Federal court blocks Trump EPA on air pollution

An appeals court Monday struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s 90-day suspension of new emission standards on oil and gas wells, a decision that could set back the Trump administration’s broad legal strategy for rolling back Obama-era rules.

By Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson July 3 at 8:42 PM

In a 2-to-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded that the EPA had the right to reconsider a 2016 rule limiting methane and smog-forming pollutants emitted by oil and gas wells but could not delay the effective date while it sought to rewrite the regulation.
The agency has proposed extending the initial delay to two years. Next Monday, there will be a separate administrative public hearing on that suspension.

“The court’s ruling is yet another reminder, now in the context of environmental protection, that the federal judiciary remains a significant obstacle to the president’s desire to order immediate change,” Richard Lazarus, an environmental-law professor at Harvard Law School, said in an email.

“The D.C. Circuit’s ruling today makes clear that neither the president nor his EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, can by fiat unilaterally and instantaneously repeal or otherwise stay the effectiveness of the environmental protection rules put into place during the Obama administration,” he added.


How Trump is rolling back Obama’s legacy View Graphic

The EPA, along with the American Petroleum Institute, had argued that the stay Pruitt imposed last month was not subject to judicial review, because it did not constitute final action on the rule. In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Pruitt said, “Just because you provide a time for implementation or compliance that’s longer doesn’t mean that you’re going to necessarily reverse or redirect the rule.”

But the court rejected that interpretation, writing, “EPA’s stay, in other words, is essentially an order delaying the rule’s effective date, and this court has held that such orders are tantamount to amending or revoking a rule.”

The ruling could affect myriad agencies that have delayed the Obama administration’s regulations, some for long periods. And it underscores the extent to which activists are turning to the courts to block President Trump’s most ambitious policy shifts.

Last month, for example, the Interior Department announced that it would delay compliance with a rule finalized in November that would limit methane burned off from drilling operations on federal and tribal lands. And the Labor Department just proposed delaying until December a rule that was set to take effect July 1 that would require companies to electronically report injuries and illnesses.

“The court says you can consider changing the rules but you have to do it the normal way, with a comment period,” said David Doniger, director of the climate and clean-air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “You can’t yank it out of existence on your say-so.”

Lazarus added, “Changing the rules midstream can occur only after a thorough administrative review, including public notice and opportunity to comment, that ensures that there are good reasons for the change, backed up by sound policy and science.”

EPA spokeswoman Amy Graham said in an email that the agency was “reviewing the opinion and examining our options” in light of the decision.

President Trump made climate change skeptic Scott Pruitt the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Here's what you need to know about him and his plans for the agency. (Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The rule the EPA had sought to suspend had imposed the first-ever federal limits on leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and natural-gas wells. It applied only to new or modified wells. The agency had previously projected that the rule would prevent 11 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent emissions by 2025. Doniger said it would, so far, apply to about 11,000 wells drilled since September 2015.

Many of the industry’s largest companies have been working with the Environmental Defense Fund to measure leakage through the natural-gas system, including wells, pipelines, power plants and homes. The EDF said that reducing leaks would keep large quantities of smog-forming volatile organic compounds, cancer-causing benzene, and methane from being emitted into the air.
Pruitt has moved to suspend or revoke several other rules adopted during the Obama administration, including a two-year delay on a regulation aimed at minimizing chemical accidents like the 2013 ammonium nitrate explosion at a plant in West, Tex.

Monday’s court ruling was sharply worded at points, with the judges dismissing “the flimsiness” of the EPA’s “claim that regulated entities had no opportunity to comment” on one aspect of the methane rule.

“The administrative record thus makes clear that industry groups had ample opportunity to comment on all four issues on which EPA granted reconsideration, and indeed, that in several instances the agency incorporated those comments directly into the final rule,” the judges wrote.

Reid Porter, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, said in an email that the suspension of the rule would have allowed for “regulatory certainty” and that an EPA report in March concluded that methane emissions from petroleum production had already declined roughly 8 percent from 2014 levels.

