Death toll rises to 82; 118 missing, 145,000 in camps

By Maheesha Mudugamuwa-May 22, 2016, 11:16 pm 

The death toll from last week's natural disasters has risen to 82; it is expected to increase within the next few days as rescue operations continue to look for another 118 missing people, according to the Disaster Management Centre (DMC).

Meanwhile, 30 people have been confirmed dead due to the landslide in Aranayake and 114 others are missing. Another part of the same mountain at Aranayake in Kegalle District had crashed on Saturday, but there were no casualties as residents had been evacuated following the first landslides, an official said.

According to the DMC, 34,476 people have been affected by torrential rains widespread floods, landslides, mudslides and high winds in 22 districts during last week with 29 people injured. Over 476 houses have reportedly been destroyed and thousands of others damaged; many of them are still under water.

After a week of massive flooding triggered by heavy rains, deluged capital city Colombo, too, is slowly beginning to dry out.

The Irrigation Department yesterday announced that the water levels of the Kelani River were receding.

Irrigation Department Director of Hydrology P. Hettiarachchi said the water level measured at Nagalagam Street was 5 feet and 6 inches as at 9.00 am yesterday.

The department blamed illegal constructions on the river banks for heavy floods experienced in the Colombo region.

In the Colombo District, over 145,000 people are still at evacuation centres and most of them are from the worst hit areas of Kolonnawa, Thimbirigasyaya, Kaduwela, Seethawaka and Colombo, according to the statistics of the Disaster Management Centre (DMC). More than 147,000 people in Colombo District have been affected by floods.  

Relief workers are still trying to gain access to thousands of marooned people in need of food and clean water. The logistics of delivering food and other aid to the displaced had become a critical issue, the DMC said. With roads impassable because of flooding, most efforts will continue to be carried out by boats.

Landslide warning issued to Ratnapura, Kegalle, Kalutara, Kandy, Kurunegala, Nuwara Eliya and Matale has been further extended by the National Building Research Organisation (NBRO) and people living in landslide prone areas have been evacuated to safe locations.

The Meteorology Department yesterday pointed out that the weather was now returning to normal.

Asked whether the Southwest Monsoon was expected this week, the department’s Research, Training and Development Director S. Premalal told The Island that it couldn’t predict the due date of monsoon and it could only give predictions for next 24 hours.  

On the second week of this month, the Met Department predicted a one-week delay in Southwest-monsoon reaching Sri Lanka this year due to the strong El Nino conditions that affected the country last year. Duty Meteorologist at the Met Department Janaka Kumara stated that due date for the monsoon was May 25, but this year it would reach the country during the first week of June.

The Met Department yesterday predicted showers in the Western, North-Western, Southern, Central and Sabaragamuwa provinces and strong windy conditions over the country and in the sea areas would continue further particularly over the Southern, Eastern and Northern sea areas.

According to the Secretary to the Disaster Management Ministry, S. S Miyanawala, a task force of security forces personnel and those from the Civil Security Division will launch operations in the coming days to re-settle the displaced people. The government had released Rs. 92 million to District Secretaries and a further Rs. 55 million was on standby, he said.

Meanwhile, the international assistance for victims of floods and landslides started to arrive in the country on Saturday, following an urgent government appeal for foreign aid. India, Australia, Japan the United States, Nepal, China and Pakistan were among the donor countries as at yesterday.  

As floods are beginning to recede, the Health Ministry urged the public to be vigilant about diseases that could spread.

Director General of Health Services Dr. Palitha Mahipala said that with the flood waters receding there was a possibility of diseases such as diarrhoea, jaundice, typhoid, dengue and leptospirosis (rat fever) spreading through food and water.

He said awareness was important to prevent the spread of those diseases.

SRI LANKA FLOODS: UN TO HELP; GOVT SETS UP SPECIAL TASK FORCE & DISASTER RELIEF FUND

23/05/2016

A Special Presidential Task Force has been stablished under the instructions of the President to manage the current disaster situation in the country. This Task Force will cover all aspects of the disaster management and will be headed by the President’s Secretary P.B. Abeykoon, reports Presidential Media Unit.

The first meeting of the Task Force is to be conducted tomorrow at President’s Office. To begin with the task force will cover the areas of reconstructing the damaged houses, resettle the disaster affected victims in safe zones, and provide solutions for health concerns of affected population and many other issues.

The Government a has set up Bank Accounts to which monetary donations for Disaster Relief may be sent by well-wishers in local and foreign currency reports Daily Mirror

Monetary Donations may be also made at the nearest Sri Lanka Embassy / Mission.

