Women Prisoners’ struggle in Sri Lanka

THULASI MUTTULINGAM·THURSDAY, AUGUST 30, 2018

Some of you might have watched that video clip taken by journalist Priyadharshini Sivarajah of female prisoners screaming for help from inside a prison bus? The video is linked in comments below.

Since then, much has happened in the prisoners' struggle over their demand for basic facilities and humane treatment. The women were assaulted in the Welikada prison for trying to raise awareness on their sub-human treatment within. One has died.

Others continue on without access to medical treatment after being injured in the assault. Meanwhile most of the populace outside appear to be looking away as this tragedy unfolds, with the typical Sri Lankan attitude of, 'it’s not our business' and 'they deserve it, because they are criminals.'

FYI, a number of these are detainees who have not been charged yet for any crimes - for years on end. Others are petty criminals who were used and abused as drug mules while the drug lords get away with their crimes. Yet others are poverty stricken people who were remanded for something as petty as not paying a fine.

And all of them are thrown into our torturous 'justice system' (the term is a joke) to suffer and roil together. Keep in mind what happens in contrast to true criminals like Gnanasara in this country. Political heavyweights get a cushy deal no matter what it is they did in criminal activities. So do rich people who can bribe their way out, or into better 'prison' conditions. Meanwhile the masses who were abused by the system continue to be abused in horrific conditions in prison while we all look the other way.

I attended a meeting at the Social Science Studies Circle yesterday where a few lawyers and human rights activists actively looking into this matter, discussed the issue and what could be done to alleviate it.

Here are some of the things I learned:

1. The female prisoners are given just one menstrual pad per day during their menstrual cycle. All the women out there would know exactly why this is a devastating human rights blow. Some of us have such heavy flow that we need to wear two at a time to stop overflow - and in that way, I sometimes run through 16 a day in heavy flow. At the bare minimum, a woman would need 5-7 pads a day. No, the prison is not out of money for sanitary pads. Prison officials have apparently told the women, "if we give you too many pads, you'll smuggle drugs into them so this is the limit."

2. Sanitation conditions: We are still using the prions left behind by the British - built in the early 1940s. Hundreds of prisoners are crowded into rooms where they can barely stand up, never mind sleep in. And there are three toilets for 3000 people.

3. Corruption: the conditions as you can imagine is rampant for psychopathic prison guards to rule. Sexual abuse - of both male and female prisoners, is rampant. So is the demand for bribes for the delivery of everyday items needed to survive. - A bucket of water costs Rs.500. - A pillow costs Rs. 50,000. There are prices for food too, but I forget now the charges.

4. Nutrition- one of the demands put forward by the women prisoners is access to basic nutrition. This wasn't discussed in detail yesterday so I am not sure what food they are getting now if at all, but it is a major problem that they have said they are facing. Some of these women have children born in prison, living with them - and those children face the same conditions - lack of sanitation, nutrition, space to play in or even toys to play with. One of the lawyers who had been inside the prison described the conditions as 'hellish' and something that tore him up every time he visited.

The people of this country have largely ignored this problem.

Please remember, you don't have to be a criminal to end up in this system. One of the attendees yesterday talked about how he ended up in remand prison for a day for inadvertently getting into a traffic accident - and his remaining horror to this day over that one day's experience.

He was lucky enough to get out after a day - but there are people who were arbitrarily picked up and have remained there for years without being charged of any crimes.

Even if they are charged and / or convicted, keep in mind that police investigation skills in this country is mainly relegated to randomly arresting people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time in the vicinity of a crime, and torturing them into confessions. There are quite a number of these in prison too. I know one person who was arrested for reporting a suspicious basket on the premises he worked in - and spent five years in jail for it.

During the war years, an easy way for people to settle scores in the North and East was to tell the army / CID / police that the person they had an argument with, had links to the LTTE. I have personally heard this threat thrown around by people on multiple occassions.

In one well known case that made it to the papers in 2003, a woman was arrested on a tip off, as being linked to the LTTE's airport bombing. After two years of torture she underwent in prison to confess, it eventually emerged she was innocent and had been picked up on one such unwarranted accusation to settle scores. She had been an innocent woman living in Trincomalee who been duped into marrying an already married man in Negombo. She had not known he was already married - this too is a very common occurrence; Men duping women multiple times for marriage. Given the community, he probably also got a fat dowry. When she came up from Trincomalee to live with him in Negombo, she discovered his other family already there and refused to live with him as his second wife. She had left immediately, but the man had kept on threatening her he would report her as an LTTEer if she did not return to live with him. He eventually carried out this threat and the woman was tortured for 2 years in prison for it. 

Her case was eventually overturned but you can imagine the number of cases that were NOT similarly overturned. 

Even assuming that people in prison are indeed criminals and are deserving of being incarcerated, being imprisoned is punishment enough. Torture, abuse and withholding of basic human facilities should NOT be condoned, to whomever it might be.

~

The Social Science Studies Circle members and other well wishers will be holding a protest in front of Welikada Prison, on Monday at 12 noon, to demand humane treatment of prisoners.

Please attend if you can, and look at the diverse ways you can lend support to overhaul this system, that belongs in the middle ages, not 2018. 

Thank you.