“API supports revision of the 2016 New Source Performance Standards, and we are hopeful that the eventual outcome recognizes the science, allowing for revisions to the flawed rule,” Porter said.
Even as one aspect of the administration’s push to promote domestic energy production faced a legal setback Monday, it advanced on a separate front. The Interior Department launched a new offshore-leasing planning process for 2019 to 2024, a move that could open up new areas for drilling in the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as the Gulf of Mexico.

In a Federal Register notice published Friday, the Interior Department invited public comment on a plan that would “replace the 2017-2022 Program” established during the Obama administration and represent “a key aspect of the implementation of President Donald J. Trump’s America-First Offshore Energy Strategy.”

Brady Dennis contributed to this report.

Correction: An earlier version of this article said that the court struck down a two-year delay of the 2016 methane rule, not the EPA’s initial 90-day delay of the rule.

Thailand: Thousands of Burmese migrant workers flee amid new labour rules

Burmese workers work on a fishing boats at a pier in Prachuabkhirikhant province, southern Thailand. Pic: AP.

3rd July 2017

TENS of thousands of workers have fled Thailand, most of them for homes in neighbouring Burma (Myanmar), immigration officials said on Monday, after new labour regulations adopted by the military government sparked fear and panic among the migrant community.

Millions of workers from poor neighbours, such as Cambodia and Burma, form the backbone of Thailand‘s manual labour force, with industries such as the multi-billion-dollar seafood business heavily reliant on foreign workers.

Since taking power in a 2014 coup, Thailand‘s ruling junta has attained varying degrees of success in campaigns to regulate the foreign workforce, spurred partly by media reports that unregulated workers faced exploitation by employers.

SEE ALSO: Thailand calls on US to help in anti-trafficking efforts 

About 60,000 workers left between June 23 and 28, and the number has risen since, an Immigration Bureau official said.

“They were of all nationalities, but the biggest group was from Myanmar (Burma),” Deputy Commissioner Pornchai Kuntee told Reuters. “They are probably very scared.”

Following news of the exodus, Thailand on Friday promised a 120-day delay in enforcing parts of the decree, including fines that can range up to 800,000 baht (US$23,557) for employers who hire unregistered foreign workers without permits.

Geta Devi, 28, a Burma worker based in Bangkok, said some of her friends panicked over the decree, adding, “They went back to Myanmar (Burma).”

Thai government trucks have been taking workers to the Burma town of Myawaddy, 246 km (153 miles) east of Yangon, and located opposite the Thai town of Mae Sot, to be handed to Burma authorities, a Burmese official said.

It was unclear if they were leaving Thailand voluntarily.

Since June 29, more than 16,000 people have returned home, Aung Htay Win, a labour ministry official who is coordinating Burma’s response, told Reuters.

The figure included both legal and undocumented migrants fearing a crackdown, as well as some ordered home by employers, he said.

SEE ALSO: Thailand: Police on hunt for human traffickers who abandoned 35 migrants from Burma 

“Most of them stay for one night or so, then they continue to their home towns,” he said, adding the workers were being temporarily housed in government buildings.

Since last week, up to 500 Cambodian migrant workers have returned home, said Chin Piseth, deputy chief of the Thai-Cambodia border relations office of the Cambodian army.

“According to reports I received, between 400 and 500 were deported,” he told Reuters.

Such mass movement leaves undocumented workers vulnerable, said Andy Hall, a migrant workers’ rights expert who has monitored such migration in Thailand for over a decade.

“It’s clear to me tens of thousands of migrants only move like this after instigation,” Hall told Reuters.

Despite the threat of punishment, “corrupt officials” would try to seek bribes, he said, adding, “Mass profit is to be made in a short time from the panic and commotion.”

Police trying to extort money from employers or migrant workers will be punished, Thai police chief Chaktip Chaijinda warned on Friday.