Meanwhile the United Nations continues to support the Sri Lankan Government in its efforts to respond to the needs on the ground, spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Stephane Dujarric had said, reports Daily Mirror

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that according to Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Disaster Management as at 20 May, nearly 428,000 people in the 22 districts of Sri Lanka were reportedly affected by floods, landslides and heavy rain.

“International NGOs are organising a joint rapid assessment in 11 districts starting today to obtain further information on the needs on the ground,” the Spokesman said speaking at a UN noon briefing yesterday.

Hats Off To Our WhatsApp Warriors

HILMY AHAMED-on 05/22/2016

Featured image courtesy the Star

The floods in Sri Lanka have brought out the best in social media. Whatsapp and Facebook were used extensively to save lives and mobilise relief. An unprecedented initiative indeed, in this age when parents are concerned about the negative impact of social media on their children. Facebook in fact had initiated a post that confirmed the safety of Facebook members and or whether needed any support. Our own “Pick Me” service included boat rescue, a service provided free of charge by the Navy to evacuate stranded people. The value of Internet and communication technologies was showcased to its best in this time of disaster. With more mobile phones than our population, there is hope that these technologies could be further used in disaster management, education and development.

Rescue and relief operations were undertaken by individuals and groups, using WhatsApp including directing rescue boats to save lives. Thousands of rice parcels were directed to the needy using this modern wonder. Messages from groups included total strangers offering to reload mobile phone credit of volunteers in the field, confirming the importance of these social media phenomena.

Broadcast media, as usual came forward to support relief and were able to mobilise collection of mass scale relief supplies, but it is the social media that was in the forefront in providing immediate relief and saving lives.

Sri Lankans as a people are generous. We heard wonderful stories of even beggars emptying shelves of supermarkets of food and other relief items using their savings in support of the Tsunami victims in the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004.

Where is the Government in all this? Of course as usual the tri-forces and the Police were the real Heroes who were in the forefront of relief and saving lives from day one, but where is the Government administration? The President gave the 1919 number to speak to him directly, if relief by the Government was not reaching the victims, but we saw no evidence of the public service nor our politicians getting their feet wet and standing in the waters to direct relief operations for well over 48 hours since disaster struck. One of the main complaints of the people was that none of their elected representatives were to be seen. They probably waited for the President or the Prime Minister to visit the affected areas so that they could have their picture taken to use during their next election campaign. The Government continued with their media blitz and announced that they would provide whatever relief was necessary, but there was limited action. It is time that the Government took control of the situation and got down to providing the much-needed support to these unfortunate victims of flood and landslides.

With the flood waters receding, there would be a great need to support the resettlement of those whose houses have been damaged, provide clothing, basic furniture and other domestic needs. While the government mechanism may provide basic compensation, the demand would be much greater, and benevolent donors will come forward to support this.

The tri-forces who have been working tirelessly need to be enlisted to continue their dedicated service to resettle the affected population. They have the manpower, skills and the machinery to undertake the resettlement professionally. They can be supported by the thousands of volunteers who are standing by to assist to the best of their ability to get these people back to their normal lives.

There would be many groups who would now start their own fund raising initiatives, and regretfully compete to gain a greater share. This will lead to friction between the people who worked tirelessly as a team in the field, providing for the people from the onset of this emergency. To address this, there will be a need to streamline fundraising by various groups and individuals. There could also be confidence tricksters and opportunists at work as we saw in the Tsunami tragedy. Bleeding hearts are ever ready to dole out their last cent to support fellow humans who are affected by the recent tragedy, yet it is important that not one cent of the donations are abused by unscrupulous elements who would make capital out of the misery of our fellow Sri Lankans affected by the floods and landslides.

This leads us to also question the social media groups too, who may be on a noble cause, but are they accountable to anyone? Are their donations and accounts scrutinized by any? Will they report their income and expenditure to their donors? While, they provide a yeoman service, they should not become suspect. The authorities need to work with these social media Heroes to streamline their operations, so that their valiant efforts are not suspect.

One option would be for these social media groups to align themselves with established relief organizations and handover the fund raising responsibilities to them. Recognized organizations will have the administrative mechanisms to ensure proper audit and transparency in their operations. Failure to adhere to these may eventually brand these heroes as rougues, and all their efforts to genuinely help would be in vain.

