Emergency '58
ON Monday the Colombo customs impounded j copies of a book published by Andre Deutsch in London earlier this month, and sent by them to Ceylon. Entitled 'Emergency '58, it is the first near-complete account of what actually happened during the Sinhalese-Tamil riots earlier this year and was written by leading Sinhalese journalist Tarzie Vittachi, editor of the Ceylon Observer, from diaries kept at the time.
It is a fair record of riots which were allowed to get out of hand, largely because the police and administration had for nearly two years been so intimidated by politicians that practically every- one was afraid to move to stop the rioters. The result—on the Governor-General's intervention— was a declaration of a state of emergency, the imposition of martial law, the suspension of Par- liamentary control and habeas corpus, and a press censorship which the Commonwealth Press Union describes as unprecedented in the peace-time his- tory of any Commonwealth country.
Vittachi falls over backwards to be objective and factual. Why, then, was his book impounded? The events he describes—censorship or no—will not surprise those who lived through them. Can it be because this is the first account written by a Sinhalese which lays blame on the shoulders of perhaps the best-intentioned, most woolly-minded, nerveless, inept, and incompetent bunch of politi- cians in Ceylon's history? A government which makes the unlamented government of the United National Party seem a model of efficiency in comparison.
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