Last month, the United States kept Thailand on a trafficking watch list, saying it fell short of the minimum standards to end human trafficking. Thailand defended its anti-trafficking efforts, urging U.S. officials to visit and assess them.

Thailand has more than 3 million migrant workers, the International Organization for Migration says, but rights groups put the figure higher. ($1=33.96 baht)  – Reuters

Older male partners 'lower chances of IVF baby success'

MURAT DENIZ/GETTY IMAGES-Men over the age of 35 can affect the chances of success in IVF couples

GETTY IMAGESImage captionA woman's age has a larger impact on a couple's fertility than a man's age

3 July 2017

 The success rate of couples going through IVF is dependent on the age of the man - not only the woman, a US study suggests.

Older men were found to have a lower chance of conceiving than younger men with a female partner of the same age.

Harvard researchers presented their study of nearly 19,000 IVF cycles at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.

The findings contradict the idea that male fertility goes on forever.

In fact, whether conception is natural or assisted, sperm mutations and a decline in sperm count in older men are thought to reduce the chances of pregnancy.

Previous research has also shown that older sperm is more prone to genetic errors, and this has been linked to the development of autism and schizophrenia in children.

• Older fathers have 'geekier sons'
• Child health problems 'linked to father's age'

But the age of the woman still has a larger impact on fertility than the man's age.

In this study, scientists found that men aged 40-42 were linked with a 46% lower chance of having a baby by in vitro fertilisation (IVF) than men aged 30-35, when the female partner was under 30.

Thirty-five year old women had significantly more success with a male partner under 30 after one cycle of treatment, than with a man in his mid-30s.

Dr Laura Dodge, from Israel Deaconess Medical Centre and Harvard Medical School, said the reasons behind reduced male fertility in older age were not completely clear.

"While the effect of female age on fertility is overwhelmingly due to increased rates of chromosomal abnormality, the proposed mechanism in the effect of male age on pregnancy are more subtle."

Can older men with younger female partners do anything to compensate for the age effect in IVF?

Dr Dodge said: "In the absence of clear evidence of the mechanism, the best pre-conception advice we can offer is to maintain a healthy lifestyle."

Nick Macklon, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at University of Southampton, said: "This may encourage male partners to get a move on.

"It also offers new insights into the dynamics between the man and woman - it's not just down to the age of the woman."

'Errors creep in'

Dr Raj Mathur, consultant gynaecologist and clinical lead for reproductive medicine at Manchester Fertility, said the issue of men's age and its impact in IVF needed to be researched further in a larger database of couples.

But he said: "We should start taking male age into account."

Women who used donor sperm were not included in the study of nearly 8,000 IVF couples.

Dr Gillian Lockwood, medical director, Midlands Fertility Services, said there were distinct differences between women's and men's fertility.

"Women are born with all their eggs and don't make any new ones, but men make new sperm every morning.

"That's where errors can creep in as a result of cell division," she said.

She said that there was more chance of the woman becoming pregnant if both partners were young and added: "But if they both wait until they are older, then that could be more problematic."

Prisoners are being brutally assaulted

Jul 02, 2017

Suspects being held at the Anuradhapura and Vavuniya prisons are being brutally assaulted, the Kilinochchi District Court was informed last week.One of five suspects arrested over the attempt to assassinate Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian M. A. Sumanthiran informed the Kilinochchi District Court judge that he was assaulted by six jail guards.

The suspect reportedly suffered serious injuries on his legs while being kept in remand in Anuradhapura, the judge was told when the case over the attempted murder of the Parliamentarian was heard.The suspect had reportedly been assaulted in the night on 23 rd June by the six prison guards.

The judge was also told that another inmate of the Vavuniya prison also suffered a similar assault. After hearing the submissions, the judge ordered that the suspects in the plot to assassinate Sumanthiran be kept in remand in Jaffna.