Floods and landslides GMOA ready for any health issues

By Umesh Moramudali-2016-05-23

With the disaster situation affecting several areas in the country, a lot of health concerns are likely to arise. In order to dig deep into possible health concerns Ceylon Today interviewed Government Medical Officers' Association (GMOA) Assistant Secretary Dr. Naveen de Soysa. In the interview, he stressed that with the disaster situation there are possibilities of spreading communicable diseases.

He said when the flood starts to reduce there can be threats of spreading communicable diseases such as dengue. In order to address the issue we need to enhance the prevention, care and the issue needs to be looked at from a public health angle. For that a team consisting of medical officers who specialized in community medicine will be deployed. At the moment preventive measures are being taken. Together with the Health Ministry they are enhancing the awareness of the public regarding the health concerns.
The coordination work is done through the information received from the Medical Officers of Health (MOH) in respective areas. He further said public need to be concerned of children who were affected by the flood as they are more vulnerable. Most of the children are likely to deal with a lot of mental pressure at the moment which could affect them adversely in the long run. Therefore, steps need to be taken to prevent children being affected mentally.

He further added that a special hotline was established to address the health concerns arising due to disaster situation. That is 0710147075. Public can use the hotline to inform about the need of medical officers, establishing health camps, medicine or any health emergency via the hotline.

Excerpts:
?At the moment some of the areas in the country are severely affected by the adverse weather. Thousands of people had become homeless while some were trapped in houses due to the floods. What are the possible health hazards during such disaster situations?
A: At the moment there are a lot of activities going on regarding the health of those affected by the adverse weather. Due to the disaster situation, there are acute health problems. A lot of people had lost their houses and had become homeless. As a result of that there is a huge issue regarding the provision of basic needs for many people. At the moment, many people are vulnerable for a lot of illnesses. There is a possibility of people not receiving sufficient amount of food and they may also fall ill due to lack of food.
Those who are taking treatment for non-communicable diseases will find it difficult to have medicine. For example, a person who is taking medicine for high blood pressure or diabetes is likely to face difficulties in finding the medicine. In that sense, there is a risk of increasing Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) as the people may not have sufficient medicine. On the other hand, there is a very high risk of spreading communicable diseases due to the dearth of clean water as well as lack of proper sanitary facilities. For example, there is a risk of spreading diarrhoea and fever.

Further, there are people who were injured due to the disaster situation. That too is a health concern we are looking at. We need to manage this situation. For that, GMOA together with the Health Ministry had established a Disaster Management Coordinating Centre. We have assigned medical officers who have completed postgraduate in disaster management and those who specialized in community medicine to carry out these tasks.

Already we have started health camps together with the Health Ministry. Director General of Health Services is working with us. At the moment, we will make sure that doctors will be made available according to the needs of the people in flood affected areas. GMOA has informed all 102 branches and is ready to deploy the doctors to any area. We are providing services through the coordination centre.
Secondly, we need to be concerned of the children who were affected by the floods as they are more vulnerable. Most of the children are likely to deal with a lot of mental pressure at the moment which could affect them adversely in the long run. Therefore, steps need to be taken to prevent children being affected mentally. Already, pediatricians are looking into it.

Further, when the flood starts to reduce, there can be threats of spreading communicable diseases such as dengue. In order to address the issue we need to enhance the prevention, care and the issue need to be looked at from a public health angle. For that a team consisting of medical officers who specialized on community medicine will be deployed. At the moment preventive measures are being taken.

Together with the Health Ministry GMOA is enhancing the awareness of the public regarding the health concerns. The coordination work is done through the information received from the Medical Officers in Health (MOH) in respective areas. GMOA is providing the support for MOH officers in flood affected areas in order to carry out their duties.
Also, there can be post-traumatic disorders. In order to address such issues, GMOA is working together with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to provide counselling services. A GMOA executive committee member is represented in the Disaster Management Committee in the Health Ministry. Through that the coordination work is done properly without the work being duplicated. We also work with the Disaster Management Coordination Centre.

? Has any hotline established to get any support for health concerns?
A: Yes. We have established a hotline to address the health concerns arising due to the disaster situation. The number is: 0710147075. Members of the public can reach the hotline to inform us about the need of medical officers, establishing health camps, medicine or any health other health issue via the hotline. It is open 24 hours.

?What are the diseases that have the risk of spreading during the disaster situation and during the post-disaster period?
A: In any disaster situation communicable diseases can spread very fast. Referring to the disaster situation that is being affected now, there is a risk of spreading diarrhoea, particularly among children. Also there is a risk of spreading dengue and other diseases spread by mosquitoes. In addition to that people who suffer from high blood pressure can even get strokes due to the unavailability of medicine. Therefore, we need to take preventive measures as soon as possible. Failure would lead us to a worse disaster. Throughout the history, no such issue happened during the post-disaster period in Sri Lanka. Even during tsunami disaster people's health concerns were addressed. The healthcare services during the disasters as well as preventive care were up to the standard. If we work like during previous disasters we will be able to minimize the health concerns that could arise due to disasters.