Waiting for oh-God-only-knows

 Friday, 31 August 2018

A word. An iota of info. The news, be it good, bad, or ugly. That grimy scrap of a rumour wrapped in a cruel whisper to lay at withered ears. Those hours spent in faint hope mixed with dread that the unforeseen worst might be true… Whatever it is that the friends, family and others have waited for – for so long – they’re still waiting. Still, there are no answers for the loved ones of an estimated 60,000 ‘disappeared’ in Sri Lanka’s bitter, protracted, and apparently ongoing conflict with itself.

Now, at last, at least, there is relief. If not exactly the blessed release of knowing with a dead cert finality, there is the catharsis of open protest at the lack of progress made. And – wonder of South Asia, small miracle – there is no pushback from the powers that be.

It is a consummation devoutly wished for decades. But the time may not yet be fully ripe to consummate a harvest of righteousness in our blessed isle. Since the Government’s laissez-faire response – or lack of one – to Amnesty International’s street campaign this week comes with the flip side of laissez passer. However benign the incumbent administration may seem to be, Sri Lankan and global watchdogs must remind themselves as much as the authorities that demonstrations being suffered in silence with patience (‘this too shall pass’) is not necessarily a good thing. Therefore, watchful vigilance must not abate. The balmiest weather can go bad in two shakes of a Goat’s tail. We are not done – quite.

Bouquets

But first, credit where credit is due. There were many polls trail promises made by the powers now in while they were out in the cold. Here is a (one might essay rare) singular instance in which the erstwhile opposition now entrenched in a political establishment has walked the talked. It has delivered the goods in respect of a just and peaceful milieu in which citizen rights to dissent are showcased in caucus and constitution as much as in openly angry demonstration.

Or at the very least it has let it come to pass that Sri Lanka’s undertakings to the international community and its nod to being readmitted to the human race after a debilitating humanitarian crisis, which left our reputation in tatters, is not seen as some savvy insincere diplomatic game. And if peace without justice is the present impasse to which we have come by default if not design, let that too pass.

That what has come to pass in the present can be a hedge against tomorrow’s outrages must not escape our attention. For civil society joining hands with global bodies – albeit tarred by the brushes of other lobbies – can work to build bridges from Sri Lanka’s scarred past to a blemish-free future. If only political will rather than political oh-let-it-pass prevails.

Don’t forget: governments under pressure in extremis from insurgents and insurrectionists can be excessively violent – and even cruel – in systematising enforced disappearances. It has happened not once or twice, and will again – if we don’t act judiciously now to criminalise abduction, torture, execution.

Brickbats

And so then to the devil his due. But to find the res, one must dig a little deeper as always.

For the sins of the previous regime – and other non-salutary administrations before that incarnation of banana republicanism – can’t pale to those who still wait. That by then no means shadowy figures in our myriad abductions and assassinations continue to be at large – and strut and fret their petty (coming?) hour on the national stage – must give us pause. There are a few who stand culpable for the deaths and disappearances of the many… some say as much as 100,000 in Sri Lanka alone in over three decades of civic conflict and attendant chaos.

Were they unmitigatedly guilty as once alleged, ad nauseam? Are they untouchable now, for reasons yet to be disclosed by those who hold law and order highly yet lightly at present? Where will the fully anticipated operationalisation of the Office of Missing Persons and a movement to restore not only democracy but the dead to their dear ones leave the villains who made a desert and called it peace? Is Government’s splendid benevolence paving the way for playing the Goat?

By the way

And we don’t mean to be disrespectful to the democrats who are really trying, but how hard is it to collar the remnants of a criminal cabal now that we’re ostensibly under the rule of men entirely great? Or must men and women who went to the grave believing that the rigorous pen is mightier than the sword of realpolitik remain dead – or missing for ever?

Is it prudence (“we must be cautious – polities are perverse about their heroes”) or pragmatism (“we must carefully consider our own future – elections are eventually won by personalities not principles”) that prevents the powers that be from going the whole hog, or the Whole Goat?

Be that as it may

But a journey of a thousand miles begins with but a step. Baby-steps have been taken towards national reconciliation. There are miles to go before we sleep. However hard the interim may seem to be, those who are sincerely committed to transitional justice as Sri Lanka’s last best hope before the light fades must stay the course. Rejoice with those who savour liberty. Grieve with those who yearn for closure. Mourn for those who have no body to bury or the ashes of a loved one’s destiny to inter.

Therefore this week we stand with those who wait with bowed heads but uplifted eyes. Because this is the only way that we can serve the dearly beloved missing or not quite dead. I suspect that even if it is a dying political right to shout out aloud that there are still no answers, it is equally a human need to be allowed to ask the lively questions that make even all the political animals human.

(Journalist | Editor-at-large of LMD | Writer #SpeakingTruthToPower)

Arrest CDS if there is evidence he helped Prasad evade arrest-Magistrate tells CID

Ravindra

By AJA Abeynayaka-August 30, 2018, 12:00 pm 

Colombo Fort Magistrate Lanka Jayaratne yesterday told the CID that Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne, Chief of the Defence Staff, could be arrested and produced before courts if there was adequate evidence to prove that he has in anyway helped Lieutenant Commander Chandana Prasad Hettiarachchi, who was wanted by courts, evade arrest.

Magistrate Jayaratne also ordered that Hettiarachchi, the 10th accused, in a case of kidnapping 11 youth between 2008 and 2009, be remanded till September 12.