AshWaru Colombo

Sri Lanka’s deepening political crisis: Not losing an opportunity to lose another opportunity

Image courtesy Asian Mirror

PROF. JAYADEVA UYANGODA on 07/02/2017

Is the Yahapalanaya (‘good governance’) regime jointly led President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremasinghe slowly abandoning its political reform commitments made during the Presidential and Parliamentary elections of 2015? Are the government leaders working towards their own political downfall, leaving the space for the return to illiberal and authoritarian politics?  Are our President and the Prime Minister proving the point often being made by the cynics that Sri Lankan leaders will hardly lose an opportunity to lose an opportunity for peace building and political reforms? These are questions any vigilant observer of Sri Lanka’s current politics will not hesitate to ask.  Many may even provide answers in the affirmative.

Sri Lanka’s deepening political crisis Not losing an opportunity to lose another opportunity.docx by Thavam on Scribd

India donates 16,000 mostly Tamil books to Jaffna library

I02 Jul  2017

ndia donated 16,000 books, mostly in the Tamil language, to the Jaffna library last week, during the Indian High Commissioner, Taranjit Singh Sandhu visit to the North-East. 

The books, ranging in topics from culture, politics, philosophy and science, were collated by a Thanjavur based organisation, the Karunthai Tamil Sangam, the Times of India reported.

The collection includes photocopies of some of the original work of the Arumugam Navalar which was destroyed when the library was set alight by state security forces and Sinhala mobs in 1981. 

Over 95,000 ancient Tamil palm leaves (olai), manuscripts, parchments and irreplaceable books, magazines and newspapers were destroyed in the burning. 

The 1981 burning happened under the watch of a UNP government, during a period of electioneering for District Development Council elections and notably while two notoriously Sinhala chauvinist cabinet ministers - Cyril Mathew and Gamini Dissanayake - were in Jaffna.

TISL Messes Up RTI Applications To PM’s Office, Prez’s Office – Yet Again!

JULY 2, 2017

The Colombo Telegraph has learnt that Transparency International Sri Lanka, an NGO doing trainings and holding conferences on RTI in Colombo has again messed up a simple information request for the Assets Declaration of the Prime Minister. This is by completely ignoring a condition in RTI01 form, which is the gazetted information form under the Act, requiring information requesters to state if he/she is a citizen or not.

TISL Executive Director Asoka Obeyesekere

This problem has emerged with TISL filing an appeal to the RTI Commission against the refusal of the Prime Minister’s Office to give the information asked for. The refusal of the Prime Minister’s Office was carried in massive propaganda on its social media platforms and picked up by activists to hammer the Government.

When CT examined the information request carried on social media, it was apparent that TISL had not even bothered to use the gazette form (RTI01) or to include its requirements in a separate letter as the gazette itself provides for.

The information request signed by TISL Executive Director Asoka Obeyesekere and filed with big publicity on February 3rd 2017 which was the very day that RTI was operationalised in the country, shows that TISL has filed as an organization. Sri Lanka’s internationally recognised RTI Act limits the right to obtain information in the possession, custody or control of a public authority’ to a ‘citizen.’ ‘Citizen’ is defined as including, “a body whether incorporated or unincorporated, if not less than three-fourths of the members of such body are citizens.” As seen on the Commission website, (http://www.rticommission.lk) the RTI Commission has reserved the matter for a full hearing and determination with written submissions being called for, from both parties, in early August.

TISL had filed two RTI requests for the assets declaration of the Prime Minister. Secretary to the Prime Minister Mr Saman Ekanayake had appeared before the Commission as the Designated Officer and stated that the information asked for by TISL is not ‘within his possession, custody and control’ and that therefore he is not able to give the information. He had also asked for further time to respond to get legal counsel given the complex matters involved.

That objection reflects an earlier expose by Colombo Telegraph pointing out that TISL had muddied the waters by filing for the Assets Declaration of the Prime Minister in the office of the Prime Minister rather than in the President’s Office which is the correct Public Authority in terms of the Declaration of Assets and Liabilities law.