?What is the advice you could give to those who are affected as well as those who support the affected?
A: Mainly, the donors, particularly food donors are advised to go through MOH offices. The quality of the food provided should be ensured. If not the flood affected people will have to face more inconveniences. We cannot strictly advise people to drink hot water in this situation. It is advisable to provide bottled water for drinking purposes and donors are expected to provide bottled water as much as possible.

? What is the role of the government in this situation?
A: So far, the Director General of Health Services has looked in to the matter and actively engaged in providing solutions to the health concerns of those who were affected by the adverse weather. GMOA is extending its fullest support, particularly in deploying doctors.
The government should allocate sufficient funds for preventive care. Sufficient sanitary facilities need to be provided. For example, if there are only two or three toilets for a camp housing around 600 people that would be a huge health concern. The government must ensure that such issues would not arise.
?Did GMOA come across any concerns so far in providing health assistance to the people?
A: We have not come across any concerns so far. In one camp, there were six people suffering from diarrhoea. In a few camps there were one or two people suffering from skin infections. GMOA continuously requests to ensure the quality of the food provided.

Racketeers defraud donors, fleece flood victims

May 22, 2016

Woman leading the racket giving commands to her cronies. Pix by Nishan S Priyantha

Relief items fraudulently obtained being stored in a container

By Norman Palihawadane and Nishan S Priyantha

The Island yesterday captured images of a group exploiting the tragic situation to cheat unsuspecting donors and fleece marooned flood victims.

A woman racketeer deployed her cronies, consisting mostly of drug addicts, near the Kelani Bridge to collect relief items being distributed by hundreds of kind hearted donors. The relief goods meant for the people living in temporary huts on the bridge were then stored in a nearby container.

A group of men took the relief items from there to a place near the Biyagama Road, where they were sorted. Thereafter, another group sold the relief items to the flood victims.

When our photographers captured some images of this operation, several thugs threatened them. Cronies of the woman forced them to delete the images recorded in their cameras. But, they managed to retain some of them.

A senior military official handling relief operations near the Kelani Bridge told The Island that he and his men had seen the racketeers in action, but their priority was to provide relief to the needy people. "All we can do at the moment is request donors not to distribute their relief parcels themselves but to hand them over to the police

or security personnel and their offices set up near the Kelani Bridge," the senior official said.

When asked what action had been taken to prevent the group of racketeers, police said that they could not take action it since they had not received any complaint.

Colombo North SSP, Ajith Rohana said a team of police intelligence unit members would be deployed to arrest those defrauding donors and fleecing the flood victims. He said that the police had received complaints of outsiders coming to the Kelani Bridge and collecting relief material posing as flood victims. Any impersonators would be arrested and severely dealt with, he said.

RAGGING AS A ORGANISED CRIME AND TOOL IN STUDENT POLITICS IN SRI LANKA

By Chula Goonasekera, Ex-Academic and Dean, University of Peradeniya.

23/05/2016

University students try hard to clash with the police. The primary idea is to get injured, arrested, and thereafter escalate issues on a different note. Is this a reflection of student immaturity that we should excuse all the time, or a sinister plot that needs careful attention of the law enforcement authorities and the government?

Police and university students are very important communities in a civilised country. Police form the basis of discipline necessary for development and national progress. Students are our future. They need to gain knowledge and master skills to become future leaders and professionals of this country. Both police and students are funded by the tax payer and hence they are duty bound to play the role the public expects of them.

Only 3% of our student population qualifies for free tertiary education. The remaining 97% will not only have to self-fund their education elsewhere but also pay taxes to maintain free education for the aforesaid 3%. But, today the lucky 3% of students protest to prevent the not so lucky 97% follow any Sri Lankan self-funded courses, for example, in Medicine. This means the 3% lucky enough to be in universities want to ‘privatize and monopolize free university education’. In fact, university students have no right whatsoever to stop somebody else’s education. They can argue for maintaining quality of education. Ensuring quality is, however, the responsibility of the Quality Assurance Council and not of students.

Why is it that the privileged 3% of students waste their precious time on roads and clash with the police? Why do they practise the most primitive form of protest–– violence? Aren’t they destroying their own future and that of the country?