Inspector Nishantha Adrian Silva of the CID told the Magistrate that there was adequate evidence to prove that Wijegunaratne, as the Commander of the Sri Lankan Navy,had advised Hettiarachchi to avoid arrest. The CID also told the Magistrate that the two national identity cards that were in possession of Hettiarachchi, when he was arrested, belonged to a Civil Defence Force member, from Agbopura, Kanthale and a resident of Thalduwa, Ahangama.

Jayaratne also ordered 22 state and private banks to provide CID by next week with detailed reports on the accounts Hettiarachchi had maintained and the investments he has made. The CID told the court that the suspect, in being involved in crimes and other incidents has made statements, claiming that he could not remember or had any knowledge of them. Thus the CID asked for more time to question Hettiarachchi. The Magistrate ordered the Superintendent of Prisons to assist the CID in questioning Hettiarachchi.

Attorney -at-law Kalpa Perera, appearing for the defendant said that Attorney Ajith Prasanna who appeared for Hettiarachchi when the suspect was produced before the court on August 15 has made statements without the suspect’s advice. Perera told court that Hettiarachchi had not asked Prasanna to appear on his behalf.

Jayaratne told Perera that it was a very serious matter and instructed Perera to confirm it after checking with the suspect in the dock.

Inspector Nishantha Adrian Silva told the Magistrate that attorney - at - law Prasanna had appeared for former Military Intelligence Director and Army Chief of Staff Major General (Retired) Amal Karunasekara, who was arrested in connection with the abduction and assault of former The Nation Newspaper Editor Keith Noyahr in 2008, without Karunasekara ‘s instructions. Silva requested the court to take appropriate action. The Magistrate said that she would look into the matter.

Sri Lankan man arrested and charged with terror offences in Sydney

Police say the 25-year-old was in possession of a document linked to the planning of a terror act

The Sri Lankan man charged with terror-related offences was due to appear in court in Sydney on Friday. Photograph: Julian Smith/AAP

Australian Associated Press-Fri 31 Aug 2018 

A Sri Lankan man employed by a Sydney university has been charged over a document that police allege contained plans for terrorism attacks.

Mohamed Nizamdeen, 25, was arrested by counter-terrorism officers at the University of NSW in Kensington on Thursday afternoon, police said.

It followed a tip-off from a worker at the university, who police said found a notebook that allegedly contained the names of several locations and individuals as “potential targets”.

“They are symbolic locations within Sydney,” acting Detective Superintendent Mick Sheehy said on Friday.

“We have psychologists and investigators looking at that document to try to interpret the intent and capability, but that is in essence the offence that is before the court.”

A number of electronic items were also seized during a raid at a unit at Zetland early on Friday morning.

The man was charged with collecting or making a document which is connected with preparation for, the engagement of a person in, or assistance in a terrorist act.

He was refused bail to appear at Waverley local court on Friday.

“The charges laid against this person are serious and significant, and should not be underestimated,” said Australian Federal police Detective Superintendent Michael McTiernan.

Nizamdeen, who is in Australia on a student visa that expires in September, has not been charged with being a member of a terrorist group.

He was employed as a contractor at the University of NSW and has allegedly travelled back to Sri Lanka and other areas.

The man was not known to police and does not have any criminal history in Australia, police said.
Authorities insist there was no concern for public safety.

His matter is due before Central Local Court on 24 October.

Child dies because doctors refuse to treat ! Galaha residents protest against doctor villains!

-Video footage of egregious cruelty of doctors !

(Lanka e News - 30.Aug.2018, 10.00AM) An infant died at Galaha hospital because of the gross neglect and dereliction of duty of two rascally doctors . These are the doctors who after completing their studies out of public funds waste their time out on pavements to protest and claim their superiority while neglecting their duties towards patients. Because no medical treatment was given to the child for two long hours by the doctors , and the driver of the ambulance of that hospital too has refused to take the child to Peradeniya hospital, the innocent victim met this fate.

This tragedy occurred on 28 th morning.

Those who were provoked over this tragedy had demonstrated their bitter resentment against the hospital administration. They had caused minor damage to the hospital , and attacked the vehicles of the doctors with stones breaking the vehicle windshields into smithereens.

The two ruthless brutes (doctors) are Dr. J.M.A.M.Jayasekera (chief doctor) and his assistant Dr. Ms. Shiromi De Silva.

The innocent infant was admitted to the hospital at 7.00 a.m. but until 9.00 a.m. no medical treatment was given. As the condition of the infant was turning for the worse the parents had tried to dispatch the child to Peradeniya hospital . However the chief medical officer Jayasekera had obstructed to that.

Even the request to take the critical patient to the Peradeniya hospital was turned down, and the ambulance driver had entered into a conflict with the parents. This driver had then taken the ambulance away saying there has been an accident elsewhere.

Meanwhile a request was made to the police to dispatch the child to Peradeniya hospital , but the police too was not allowed.

Finally , having no other choice , the child was forcibly taken  out and when being taken to the Peradeniya hospital , the child has passed away either on the way to hospital or on admission. The Peradeniya hospital staff had told the parents , if the child had been brought there 5 minutes earlier , the child’s life could have been saved.

According to the residents of the area , the three doctors employed at the Galaha hospital are never in the hospital as they spend all their time on their private practice. Moreover , a large number of children have died in that hospital earlier on , and one child was dragged and taken away by a dog – gross neglect of the staff proved.

These are the scoundrels after becoming doctors out of the public funds who stage meaningless strikes and heartlessly compromise lives of patients . When they should be the best friend of the patients after taking the sacred oath to serve selflessly , they are instead behaving as enemies of the patients while only selfishly serving themselves demanding privileges endlessly and ruthlessly, to the detriment of the patients and the country as a whole.

