Kim Han-Sol appears in a YouTube video shortly after the murder of his father Kim Jong-Nam in March 2017. Source: YouTube
CHINESE authorities have reportedly arrested two men in an alleged plot to assassinate the eldest son of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean supreme leader who was killed in a cloak-and-dagger style murder in Malaysia earlier this year.
Sources who spoke with South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo said the two men were allegedly North Korean operatives who were part of a seven-man team secretly dispatched to China to kill 22-year-old Kim Han Sol.
Kim Jong Nam, the older half brother of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, is seen in this handout picture taken on June 4, 2010, provided by Joongang Ilbo and released by News1 on February 14, 2017. Source: Joongang Ilbo/News1 via Reuters
The two suspects were arrested last week and are currently being questioned in the outskirts of Beijing, while the remaining five are believed to be still at large, the Korea JoongAng Daily reported.
The source who spoke anonymously on Monday said North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau recently sent the team to Beijing to search for the nephew of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and kill him. The group was sent to China without the knowledge of Beijing.
Before the spies could carry out the attack, officials from China’s State Security Ministry apprehended two of the spies.
South Korea’s Intelligence Service said they were not aware of the alleged plot.
On Feb 13, a team of North Korean spies allegedly assassinated Jong Nam at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 with the help of two women from Vietnam and Indonesia who smothered his face with VX agent, a chemical substance banned by the United Nations.
Jong-Nam is survived by his second wife, Ri Hye Kyong, the eldest son, and a daughter named Kim Sol Hui, who were living in Macau until the time of the murder.
In 2012, Han-sol criticised his uncle Kim Jong-un as a “dictator” during an interview with a television station from Finland. The nephew, who is fluent in English had attended school at the United World College, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and had expressed hope for “world peace” one day.
After the father’s murder, Han-sol emerged in the public spotlight when he appeared on a YouTube video, saying: “My father has been killed a few days ago and I am currently with my mother and sister. And we are very grateful to…” before the remaining parts of the video were cut off.
He continued by saying, “We hope this will get better soon.”
Cheollima Civil Defense (CCD), the group which claimed in early March to have rescued Kim Jong Nam’s surviving family said all three members had been “relocated to safety” without disclosing any more details.
The group said China, United States, the Netherlands, and another government had provided assistance to protect the family.
Sayfullo Saipov, the suspect in the New York City truck attack is seen in this handout photo released November 1, 2017. St. Charles County Department of Corrections/Handout via REUTERS
TASHKENT/ALMATY (Reuters) - An Uzbek immigrant accused of killing eight people in New York by driving a rental truck down a bike path became interested in religion after emigrating to the United States, a fellow Uzbek who spoke to him two months ago told Reuters on Wednesday.
Sayfullo Saipov, the suspect in the New York City truck attack is seen in this handout photo released November 1, 2017. St. Charles County Department of Corrections/Handout via REUTERS
Police said they had interviewed Sayfullo Saipov, 29, who was shot and arrested by police moments after the rampage in lower Manhattan on Tuesday.
He had entered the United States in 2010, police said. CNN, citing police officials, said he had left a note saying he carried out the attack in the name of Islamic State and had shouted “Allahu Akbar” - Arabic for “God is greatest.”
“He became religious on the spur of the moment,” Mirrakhmat Muminov, a truck driver and Uzbek community activist who lives in Stow, Ohio, told Reuters by phone. He said Saipov had previously lived in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan.
“He started studying religion in the United States,” said Muminov, adding that Saipov “couldn’t get enough” of the religious freedoms enjoyed in the United States after living in the strict confines of Uzbekistan.
A Reuters reporter found Saipov’s family home in Tashkent, a grey one-storey house, but nobody answered the door on Wednesday and a neighbour said his parents had left earlier in the day.
In Uzbekistan, an authoritarian, predominantly Muslim country in Central Asia ruled by Moscow until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the practice of Islam is tightly controlled by a government wary of radicalism.
Tuesday’s attack shines an uncomfortable light on Islamist militancy in the wider region of Central Asia that has supplied Islamic State in Syria and Iraq with thousands of fighters. The rampage in New York was at least the fourth deadly attack by an Uzbek national or ethnic Uzbek this year.
A security source in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan told Reuters Saipov had also lived there, receiving temporary identity papers in the town of Uzgen, which lies in the sometimes volatile Ferghana Valley, in 2004.
In the United States, Muminov said, Saipov had lived in Stow two or three years ago, they had met through the local Uzbek community, and Saipov had worked as a truck driver.
Police investigate a pickup truck used in an attack on the West Side Highway in lower Manhattan in New York City, U.S., November 1, 2017.REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Police investigate a pickup truck used in an attack on the West Side Highway in lower Manhattan in New York City, U.S., November 1, 2017.REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
“AGGRESSIVE LONER”
Muminov said he had heard about the attack from Uzbeks in the Stow area some of whom he said were getting ready to be questioned by the authorities.
