KARRIYAPPAR's PTA & PSTA - I KNOW THE LAW
Legal Correspondent
Nizam Kariyappar, President’s Counsel, Secretary General of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, and a sitting Member of Parliament, has claimed that the anti-terrorism legislation currently proposed by the NPP government is nothing more than political window-dressing.
He made this assertion in a post published on his X (formerly Twitter) account.
According to Kariyappar, the only change made to the existing Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) is the cosmetic addition of the letter “S”, rechristening it as the Protection of the State from Terrorism Act (PSTA). Beyond this rebranding exercise, he argues, there is no substantive reform. “This is not reform,” he insists, “it is merely a change of name.”
He further states that Sri Lanka requires genuine reform grounded in internationally accepted legal principles, particularly those enshrined in Articles 9 and 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which deal with liberty, due process, and humane treatment of detainees.
That is the claim. However, the context and the messenger warrant closer scrutiny.
Mr Kariyappar, despite his fondness for invoking international conventions, is not a specialist in international counter-terrorism law. His professional background includes a period of service in the Attorney General’s Department, but that experience does not automatically confer expertise in the highly specialised field of international terrorism legislation—laws that are not drafted for rhetorical flourish, but to preserve the legal architecture of the state while balancing civil liberties.
Yet, like a handful of Sri Lankan lawyers—particularly from the Eastern Province—who periodically attempt to display imported legal sophistication (some even loosely implying Ivy League or Harvard-level pedigree), Mr Kariyappar appears eager to perform his legal acumen in Parliament and on social media. The performance is often louder than the substance.
What is striking is the contrast with Sri Lankan legal professionals who actually operate at the highest levels of global academia and practice. There are Sri Lankan Muslims teaching law at institutions such as Oxford University, deeply engaged with international human rights and security law, who choose to remain measured, restrained, and intellectually disciplined—rather than grandstanding in domestic political theatre.
In that light, Mr Kariyappar’s commentary reads less like a rigorous legal critique and more like a familiar exercise in parliamentary posturing: selectively quoting international instruments without demonstrating a working understanding of how modern counter-terrorism frameworks are structured, implemented, and judicially supervised in democratic states.
Sri Lanka certainly needs serious debate on terrorism legislation. But that debate requires depth, comparative analysis, and legal humility—not superficial rebranding arguments delivered as constitutional wisdom.