Doctors are generally considered as ‘god’ but because of a few doctors behaving like Draculas lusting for blood uncaring for human lives the entire profession is being disgraced and degraded. It will be in the best interests of the profession , patients and the entire country if at least one such doctor engaged in villainies and ruthless negligence is punished duly by canceling his / her medical practitioner license, as well as blacklisting them. That will deter and daunt the other rascally doctor killers and doctor draculas.

It is no point screaming at politicians alone that they are devastating the country. These scoundrels and rascals who are of no use to the public , disgrace the profession and kill patients are doing much greater damage than the politicians. At least the politicians have to face the people once in five years , but these medical villains have nothing to fear or face during their career despite their egregious cruelties , atrocities and neglect of duties.

These are heartless scoundrels who have become millionaires after studying out of public funds and collecting salaries paid out of public funds. It is a cruel irony while the public are suffering on account of them, these medical scoundrels and villains are living in the lap of luxury all throughout their lives . What a strange phenomenon ? Even after these scoundrels and rascals die after neglecting their duties and allowing the patients to die thereby , it is the public that have to pay their widows’ pensions .

Video footage covering the incident is hereunder 

---------------------------
by     (2018-08-30 04:58:57)

Rtd Army Captain ordered to pay Rs. 1.5M

MADHAWA BANDARA- AUG 29 2018

Gampola Magistrate and District Judge Chandani Meegoda today (29) ordered a retired Captain of the Army to pay compensation in a sum of Rs. 1.5 million to a Police Constable (PC) for causing financial and mental agony to the latter.

The Judge concluded that the retired Army Captain, identified as Lumbini Somaratne had willfully continued to exert revenge on PC S.A. Priyantha Kelum, a resident of Gelioya, who had filed a case against the former in 2009.

The Army Captain had been in charge of the Tamil Language Training School in Kotmale at that time.

The plaintiff had stated in his petition to the Court that he had attended the Tamil Language Training School in Kothale in May 1999 and the respondent had issued death threats to him forcing him to abandon his language training.

The plaintiff had stated that the respondent Army Captain, by using his rank had forced top Police officers to harass the plaintiff thereby bringing about mental distress to him.

During the Court case it had been revealed that the PC concerned had been transferred to 11 far-flung Police Stations within the Nuwara Eliya District and on each of those occasions he had been subjected to mental torture.

Announcing her decision, Magistrate Meegoda said that the plaintiff, to his credit had shown mental fortitude to take harassment in his stride and fight along without giving into the actions of the defendant.

It was claimed in Court that the respondent had fallen out with the plaintiff after the latter had frisked the former and his spouse when they had been travelling through the Ulapane checkpoint, put up as a protection for the Kotmale tank during the war in 1999.

Have Authorities Deceived The People On Mahendran’s ‘Red Notice’?

By Amrit Muttukumaru –AUGUST 29, 2018

Amrit Muttukumaru

Former Central Bank Governor, Arjuna Mahendran’s place of residence is now no more a secret subsequent to media reports of a senior official in the Attorney General’s Department informing court that Mahendran, a fugitive from justice “had requested for copies of the warrant and evidence against him from the CID via the Singapore Interpol”. This was in response to the Colombo Fort Magistrate asking the senior AG official on the status of the Arrest warrant issued by court on Mahendran.

Apart from the ‘request’ from Mahendran being unusual, it leaves no doubt that the precise address of Mahendran is now known both to the authorities in Sri Lanka and Interpol. This is because Mahendran would have revealed the address to which the required documents were to be forwarded. The excuse of his whereabouts being unknown can no longer be trotted out by Sri Lanka authorities.

Will not this request likely set a dangerous precedent inimical to upholding the rule of law in relation to the criminal justice system? Are persons summoned to appear in court for criminal cases as in the case of Mahendran, entitled to documents prior to presenting themselves to court? Would even President Donald Trump if summoned to appear before US Department of Justice Special Counsel, Robert Mueller know in advance the questions Mueller would ask him? The views of legal experts on this matter will be appreciated. 

Even Mahendran’s son-in-law, Arjun Aloysius being in remand custody for the past several months has not moved him to be in Sri Lanka to either visit him or his daughter who we are to presume until now are unaware of his whereabouts. 

It is apparent the AG’s Dept. is not keen to act on the warrant on the basis of the lead story (not contradicted) in the ‘Daily Mirror’ of 24 August 2018. It is reported that Senior Deputy Solicitor General Haripriya Jayasundara had informed court that after having “obtained a red notice” from Interpol they were “working on certain arrangements on this matter”. To say the least the reporting of this response is vague. The newspaper report fails to disclose (i) when the ‘Red Notice’ was obtained? (ii) the date on which the authorities became aware of Mahendran’s precise location? (iii) for how long the authorities were “working” on the undefined “certain arrangements”? (iv) whether Mahendran was part of or aware of these “arrangements”? (v) whether Mahendran’s request for documents were consequent to these “arrangements”?

It appears these matters have not been brought to the attention of court – hence the magistrate’s query “what had happened with regard to the warrant issued” and request for a “report on that matter without delay”. The response of the senior AG official “it would make the necessary submission no sooner the process was finalized” is symptomatic of the issue not being a priority to the AG’s Department. This is alarming since Mahendran is reportedly the first suspect in the magisterial inquiry into the bond scam which is arguably one of the largest financial scams to have taken place in the post-independence history of Sri Lanka. For sheer impunity and involvement of powerful politicians in collusion with a section of the corporate sector and regulatory authorities it is hard to beat. 