Sadly, they are instigated to violence by student leaders serving the politicians who use the university as recruiting grounds. Some students, as a consequence of political involvement, do not even complete their studies. This is at the expense of their own future and public money; they also deprive other students of opportunities to pursue higher studies. Those who do so should be made to pay back the public funds they waste.

Ragging

The majority of students forming the front line in public protests are the first year university students. They are recruited by various means during the ragging process. Ragging in the university has become savage over the years. No one has been able to overcome this because of politics.

Once, a first year student confessed to me that he had to do manual work every Sunday to make ends meet. Considering the need for free time for studying I volunteered to personally provide him with some funds. He collected the money from my office for a few months and then stopped. Subsequently, I saw him, now politically involved, owning a motorcycle and a hand phone. He had fallen prey to political exploitation. As the Dean, I became his number one enemy. His behaviour changed. Education was his least priority. His sole intention was to somehow disrupt the education process through organization of boycotts of classes, exams and protests and intimidate students and the staff.

Some first year students hold on to their personal values and do not succumb to the process of ragging. I have met students as patients who had undergone surgery, and needed renal dialysis as a result of severe muscle breakdown following forced exercises. They were not prepared to give evidence to identify the culprits as they knew the authorities could do very little to safeguard their future within the university. Some students have even left university unable to bear this kind of torture; some have committed suicide.

I have caught new female students in the faculty library, pretending to be studying very hard – but instead busy copiously copying sentences of filth, book after book, fulfilling the tasks given by their seniors in the name of ragging. Those sentences were designed to destroy any family values they held. Dishonouring parents, teachers, administrators and destroying any cultural or religious values are the goals of this kind of activity.

Criminality

This ‘getting to know’ episode of ragging extends for months until the victim succumbs to the wishes of the rogue leaders. There is no escape. It can be extreme and exhausting both physically and mentally. There is nothing called ‘good’ ragging in Sri Lankan universities. It is designed for verbal, physical or psychological abuse.

For non-adhering students this ragging spiral never ends. It continues as a form of discrimination later when they become seniors. No authority has really addressed this properly. Once, two female students together totally resisted obeying this senior command and harassment. Overnight, many posters appeared all over the faculty linking their names to various, unfounded, anti-cultural vulgar activities, totally designed to destroy their character. Of course, character assassination is part of this converting process.

Ragging is often an organised crime. It is known to involve sexual exploitation of both female and male students, though no one has really exposed it in detail. Stripping them naked individually and in groups is known to occur with other pervasive activities. Girls are made to run around on the basketball court in the hot sun. Forcing them to eat stale food from bins, lick toilet bowls and consume food mixed with cockroaches is common. Some are forced to crawl through a makeshift tunnel before being soaked with a bucket load of liquid consisting of a mixture of outflow from drains, sinks, mud, sewage and urine infested with worms. It’s called ‘bucketing’!

Organised ragging groups divide themselves as saviours and offenders. Saviours claim credit for rescuing these students during a ragging episode and try to secure their confidence and attention, to impart political ideology through lectures, and discussions.

There are other tactics. New students bowing to the leadership are granted unlimited freedom if they also function as informants and spy upon their other batch mates. They are often involved in collecting personal data about new entrants, including parents’ occupations, home addresses, wealth, telephone numbers and details of siblings. All this information is later used for intimidation if needed. Some of them may visit parents. Some students secretly record these conversations for later use or blackmail.

The students are also keen to show that all ‘good’ comes to university as a result of their protests. Staff and teachers are seen as useless individuals wasting public money and employed to serve the students as their own servants. This is the impression they want to give to the student community. For example, if university staff take action to propose a new faculty, for a group of students to enhance their educational experience, very soon the students will group and hold protest rallies demanding this. Finally, when the new faculty is installed, students claim credit and carry out celebration marches. It’s all part of a pseudo-democracy.

Student protest marches are common in the university when the freshers arrive. The initial training takes place in the university, usually at lunch time with an extension to boycott of lectures in the afternoon. These are designed to intimidate an administrator, a Dean, or the vice chancellor, and destroy instincts of self-discipline and honour amongst new students. This help give the new comers the impression that the student leaders are powerful creatures and university administrators are helpless and they cannot do anything about the ragging process. Thus, new students have no option but to fall in line.