In the second appeal, it had been discovered during the hearing before the Commission that TISL had also failed to go by the requirements in RTI01. Board member of TISL Gehan Gunetilleke who had appeared for TISL had been informed of this fact by the Commission and directed to provide written submissions on the matter.

TISL had been publicly critical of government agencies not implementing RTI properly. But it has now become apparent that its own knowledge of RTI basics is gravely in doubt! Asked for his views, an outspoken anti-corruption activist among those who had filed RTI requests to TISL on internal mismanagements and alleged corruption which had been refused by TISL, laughed out loud saying ‘this is a fine situation; when trainers on RTI need to be taught on RTI in ignorance of basic things that even a villager will be careful of as they will go by the gazette.’

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FORMER COLOMBO CHIEF JMO SUSPENDED

Disna Mudalige-Monday, July 3, 2017 

The Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC) has suspended former Colombo Chief Judicial Medical Officer(JMO) Prof Ananda Samarasekara from medico-legal practice for six months following a formal inquiry on removing slain ruggerite Wasim Thajudeen’s body parts and bones.

Prof Samarasekara was the former Colombo Chief Judicial Medical Officer who performed the first postmortem examination on Thajudeen’s charred body found in 2012. He is the Head of the Forensic Medicine Department of SAITM. “When the second autopsy was carried out in 2015 by exhuming Thajudeen’s body, it was found that the chest plate, trachea (windpipe) and two long bones which had symmetrical fractures were missing.

The SLMC received an order from the Colombo JMO who carried out the second autopsy to investigate and find out whether removal of those body parts was done following the proper procedure or whether it accounts for medical negligence.

The SLMC panel that conducted the inquiry for six months found Prof Samarasekara guilty of three out of six charges,” an SLMC member told the Daily News.

He said the SLMC findings would be informed to the court in writing on Monday.

“Prof Samarasekara’s SLMC registration has been suspended for six months with effect from last Friday.

Without SLMC registration he could not engage in private practice as well,” he stated.

However, when the Daily News contacted a legal counsel to Prof Samarasekara, he said the disciplinary committee of the SLMC has not found him guilty of “intentionally or negligently misplacing or losing the bones of Thajudeen”, but has found him guilty of “failing to follow the procedure laid down in certain documents when body parts were removed”.

“His name has not been suspended from being a medial practitioner.

He has only been suspended from engaging in medico-legal practice for six months. That means he cannot function as a JMO, but that does not matter because he is retired from the public service.

He is only working at SAITM and there is nothing that prohibits him from functioning at SAITM.

He continues to be a doctor,” he said.

“We will be challenging the SLMC findings because in our opinion he could not have been found guilty of any charge whatsoever and should have been exonerated. We are contemplating to take legal action against the SLMC decision,” he added. 

Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) on Lakshan Dias

Image courtesy News First

H.V. PERERA on 07/02/2017

The reply sent by the Bar Association of Sri Lanka [BASL] to Lakshan Dias is embarrassing.

Faced with a belligerent Ministerial threat to disenroll him Dias had emailed Amal Randeniya, the Secretary – BASL seeking assistance. Randeniya’s reply was to ask Dias to forward ‘an affidavit with all the facts pertaining to the matter’. The first point of embarrassment is the wording of the response itself. Lawyers wrangle about the specifics for a living yet, Randeniya chooses to be vague. After all there are several ‘matters’ here. They are;

• The threat made by Minister Rajapakse.
• The matter regarding the statement made by Lakshan Dias with regard to the attacks on Christians and their churches.

On both matters an affidavit is unnecessary and the request ridiculous. Why does the Bar Council need an affidavit on the threat [point (a)] as Minister Rajapakse has not denied it? In widely publicised statements Rajapakse has in fact confirmed it.

The other ‘matter’ is with regard to the attacks itself. This is even worse. How and why should Dias give an affidavit on the attacks? He never said he has personal knowledge of these incidents. He is relying on a report by the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka [NCEASL]. The report was forwarded to Randeniya and tabled at the Bar Council meeting. So when he has no personal knowledge and when he never said he had personal knowledge to ask for an affidavit is absurd.