We now get to the CLAIM of the Attorney General’s Department to court as reported in the media (not contradicted) that they had “obtained a red notice” from Interpol against Mahendran. The Interpol website does not support this claim.

Interpol ‘Red Notice’ 

Read More

State Counsel express surprise:Udayanga pays for UL Moscow do, embassy gets reimbursed-Rs. 24 mn readily spent 

Udayanga

by Rathindra Kuruwita-August 29, 2018, 12:00 pm 

SriLankan Airlines had reimbursed the Sri Lankan Embassy in Russia, to the tune of Rs. 24 million, for the expenses incurred on a party to provide publicity to the airline’s General Sales Agent (GSA) for Russia, Upekha Abeysekera, Senior Manager, Revenue Accounting at the Airline told the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) probing irregularities at SriLankan Airlines, SriLankan Catering and Mihin Lanka yesterday.

The event took place during the tenure of controversial Sri Lankan Ambassador to Russia, Udayanga Weeratunga. Last week it was revealed that Weeratunga had recommended a company, Sri Lanka Limited, to be appointed as General Sales Agent (GSA) for the national carrier in Russia. Writing to the SriLankan country manager in Russia in 2011, Weeratunga stated that Sri Lanka Limited could help the country build closer relationships with Russia and Ukraine and thus the company should be selected.

Although the party was organized to celebrate the airline’s GSA and SriLankan had agreed to bear the expenses, for an unknown reason the Sri Lankan Embassy in Russia had initially footed the bill. "This includes a payment of USD 100,000 for the venue, the Ritz Carlton and another USD 84,000 for VVIP movement handling totaling USD 184,000. Our embassy initially paid the bill and we had reimbursed it," she said. The Attorney General’s Department officials who led the questioning noted that it was strange as the airline itself could have easily paid the bill without having the embassy involved.

Last week Shiromi Cooray, Manager Industrial Relations at SriLankan told the commission that this was the first time, according to her knowledge, that a diplomat had involved himself to assist a company to become a GSA for SriLankan.

The Airline started selecting GSAs, a sales representative for an airline in a specific country or region responsible for selling passenger and cargo space, after the departure of Emirates. Earlier it maintained its own offices in a number of countries. Even under a GSA system, the airline retains a country manager and an officer in charge of finance, who are provided office space by the GSA.

Gaza’s battle-hardened medics always on duty

Ibrahim Talalqa on duty during a recent protest that was part of the Great March of Return.Mohamed Hajjar

Amjad Ayman Yaghi-30 August 2018

Since the beginning of the Great March of Return at the end of March, the Israeli military has left no doubt that it will not feel restrained in dealing with Gaza’s demonstrations.

With rules of engagement that have left at least 125 demonstrators dead, more than 5,000 wounded by live fire, among them over 800 children, the message is clear: Protest and risk death and injury.
But even those not protesting are not safe. Israeli forces have killed two journalists and at least 90 have been injured. Three medics have also been killed.

Still they come: demonstrators, journalists and, of course, medics.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, there have been at least 370 instances of paramedics being injured during the demonstrations and nearly 70 ambulances have sustained damage.

“I believe in the saying, he who saves a life, saves all humanity,” said 43-year-old Muhammad al-Hissi, a paramedic with two decades of experience.

Al-Hissi, now director of emergency medical services at the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, is an ever-present figure at the demonstrations of the Great March of Return. And his 20 years on the job also make him a veteran of the entire second intifada and all three Israeli wars on Gaza.
He has the scars to prove it.

A sense of duty

He was first injured, he told The Electronic Intifada, in an Israeli airstrike 2002 that left him needing several surgeries to remove shrapnel from his right hand.

In 2014, during Israel’s 51-day offensive on Gaza, he was injured again in the same hand in another airstrike, and this time needed a metal implant that he still carries around. And during the latest protests he was hit in the chest by a tear gas canister leaving him out of action for five days.
Yet he is not discouraged.

“Our humanitarian work is greater than the Israeli occupation,” al-Hissi told the Electronic Intifada.
A sense of duty, he said, carried him through the tear gas, the blood and rubble.

“It’s hard to save people from buildings that have been shelled. The rubble keeps coming down over our heads. When that happens, I try to remember the injured, and I decide to pull myself together,” al-Hissi said. “My job is to save people’s lives.”

In the line of fire

Al-Hissi said he has been shocked at the number of casualties and not just among protesters. He has reached out to international organizations including the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Health Organization to help them pressure Israel not to target paramedics doing their jobs.

Among the many injured multiple times in the line of duty during the Great March of Return is Ibrahim Talalqa, 23. Talalqa volunteered in a civil defense medical services team for three years to become a certified paramedic.

He has been wounded three times in the past three months, most recently on 3 August when he was strafed by shrapnel while attending to an injured youth. The shrapnel, he said, came from an exploding bullet that detonated near his ambulance as it was approaching the injured person.

“In Gaza, paramedics leave home not knowing if they will ever come back to their families,” Talalqa said. He does his best to ease his family’s concerns, he added. “My mother worries about me, but she stands strong before me and supports my choice. When I get injured, I do not tell her until I am back home.”