To be continued

(Original Caption: Ragging – a tool of extremists  by cgoonase@sltnet.lk/ The Island)

‘Rekava’ – One Film, 60 Years

By Uditha Devapriya –May 23, 2016

Uditha Devapriya

Films are made. They age. They are as subject to decay as other art-forms. Explains why, at the end of the day, very few are remembered. Those few, I’m willing to bet, would have been cast aside, marginalised, looked over, and in other ways rubbished, because they were unconventional for their time. Makes sense. People thought Picasso was mad. His paintings don’t fetch for anything less than 100,000 dollars today.

Madness and unconventionality, we can conclude then, are hallmarks of genius, in films and paintings and pretty much every other art-form man invented in this world of ours. This is a story of one such film, made here and considered ahead of its time.

Some say our cinema was born in 1947 (with a “broken promise”, apparently). That’s true. History begins with a whimper, though. History is created, on the other hand, with a bang. That “bang” came up in the form of a group of escapees from the Government Film Unit, “fugitives” you could say, who got together and filmed a story which remains un-erasable from our cultural history. “Rekava”, the first real Sinhala film to be made on our soil, was released 60 years ago this year.

“Rekava”, one of those works of art in this country which need no introduction, was footnoted in its day. Time and time again, I have heard of how this simple film, with its unconventional, yet simple theme, was rubbished by both audiences and critics. It curried favour with European critics, however, won for Lester Sri Lanka’s first nomination for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and became a catalyst for the 20 other films he’d make over the next 50 years. And yet, when I see it today, I am neither surprised nor anguished at the fact that our people initially ignored it.

Read More

Thiniyawala Palitha Thera does ‘Mr. Bean’ act!

 May 23, 2016

Chief incumbent of Nalandarama Temple in Nugegoda, Thiniyawala Palitha Thera has violated the Bhikku precept ‘Nachcha Geetha Waditha Visooka Dassana Mala Gandha Vilepana’ and watched the world famous comedy first screened in 1997, ‘Bean: The Ultimate Disaster Movie or Bean: The Movie’, is preparing these days to give a telephone call to Mr. Bean, aka Rowan Atkinson, in order to come out of the soup he is in, reports say. The predicament he is facing is as follows:

In order to celebrate Vesak at the weekend, sacred relics brought from Pakistan were to be displayed at Temple Trees. However, organizers could not find a suitable Buddha statue to place along with the relics. They told the chief organizer, Thiniyawala Thera, about this, and his prompt solution was to get a good statue from the national museum.

On his advice, the organizing committee telephoned Commissioner of Archaeology Sanuja Kasturiarachchi and explained their need and requested her to provide them with a Buddha statue. Kindly rejecting the request, she said permission could not be given to take Buddha statues out of the museum, because if any harm comes to them the entire Department will get a black mark.

What she told them was relayed by the organizing committee to Palitha Thera, who directly spoke to the archaeology chief and ordered her to send a Buddha statue to Temple Trees immediately as this was a matter of the prime minister. Very reluctantly, she gave permission to take an Anuradhapura era Buddha statue made of copper to Temple Trees.

In the last two days, this Buddha statue was on display along with the relics. Yesterday afternoon, the Navy personnel on security duty were going to straighten the red carpet on which the Buddha statue was placed, when the statue fell down. The frontal area of the Buddha statue was damaged in the fall. Alarmed by the incident, the Navy men and the organizing committee members immediately informed Palitha Thera about it. Greatly troubled, what he told them first of all was, “Do not allow this to be known to the media. Immediately take the statue back to the museum.”

On his instructions, the Buddha statue was returned to the museum around 11.30 last night. The entire night, Palitha Thera kept awake and is presently carrying out a big operation at the museum under Navy security to restore the Buddha statue, in the same manner Mr. Bean restored a damaged painting of high archaeological value in the above-mentioned movie. On his advice, nails and bolts are being inserted into the damaged area of the Buddha statue. Shocked by the incident, archaeology chief Kasturiarachchi is going to resign from her position, say department sources. Several attempts to reach her by telephone for a comment were unsuccessful.

FCID arrests fmr. Ministry Sec and bank manager




2016-05-23
Former Secretary to the Ministry of State Resources and Enterprise Development, Willie Gamage and former bank chairman Ariyathilake Dahanayake were arrested by the Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID) today in connection with a land deal at Oruthota, Gampaha. 

The FCID summoned Mr. Gamage and Mr. Dahanayake this morning to record statements regarding a land belonging to former Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa.

 The suspects were produced to the Gampaha Magistrate’s Court today. The FCID is currently investigating several major land and property deals. 

On May 12, Basil Rajapaksa was also arrested by the FCID over an irregularity in purchasing a land in Matara. He was later released on bail. 