Every good lawyer knows the fundamental rule of evidence that a person can state by affidavit only what he knows from his personal knowledge. Information he receives from a third party [like the NCEASL report] is what lawyers call ‘hearsay’ evidence’. Hearsay cannot be included in an affidavit. Randeniya, the rest of the BASL Executive Committee and the Bar Council ought to read the judgments in Gunasinghe Banda v Navinna [2000] 3 Sri L R 207 and Seneviratne v Dharmaratne [1997] 1 Sri L R 76 on this point.

So the BASL response is embarrassing because it is technically bad. It is an example of very bad lawyering. For after all what is the Bar Council going to do with the affidavit? Does it plan to cross examine Dias?

In the range of responses available to the Minister of Buddha Sasana, threatening a lawyer with disenrollment is the worst of its kind. It’s the nuclear option. It is an overreaction. The fact of the Minister threatening legal consequences to someone for a statement made on a talk show is itself problematic. It raises questions about the Minister’s own fitness and ability to function as a policy maker. These threats discourage other lawyers from taking on and speaking about unpopular causes. Even if you eventually win the case against you, the fact is you have to suffer through it. This is not how free and fair societies function.

The BASL should stand up for the freedom of lawyers to act without having to look over their shoulder for overreacting bullies. The BASL must protect this freedom for it is because lawyers have spoken and fought for unpopular causes that we enjoy the rights and freedoms we enjoy today. The legal profession is the profession of Abraham Lincoln, Mahathma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. Impeachments and disenrollments are the hallmarks of tyranny and dictatorship. Rajapakse’s bullying was unacceptable and it should have been condemned. The BASL side stepping is embarrassing and unfortunate. It is a small-minded response having failed to see the bigger picture.

PM please ask Suren Ratwatte to leave

- Jul 02, 2017

We have over the last 12 months highlighted many time the way the current CEO Srilankan Airlines, Suren Ratwatte has acted in a very high handed way. He is very often been found guilty of abusing people at the Airline using the four letter word. A board member had even warned him. He has thus far spared no one with his abuse.

His arrogance is largely to due to his bankrupt brother Charitha Ratwatte sitting at the Prime Minister's Office. Whom we have highlighted many times as one person who had singlehandedly destroyed the UNP. Thanks to his high handed action between 2001-2004, the UNP lost power. Senior Ratwatte according to a Deputy Minister had never sighted the UNP headquarters until the UNP got back to power after 12 years in January 2015. A minister who spoke to us told us instead of one Ratwatte we have now been given two Ratwatte's by the Prime Minister, who have now come together to send the UNP home for good.

Suren Ratwatte who has had no managerial experience other than flying planes and flirting with Cabin Crew for 25 years, continues to act in a highly controversial & illegal way, despite being reprimanded repeatedly by the Board. His latest chronic action that is causing concern is that he has taken the Crew Scheduling from the hands of the present Manager Flight Operations, because he has refused to cater to the CEO's whims & fancies by rostering him with a Check Pilot of Rathwatte 's choice. This is in order for him to pass his flying test without an issue. But we understand the Manager Flight 
Operations has stood his ground and refused to change the roster of the Check Pilot to suit CEO Ratwatte. CEO Ratwatte in retaliation has issued an order to handover Crew Scheduling to Head of Human Resources Pradeepa Kekulawela, to marginalize and sideline the Manager Flight Operations, a very good officer. Sources told us that Kekulawala will accommodate every request of the CEO with the roster to help Ratwatte to get through his flying test and operate flights as a Captain, in case he is fired by the government.CEO Ratwatte knows that shifting Crew Scheduling is a clear violation of all Aviation Safety Laws regulated by the ICAO. Sources also say the safety of the National Carrier will be totally compromised from now on, due to CEO Ratwatte's arrogance and ignorance.