Muhammad al-Hissi says he has appealed to international bodies to pressure Israel to stop targeting paramedics. Mohamed Hajjar

Talalqa remembers the 14 May protests as the worst – these also claimed the most casualties of any of the series of demonstrations to date. He was not wounded on this occasion, but it was close.

At one point, he had to crawl on his stomach to reach a youth who had been injured near the boundary. When he finally got there, he had to try to carry the young man, who had a chest injury, back to an ambulance. Yet he initially could not reach the ambulance because of the intense shooting. Talalqa ended up having to drop to the ground and wait with the wounded man until an ambulance could finally pick them both up.

Perhaps worse was when he saw a colleague shot in the leg as he was carrying an injured 12-year-old who was then again wounded with a shot in the back. Eventually the medical teams nearby succeeded in extricating both child and medic from the scene. Both survived.

Battle-hardened medics

Adel al-Masharawi is another veteran paramedic. The 41-year-old began in 2000 and says the situation has only become worse.

He has fainted four times during the recent protests as a result of inhaling tear gas and is convinced that the chemical composition of the gas has changed over the years. He worries that too much exposure will result in future diseases.

But, like the other medics, he is determined to carry on.

“We are part of the Palestinian struggle,” he said. “It is our duty to work and save lives whatever their injuries and where they may be.”

Adel al-Masharawi comes to the aid of a colleague exposed to tear gas.
 Mohamed Hajjar

It may be a duty for these battle-hardened medics, but those who are rescued will always be grateful.
On 3 August, Bashar al-Muzaini, 18, found himself on the edge of the protests waving a flag and wearing the distinctive black-and-white Palestinian kuffiyeh.

He and friends were staying at a distance of 500 meters from the boundary, a distance they thought would be safe. But at one point, as a thick cloud of tear gas descended on the group, al-Muzaini found himself alone, nauseous and disoriented.

Eventually al-Masharawi found his way to the confused youth, helping him get away from the gas and providing him with medicine to take away the nausea.

Al-Muzaini later realized that he had been lucky to escape only with tear gas poisoning. The area had been the site of heavy shooting while he was lost in the fog. But when he tried to thank al-Masharawi he was almost rebuffed.

“When I went to thank the medic he told me this happened every day,” al-Muzaini told The Electronic Intifada. “I wasn’t the first, and I won’t be the last that he will rescue like this.”

Amjad Ayman Yaghi is a journalist based in Gaza.

Trump Wants to Help Israel by Cutting Aid to Palestinians. Why are Some Israelis Worried?

Cuts could deepen economic crisis in the West Bank and Gaza and lead to violence.

Palestinian students at a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency on Aug. 29. (Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) 

By Neri Zilber- August 29, 2018, 6:38 PM

TEL AVIV, Israel–In early 2014, workers for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the seven-decade-old body that provides basic services for Palestinian refugees, went on strike in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The cause was an internal battle between management and teaching staff over budget cuts and layoffs. For two months, across the refugee camps of the Palestinian territories, UNRWA schools shut down, garbage piled up in the streets, and health care clinics remained closed. Officials on all sides expressed concern about the strike, but none more stridently than Israeli military officers. “This is a security interest for all of us,” one senior officer from the military unit that runs the West Bank told me at the time. “We don’t want kids to be bored, and to start throwing rocks.”

Now, the Trump administration seems determined to end all U.S. funding to UNRWA and cut other aid to the Palestinians. Some of Trump’s closest advisors, including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, believe the refugee agency undermines Israeli interests and stokes the refugees’ hopes for repatriation in Israel. As with Trump’s decision last year to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the withholding of aid money is seen as one more way that the U.S. government, the historic peace process mediator, is aligning itself with hard-line elements within Israel.

But while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu basks in the unmitigated support he gets from Trump, top Israeli security officials are worried. Some of them told the Israeli Cabinet that the move could backfire badly on Israel, “setting fire to the ground,” according to a report on Israeli television this past weekend. Others are cautioning that the void created by any decline in UNRWA services would be filled by the Islamist Hamas group.

The reasons for the concern are not difficult to discern. As an international diplomat in Jerusalem once told me, UNRWA is effectively a “quasi-government” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, providing education, health, and other essential services to some 2 million people.

In the West Bank alone, nearly 800,000 Palestinians are registered as refugees, many residing in the 19 refugee camps scattered across the territory (camps is a misnomer; these days they are urban concrete slums usually connected to major Palestinian cities). Almost 50,000 pupils study at the 96 schools UNRWA operates, with the agency responsible for an additional 43 health care centers, 15 community rehabilitation centers, two vocational training centers, and 19 women’s program centers.
The situation in Gaza is even more acute. One million Palestinians, half the population of the blockaded coastal enclave, depend on UNRWA for food aid; a quarter million refugees study at the agency’s 267 schools; some 21 health centers dispense care to a war-ravaged population. In a territory with a 40 percent unemployment rate, the highest in the world, UNRWA employs almost 13,000 staff–many of them registered refugees themselves.

The U.S. government, historically UNRWA’s biggest donor, provides more than a quarter of the agency’s budget. Its plan to eliminate $350 million in funding will leave UNRWA with a massive shortfall and has already forced layoffs. The school year is set to start on time, but officials at the agency can’t guarantee that it will extend past the end of September. Gaza in particular is of utmost concern, with the territory already on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe and Israel and Hamas teetering on the edge of war. Israeli security officials have consistently described Gaza as a “ticking bomb”–one that Israel and Hamas (which rules the Strip) are now trying to defuse via indirect talks.