The FCID also questioned businessman Thirukumarana Nadesan last Sunday (22) for over five hours in connection with the purchase of a 16-acre land in Malwana in 2014 by former Minister Basil Rajapaksa. (Darshana Sanjeewa) Pix by Nisal Baduge 

SitRep: Obama Confirms Taliban Chief Death; U.S. Arms to Flow to Vietnam

BY PAUL MCLEARY, ADAM RAWNSLEY-MAY 23, 2016

And now it’s official. Speaking in Hanoi on Monday, President Barack Obamaconfirmed the death of Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour in a U.S. drone strike in the Pakistan. Significantly, it was the first ever U.S. drone strike in Baluchistan province, despite years of American bombing runs on al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, and brings to end the Mansour’s brief run as head of the group.

At a news conference with President Tran Dai Quang of Vietnam on Monday, Obama insisted that the strike does not signal a change in U.S. military posture in the region. “We are not re-entering the day-to-day combat operations,” in Afghanistan, he said. But Mansour “was specifically targeting” the 9,800 U.S. troops in the country, and he had refused to enter into peace negotiations the Afghan government.

What next? FP’s Paul McLeary writes that The Taliban’s expanding operations in Afghanistan’s south has posed a vexing problem for Obama, who faces a hard choice: Keep the relatively strict rules limiting the numbers of US. airstrikes in place, “or allow American pilots to bomb a broader array of targets at the risk of deepening Washington’s role in Afghanistan and causing more civilian casualties on the ground.”

More on the debate over U.S. airstrikes from FP’s Dan De Luce and Paul McLeary here.

Pakistan’s role. It’s unclear how Pakistan will react to the strike, as it comes after months of failed Pakistani efforts to broker peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Just last week, Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan’s foreign minister, told diplomats from Afghanistan, the U.S., and China that the revelation last August that Taliban founder Mullah Omar had been dead for more than two years “not only scuttled the Afghan peace process, it also let to the splintering of the Taliban.” And despite Pakistan’s influence on the group, they had been unable to get things back on track.

The New York Times reports that Pakistani officials were alerted to the strike only after it happened, and the operation is “seen as a signal that the Obama administration was growing less patient with Pakistan’s failure to move strongly against the Taliban insurgency. While Pakistan’s powerful military establishment has quietly cooperated with the C.I.A.’s campaign of drone strikes against Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban in the northwestern tribal areas, it has refused past requests from the spy agency to expand the drone flights into Baluchistan.”

East China Sea, the new South China Sea. With all of the attention being focused on Chinese land reclamation efforts in the South China Sea, the region’s sleeper conflict, over fishing rights further east, is only now beginning to receive some attention.

FP’s Dan De Luce and Keith Johnson are on it, however, and in a brand-new story, note that Beijing has begun sailing bigger ships — old navy vessels nominally now serving in the Coast Guard, “near islands that Beijing and Tokyo both claim, as well as carrying out provocative flights with advanced jets overhead. Those aggressive tactics have alarmed Japan and raised the risk of a potentially violent incident between the two — and unlike in the South China Sea, where the United States has been vague about its readiness to help the Philippines in a dispute with Beijing, Washington has made clearit will honor its treaty obligations to come to Japan’s rescue.”

Arming Hanoi. Tossing out 40 years of American policy, the Obama administration on Monday announced it was lifting an arms embargo on the communist government. “The decision to lift the ban was not based on China or any other considerations,” Obama said Monday while in Hanoi. “It was based on our desire to complete what has been a lengthy process of moving toward normalization with Vietnam.” FP’s Dan De Luce and Keith Johnsonrecently laid out what’s at stake in the policy change, and what might be on Vietnam’s shopping list.

In a note emailed Monday, IHS Jane’s defense analysts Jon Grevatt and Paul Burton write that “with the ban lifted in full, Vietnam is finally shedding Moscow’s influence and will be able to purchase land systems and a wider spectrum of military aerospace platforms and systems from the US that will support Vietnam’s efforts to modernise its military and to secure its territory.”

Fallujah next. Embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi went on TV Sunday night to announce the start of operations to finally push the Islamic State out of the city of Fallujah, which the group has held for over two years. The city sits just 30 miles west of Baghdad, and has been used as a launching point for some of the deadly car bomb attacks which have killed scores of mostly Shiite civilians in the capital over the past two weeks.

But the fight will be tough. And complicated. There are still tens of thousands of Sunni civilians trapped in the city, and the assault will be conducted by the mostly Shiite army, police, counterterrorism forces, along with local tribal fighters and a coalition of mostly Shiite militias, some with some pretty series Iranian backing.