Employees of the Airline say this is probably the final nail in the coffin for the bankrupt SriLankan Airlines. If the Prime Minister has any concern for the country, any decency and respect for those who put him into office, he will at least now stand up and ask Ruffian Ratwatte to pack his bags with his elder brother and go back to Dubai and never return. More the Ratwatte's hang around the Prime Minister and the UNP will continue to get very unpopular.

Govt. must assure democratic space and freedom

Freedom of expression, right to a religion and attacks on minority religions have been in discussion within the last couple of days. It has raised a heated public debate, unending discussions among academics of various fields. Following the interviews with Minister Wijedasa Rajapakshe and Attorney-at-law Lakshan Dias, the ‘Daily Mirror’ contacted different professionals and leaders in religions and of the civil society seeking their points of view in this social dilemma.

“Evangelical movement is indigenous” 

- Godfrey Yogarajah, General Secretary of the National Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka (NCEASL)

2017-07-03

 “Public can complain to the national religious authorities on any misconduct.”
 Chief Executive Officer of the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka Godfrey Yogarajah insisted that the Christian community has never resort to violence and denied the presence of so called fundamentalists.
“The public can always complain to the National Christian Council of Sri Lanka or the National Evangelical Christian Alliance if there had been any misconduct in our networks. We already have in place a strict set of rules and regulations in investigating and inquiring in to these matters and we do take necessary action on our own membership without delay. There are strict regulations within our administration that these religious places and clergy have to follow ensuring transparency in their conduct and assuring it serves for the betterment of the followers and to the community,” he explained.
He emphasized that the Evangelical movement is an indigenous religious network that surfaced from the grass root levels. “Our members do not carry a colonial heritage but this is a religious community that grew up from the Sri Lankan soil,” he highlighted. 

Govt. must assure democratic space and freedom.docx by Thavam on Scribd

A reappraisal of evidence and claims-Emerging Buddhist-Muslim Rivalry in Sri Lanka? 

Aluthgama in the aftermath of riots

by G. H. Peiris-July 2, 2017, 9:07 pm 

This article consists of two parts the first of which is intended to contextualise, in the broader setting of recent political transformations witnessed in Sri Lanka, the proliferation of information on violence targeted allegedly by Sinhalese-Buddhists on the Muslims, which those responsible for disseminating such information often portray as a trend of intensifying rivalry between the two ethnic groups.

The second part contains a critique of the thematic submissions in a similar portrayal presented by John Holt, Professor of Comparative Religion at a prestigious liberal arts college in the United States, as the 'Keynote Address' of a research conference on the subject of Ethnic Conflict in Buddhist Societies in South and Southeast Asia: The Politics behind Religious Rivalries' conducted three years ago by the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Kandy.

The special attention I devote to Professor Holt is due entirely to the fact that the 'Rashomon Effect' ̶ the same event or phenomenon being interpreted in diverse ways by different persons, impelled by their subjective interests and motivations ̶ is far less evident in his keynote address than in other scholarly works I have come across on this subject.

Part 1

At the time of the conference referred to above the prevailing political ethos in Sri Lanka was such that there was reason to believe in the government, guided as it was by the strength of its convictions and commitments to our foremost national interests, having the capacity to withstand the internal and external destabilising pressures being exerted against the country's steady (but not entirely unblemished) 'post-war' recovery. Hence it was possible to regard even the blatant distortions of ground realities of ethnic relations in our country, including those that took the form of academic research, as no more than irritations of tolerable impact which small countries such as ours need to bear with fortitude while safeguarding rights as sovereign nation-states. It is now becoming increasingly evident that the 'regime change' of early 2015 has brought about a dire necessity to abandon that earlier attitude of laissez-faire indifference towards the spread of disinformation, subversion (including clandestine incitement to violence) and intimidatory threats based presumably on the pernicious doctrine of 'Responsibility to Protect', because the newly installed puppet regime, in its wayward responses to the resulting pressures, has been leading the nation relentlessly towards the same state of anarchy and chaos as those targeted in the recent decades by the so-called democratisation efforts and humanitarian interventions of the global superpowers.