Washington also seems bent on stripping millions of Palestinians across the region of their status as refugees–a highly evocative issue tied to the Palestinian “right of return” demand. Critics contend that this refugee status (imparted as well on descendants of those Palestinians who fled during Israel’s creation in the 1948 war) artificially perpetuates the conflict, impelling refugees to believe they may someday return to their homes inside Israel. “This relates to the core of the Palestinian narrative,” Lt. Col. Alon Eviatar, a retired Israeli intelligence officer with long experience in Palestinian affairs, told me. “It could have even more dramatic implications than the budget cuts.”

The Trump administration, though, hasn’t just stopped with UNRWA. Late last week, the State Department announced that it was cutting $200 million in aid to Palestinians in the West Bank, primarily development and infrastructure projects run through USAID. Beyond the larger damage to the Palestinian economy of stopping these initiatives–roads, sewage, electrical transmission, water and the like–there is a more personal and immediate problem. All told, tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians benefit, whether directly or via extended family circles, from employment in these projects. “In terms of work, there aren’t alternatives for all these people,” Eviatar said. “If you cut one hand then you have to make sure the other hand feeds [them],” he said, alluding to the wider danger of a political vacuum.

Tellingly, the United States refrained from slashing direct aid ($60 million) to the Palestinian Authority security forces, a sign that Washington does value their work, especially the tight cooperation with their Israeli counterparts. Yet even if continuing this funding were politically tenable for the Palestinians–an open question given the tattered state of their relations with the Trump administration–this is arguably a limited understanding of security.

For more than two years, the Israeli military has aggressively promoted a policy of economic development in the West Bank, in an effort to disincentive violence against Israel and allow Palestinians to live reasonable, undisrupted lives. As one senior Israeli security official told me last year, “I very much value the civilian and economic component … it was the reason why there wasn’t a Third Intifada.” In two fell swoops, the Trump administration may undo much of this hard-won stability, potentially putting untold numbers of Palestinian workers, students, and refugees out onto the streets.

“It’s clear to me that there will be a storm and [these steps] may lead to a wave of terror,” Col. Grisha Yakubovich, a retired Israeli military officer who served in the unit that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, told me.

The administration is clearly hoping that the economic pressure will get the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating table, pressure Hamas in Gaza, and force reforms on a bloated and inefficient UNRWA. But Eviatar, the retired Israeli intelligence officer, said the chances of success were not high. “They’ll get the opposite result,” he told me, referring to the Trump team. “The Palestinians won’t come back to the table. It just won’t happen.”

Kushner, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to mind if the collapse of UNRWA and these other intricate moves cause collateral damage. “Our goal can’t be to keep things stable and as they are. … Sometimes you have to strategically risk breaking things in order to get there,” he said earlier this year in an internal email leaked to Foreign Policy. An easy thing, perhaps, for someone thousands of miles away to say, but a different proposition altogether for all those on the ground–Palestinians and Israelis both–who risk getting broken in the process.

U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border, throwing their citizenship into question

Two women, Maria and Lupita, whose U.S. citizenship is in question, stand for a portrait in Brownsville, Tex. Although they were born in the United States, the government is questioning their citizenship because it suspects their birth certificates are fraudulent, even though they were issued by the state of Texas decades ago. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)

By Kevin Sieff-August 29 at 4:25 PM

PHARR, Tex. — On paper, he’s a devoted U.S. citizen.

His official American birth certificate shows he was delivered by a midwife in Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas. He spent his life wearing American uniforms: three years as a private in the Army, then as a cadet in the Border Patrol and now as a state prison guard.

But when Juan, 40, applied to renew his U.S. passport this year, the government’s response floored him. In a letter, the State Department said it didn’t believe he was an American citizen.

As he would later learn, Juan is one of a growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question. The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown.

In a statement, the State Department said that it “has not changed policy or practice regarding the adjudication of passport applications,” adding that “the U.S.-Mexico border region happens to be an area of the country where there has been a significant incidence of citizenship fraud.”

But cases identified by The Washington Post and interviews with immigration attorneys suggest a dramatic shift in both passport issuance and immigration enforcement.

President Trump spoke to ICE and CBP agents on Aug. 20, and launched attacks against "open border extremists." (Reuters)

In some cases, passport applicants with official U.S. birth certificates are being jailed in immigration detention centers and entered into deportation proceedings. In others, they are stuck in Mexico, their passports suddenly revoked when they tried to reenter the United States. As the Trump administration attempts to reduce both legal and illegal immigration, the government’s treatment of passport applicants in South Texas shows how U.S. citizens are increasingly being swept up by immigration enforcement agencies.

Juan said he was infuriated by the government’s response. “I served my country. I fought for my country,” he said, speaking on the condition that his last name not be used so that he wouldn’t be targeted by immigration enforcement.

The government alleges that from the 1950s through the 1990s, some midwives and physicians along the Texas-Mexico border provided U.S. birth certificates to babies who were actually born in Mexico. In a series of federal court cases in the 1990s, several birth attendants admitted to providing fraudulent documents.

Based on those suspicions, the State Department during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations denied passports to people who were delivered by midwives in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. The use of midwives is a long-standing tradition in the region, in part because of the cost of hospital care.

The same midwives who provided fraudulent birth certificates also delivered thousands of babies legally in the United States. It has proved nearly impossible to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate documents, all of them officially issued by the state of Texas decades ago.