A note: SitRep will be posting from the annual SOFIC Special Operations conference in sunny Tampa, Fla. this week. We’ll be attending a series of panels by the Pentagon’s top snake-eating generals and admirals and will have some exclusive one-on-one chats and updates over the next several days. We’re going to tweet out as much as possible as it happens over at@paulmcleary, and if you have any suggestions, or requests, the line is always open: paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com.

Thanks for clicking on through as we kick off another week of SitRep. As always, if you have any thoughts, announcements, tips, or national  security-related events to share, please pass them along to SitRep HQ. Best way is to send them to: 

paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or on Twitter: @paulmclearyor @arawnsley

Vietnam

President Obama has touched down in Vietnam. China is sure to be high on the agenda as Obama meets with the Vietnamese Communist Party general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc. Like many of China’s neighbors, Vietnam has clashed with Beijing over disputed maritime territories and is looking for American diplomatic support for its maritime claims.

China isn’t the only country using its fishermen as the tip of the spear in maritime territorial policy. CNN reports that Vietnam is now encouraging its fishermen to trawl the waters near the Paracel Islands, claimed by both China and Vietnam, in order to maintain the country’s assertions of ownership. Officials say Chinese fishermen attacked 17 Vietnamese vessels trying to fish in the area last year. China has trained, armed, and directed its fishermen, organizing them into militias to call dibs on contested waters and report on foreign ships.

Kosovo

The New York Times takes a deep look at Kosovo’s transformation into a hotbed of support for the Islamic State, encouraged in large part by Saudi-funded proselytization. The tiny European country has now produced an estimated 314 foreign fighters for the Islamic State, a figure which includes two suicide bombers. At the end of the Kosovo War, Islam in Kosovo had a largely moderate character, but officials say Saudi funding, and preachers that came in after the end of the conflict have sowed a message of intolerance and incitement to violence that has made the Islamic State’s message a disturbingly popular one.

Russia

An Australian law firm has filed the first lawsuit on behalf of families who lost loved ones on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 against Russia and President Vladimir Putin for their alleged role in downing the plane. The plane was shot down over Ukraine in July 2014 by a Buk missile, which American and German intelligence, as well as media investigations, say was carried out by Russian-backed separatists in the country. The firm, LHD Lawyers, filed the suit in the European Court of Human Rights and is asking for compensation in the amount of $10 million for every one of the 298 passengers lost aboard the flight.

The Islamic State

A social media campaign carried out by Islamic State fanboys has become aspectacular failure, allowing amateur sleuths to track down some of the group’s online supporters. In anticipation of Islamic State caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s audiotape this weekend, a number of the group’s European followers posted pictures of their hands holding up written messages of support. Eliot Higgins, founder of the open source investigative outlet Bellingcat, spent the weekend crowdsourcing a geolocation campaign which used clues in the photographs to pinpoint the location where the pictures were taken and, potentially, the posters behind the photographs.

Libya

The European Union (EU) is expected to grant a request from the internationally-recognized Libyan Prime Minister Faiez Serraj for help training Libyan security forces to fight the Islamic State, the Wall Street Journal reports. EU foreign ministers will meet on Monday to discuss the request. Serraj, however, has blocked the EU’s Operation Sophia, a naval missions to stop human trafficking in the Mediterranean, from entering Libyan waters. Diplomats tell the Journal that the Libyan leader “doesn’t want any boots or any boats on the ground.”

Political problems continue to complicate the international push for unity in Libya as a top general from the Libyan National Army is laying down preconditions for engagement with a rogue governing faction. Reutersreports that General Khalifa Haftar said political leaders in the country’s east can’t join up with the internationally-recognized government in Tripoli unless it shut downs the many armed militias that have proliferated there. Both factions are now maneuvering towards Sirte, where the Islamic State has a stronghold, raising the possibility of a military confrontation between the two.

Money talks

The Treasury Department sanctioned six individuals over the weekend for their alleged involvement in jihadist terrorism. Five of the individuals were sanctioned for their involvement with al Qaeda and one for his facilitation of the Islamic State in Libya. The five sanctioned al Qaeda supporters include three supporters of the group’s Nusra Front Syrian affiliate, two based in Kuwait and one, Mostafa Mahamed, a senior leader for Nusra within Syria. The fifth al Qaeda member designated by Treasury, Salih Salim al-Qaysi, is described as a “senior [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] official and a financial supporter” of the affiliate based in Yemen.

Photo Credit: /AFP/Getty Images