State of emergency and areas of exemption
The process of dealing with the past includes various processes and mechanisms for removing those consequences of armed conflict, war or massive human rights violations that are obstacles to the harmonization of relations and the release of creative development capacities in the newly established social / political community and which may be the cause of new injustices and the escalation of violent conflicts in future. The goal is to create conditions for taking responsibilities for the incurred violations, restoration of justice, alleviation of the traumatic consequences of violence and reconciliation. There is no doubt that there is great interest in studying the limitation of human rights in emergency situations over the last decades, which is the result of numerous war conflicts and other public perils dangerous for the nation, that have occurred on the territory of Europe and beyond in the international community.
In the essay by expert associate Antonio Sebastian Kukavica, an analysis of the influence of the presidential decrees was made, namely the connection of the modern state with the state of emergency as a mechanism of its own defense in the moments of emergency.
Three specific cases were presented in the essay: the case of Chile, Croatia and the USA, each of which has pointed to one characteristic of the state of emergency, proving that it appears in all types of political system. The link between neoliberalism and permanent state of emergency as a technique of ruling, logically leads us to Chile during Pinochet’s dictatorship as the first case study, where the wave of „disappearances“ began immediately during and after the military coup in 1973, when the military hunta carried out the policy of “detention, kidnapping, interrogation and execution of internal enemies”. In Croatia, the state of emergency happened, although it has not been declared, which is another ambiguous characteristic of the state of emergency. For example, the eighteen decrees passed on 25 October 1991 were issued „in case of war or in the case of an immediate threat to the independence and integrity”. In the period following the terrorist attack on September 11, after George W. Bush declared the “national state of emergency” (September 14, 2001), the exception became the rule in the United States. Today, 17 years after the attack, the United States is still in the same state of emergency that was declared on September 14, and reaffirmed in the mandates of Obama and Trump, which only shows that the state of emergency has indeed become a normal control principle in the United States.
Specific issues and selected topics related to human rights, their protection in general, and in particular through the protection of the democratic state, as well as the possibility of limiting human rights under certain conditions defined as “an emergency state”, are also being discussed.