 While some migrants worried about separations, others felt seeking asylum was worth the risk

For some seeking asylum, family separations were worth the risk: 'Whatever it took, we had to get to this country’ (Zoeann Murphy, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

A 2009 government settlement in a case litigated by the American Civil Liberties Union seemed to have mostly put an end to the passport denials. Attorneys reported that the number of denials declined during the rest of the Obama administration, and the government settled promptly when people filed complaints after being denied passports.

But under President Trump, the passport denials and revocations appear to be surging, becoming part of a broader interrogation into the citizenship of people who have lived, voted and worked in the United States for their entire lives.

“We’re seeing these kind of cases skyrocketing,” said Jennifer Correro, an attorney in Houston who is defending dozens of people who have been denied passports.

In its statement, the State Department said that applicants “who have birth certificates filed by a midwife or other birth attendant suspected of having engaged in fraudulent activities, as well as applicants who have both a U.S. and foreign birth certificate, are asked to provide additional documentation establishing they were born in the United States.”

“Individuals who are unable to demonstrate that they were born in the United States are denied issuance of a passport,” the statement said.

When Juan, the former soldier, received a letter from the State Department telling him it wasn’t convinced that he was a U.S. citizen, it requested a range of obscure documents — evidence of his mother’s prenatal care, his baptismal certificate, rental agreements from when he was a baby.

He managed to find some of those documents but weeks later received another denial. In a letter, the government said the information “did not establish your birth in the United States.”

“I thought to myself, you know, I’m going to have to seek legal help,” said Juan, who earns $13 an hour as a prison guard and expects to pay several thousand dollars in legal fees.

In a case last August, a 35-year-old Texas man with a U.S. passport was interrogated while crossing back into Texas from Mexico with his son at the ­McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge, connecting Reynosa, Mexico, to McAllen, Tex.

His passport was taken from him, and Customs and Border Protection agents told him to admit that he was born in Mexico, according to documents later filed in federal court. He refused and was sent to the Los Fresnos Detention Center and entered into deportation proceedings.

He was released three days later, but the government scheduled a deportation hearing for him in 2019. His passport, which had been issued in 2008, was revoked.

Attorneys say these cases, where the government’s doubts about an official birth certificate lead to immigration detention, are increasingly common. “I’ve had probably 20 people who have been sent to the detention center — U.S. citizens,” said Jaime Diez, an attorney in Brownsville.

Diez represents dozens of U.S. citizens who were denied their passports or had their passports suddenly revoked. Among them are soldiers and Border Patrol agents. In some cases, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrived at his clients’ homes without notice and taken passports away.

The State Department says that even though it may deny someone a passport, that does not necessarily mean that the individual will be deported. But it leaves them in a legal limbo, with one arm of the U.S. government claiming they are not an American and the prospect that immigration agents could follow up on their case.

It’s difficult to know where the crackdown fits into the Trump administration’s broader efforts to reduce legal and illegal immigration. Over the past year, it has thrown legal permanent residents out of the military and formed a denaturalization task force that tries to identify people who might have lied on decades-old citizenship applications.

Now, the administration appears to be taking aim at a broad group of Americans along the stretch of the border where Trump has promised to build his wall, where he directed the deployment of National Guardsmen, and where the majority of cases in which children were separated from their parents during the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy occurred.

The State Department would not say how many passports it has denied to people along the border because of concerns about fraudulent birth certificates. The government has also refused to provide a list of midwives whom it considers to be suspicious.

Lawyers along the border say that it isn’t just those delivered by midwives who are being denied.

Babies delivered by Jorge Treviño, one of the regions most well-known gynecologists, are also being denied. When he died in 2015, the McAllen Monitor wrote in his obituary that Treviño had delivered 15,000 babies.

It’s unclear why babies delivered by Treviño are being targeted, and the State Department did not comment on individual birth attendants. Diez, the attorney, said the government has an affidavit from an unnamed Mexican doctor who said that Treviño’s office provided at least one fraudulent birth certificate for a child born in Mexico.

One of the midwives who was accused of providing fraudulent birth certificates in the 1990s admitted in an interview that in two cases, she accepted money to provide fake documents. She said she helped deliver 600 babies in South Texas, many of them now being denied passports. Those birth certificates were issued by the state of Texas, with the midwife’s name listed under “birth attendant.”

“I know that they are suffering now, but it’s out of my control,” she said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of her admission.

For those who have received passport denials from the government, it affects not only their travel plans but their sense of identity as Americans.

One woman who has been denied, named Betty, said she had tried to get a passport to visit her grandfather as he was dying in Mexico. She went to a passport office in Houston, where government officials denied her request and questioned whether she had been born in the United States.

“You’re getting questioned on something so fundamentally you,” said Betty, who spoke on the condition her last name not be used because of concerns about immigration enforcement.

The denials are happening at a time when Trump has been lobbying for stricter federal voter identification rules, which would presumably affect the same people who are now being denied passports — almost all of them Hispanic, living in a heavily Democratic sliver of Texas.

“That’s where it gets scary,” Diez said.

For now, passport applicants who are able to afford the legal costs are suing the federal government over their passport denials. Typically, the applicants eventually win those cases, after government attorneys raise a series of sometimes bizarre questions about their birth.

“For a while, we had attorneys asking the same question: ‘Do you remember when you were born?’ ” Diez said. “I had to promise my clients that it wasn’t a trick question.”