, but even as the military prosecution of the war has
led to widespread patterns of routine violations, there has also
been the occasional executive act of ethnic discrimination that has
169
Gross and Ní Aoláin: p.225
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