Even in the course of the 30-year 'Eelam War' there were attempts made by the LTTE and the leaders of the 'Sri Lanka Tamil' community in mainstream politics to attract at least a segment of the Muslim community into their secessionist campaign. When that proved to be futile, the Muslims living in the 'North-East' of the island became targets of diverse forms of terrorist brutality that included mass murder (remember Eravur and Kattankudi?) and forced displacement of entire communities (in Mannar, more excruciatingly than elsewhere). Since the Eastern Province was liberated from the clutches of the LTTE in late 2006, the government was able to embark on rehabilitation and reconstruction in that part of the 'war zone' well ahead of the end of its Vanni military operations in May 2009, using aid funds specifically earmarked by the donors for that purpose. This resulted in a spectacular re-development of socioeconomic infrastructure in the densely populated coastal periphery of the east where the largest Muslim settlements are located. In addition, the Muslim political alignments in the immediate aftermath of the war could also have been influenced at least marginally by the cordial relations which the Rajapaksa regime had maintained with several Islamic countries – especially Pakistan, Iran, and the Palestinian government of the Gaza Strip.

These probably constituted a significant set of reasons for Mahinda Rajapaksa obtaining 57.9% of the popular vote at the euphoric presidential election of January 2010 in his contest against the other formidable ‘war hero’ of that time, General Sarath Fonseka (the candidate backed by the UNP, JVP and the disgruntled loyalists of ex-president Chandrika doing her "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" act). In fact, Rajapaksa surpassed even the support garnered by J R Jayewardene at peak popularity in 1982 (52.9%) – the only previous nationwide poll free of serious insurrectionary disruption since the inception of the ‘executive presidential system’ in 1978. Based on the fact that Muslims in all parts of the island were sharing the economic benefits of the 'peace dividend' – especially in trade and commerce – it could be surmised that the Rajapaksa camp continued to retain the support of the Muslim community at the parliamentary elections conducted a few months later at which the UPFA secured 60% of the overall total of votes, while the UNP share had dwindled to 29%.

Allegiance of Muslims

It is necessary to stress, however, that in the entire electoral history of independent Sri Lanka, the allegiance of the Muslims – almost 10% of the all-island vote – for one or the other of the parties commanding the bulk of the Sinhalese support has all along been ephemeral. This, in my understanding, has been a fact of vital salience to the 'regime change' project referred to above, given the overall electoral morphology in which: (a) the Buddhist support (70%) gets divided (both directly as well as indirectly through the JVP, the JHU and the ‘Old Left’) among the two main parties; (b) support for the Rajapaksa regime from the ‘Sri Lanka Tamil’ community remains minute; and (c) the Hindu vote in plantation areas (about 4% of the national total) with its comparatively more distinct community cohesion, being vulnerable to en bloc external manipulation (including RAW intervention as rumoured in the local press but substantiated by Dersil Patel, in the journal Defence New issue of 29 July 2015) in favour of what Delhi preferred.


It is not possible in a dispassionate attempt to contextualise the ‘regime change’ project referred to above to discount the significance of the foregoing sketch of electoral arithmetic. Indeed, it would be downright stupid to ignore the fact that promoting estrangement of Buddhist-Muslim relations, especially through clandestine support to the rabble-rousing lunatic fringe of the Buddhist segment of the electorate, on the one hand (the well-known columnist Izeth Hussain, writing for The Island on 5 May 2017, was certain that "the Islamophobic hate campaign is obviously foreign-funded and foreign backed") paralleled by a propaganda campaign designed to magnify the violent exemplifications of the alleged hostility of the Buddhists such as homicide and causing physical injury, desecration of mosques, arson, property damage, looting etc., which, in addition, contained the damning charge that the government remained inactive or even supportive of the violence because of its subservience to Buddhist interests. (Did Hussain himself contribute unwittingly to the propaganda campaign, as several others might have done? – that has remained enigmatic.