He said he had no first-hand information about whether Saipov had carried out the attack and painted a picture of a man who was struggling to make it in the United States, had few friends and poor communication and English-language skills.
”He was withdrawn, nervous, sometimes aggressive. Because of that he was lonely, he lived in his own world. He was not very popular,” said Muminov. He said Saipov’s English was poor and he did not speak Russian very well. Muminov said he had last spoken to Saipov about two months ago.
Jahon, Uzbekistan’s state news agency, said Saipov was born on Feb. 8, 1988 in Tashkent and had studied finance before taking a job as an accountant in a hotel in the city. It said he had no criminal convictions and had not “in general” caught the attention of the police.
Saipov had won a U.S. green (residence) card in a 2010 lottery and left for the United States that same year where he had later married an Uzbek woman living there, Jahon said.
He had not returned to Uzbekistan since 2010 or since seen his parents, who live in Tashkent and who the agency said practiced a “traditional” form of Islam and were not known to have any extremist links.
The state agency stressed how Saipov had not behaved suspiciously while living in Uzbekistan. “(But) after moving to the United States Saipov became withdrawn and fell under the influence of radical groups,” Jahon said.
In a letter of condolence to President Donald Trump on Wednesday, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said Tashkent was ready to use “all its resources” to help investigate the New York attack.
It was the bloodiest single attack on New Yorkers since the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings of jetliners steered into the World Trade Center. It poses a challenge for Mirziyoyev, who assumed office at the end of 2016 and is trying to slowly open up his country after decades of authoritarian rule.
On New Year’s Day, an Uzbek gunman burst into a nightclub in the Turkish city of Istanbul and killed 39 people. In April, an ethnic Uzbek man born in Kyrgyzstan blew up a metro train in the Russian city of St Petersburg, killing at least 14 people, and that same month an Uzbek man rammed a truck into a crowd in Stockholm, killing four people.
A nurse at a Utah hospital said she was assaulted by a police officer after declining to give him a sample of an unconscious patient's blood because he had neither a warrant nor the patient's consent.(Reuters)
The Utah nurse who drew national attention after she was manhandled and arrested for refusing to let a police detective take blood from an unconscious patient said Tuesday she had reached a $500,000 settlement with Salt Lake City and the university that runs her hospital.
Nurse Alex Wubbels and her attorney, Karra Porter, announced the settlement in a late-afternoon news conference outside the Salt Lake City Police Department, two months after they released body camera footage showing detective Jeff Payne handcuffing her and shoving her into a squad car as she screamed in protest.
The exact terms of the agreement were confidential, but Porter told The Washington Post that it covered “all potential defendants” involved in the incident. That included the University of Utah, Salt Lake City police and several individual security officers from the university who were present for Wubbels’s arrest but declined to intervene, Porter said.
Wubbels and Porter were considering filing a civil rights lawsuit, but the settlement now precludes that. The nurse had previously stressed that her main concern was protecting hospital staff and preventing the same conflict from happening again.
“Was a lawsuit off the table? It was never off the table, ever, from the very beginning,” Wubbels told reporters Tuesday. “But I also feel like as a whole we need to heal from this, we need to move on, we need to progress, and I feel that we’ve come to a place where we can have that conversation where we can do that.”
Wubbels said she will donate some of the proceeds to a fund that will help people obtain body camera footage and provide free legal aid for open records requests. She is also planning to use the money to raise awareness about workplace violence against nurses.
A spokesman for Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski told the Deseret Newsthat the city and the university had each agreed to pay Wubbels $250,000. “Salt Lake City has been focused first and foremost on ensuring policies and procedures are changed so things like this don’t happen again, and we are glad we could come to a resolution with nurse Wubbels,” the spokesman said.
Multiple body camera videos captured the explosive July 26 encounter between Wubbels and Payne, the detective.
Wubbels was working as the charge nurse at the University of Utah Hospital’s burn unit that afternoon when Payne arrived and demanded to collect a blood sample from an unconscious truck driver who was severely injured in a head-on collision. State law, federal law and hospital policy all required that police present a warrant or obtain patient consent before drawing blood. Payne had neither.
The nurse explained the policy to Payne and even got her supervisor on the phone to back her up. After a tense standoff, Payne grabbed Wubbels by her arms, cuffed her hands behind her back and shoved her into an unmarked car. Hospital security guards stood by as Wubbels cried “help me” and “this is crazy.”
Payne and another officer on the scene accused Wubbels of interfering with a police investigation, but she was later released without charges. The truck driver died of his injuries in late September.
Frustrated by the city’s initial response to the incident, Wubbels and her attorney got hold of the body camera footage and released it in early September. The videos went viral overnight, drawing a chorus of condemnations from hospital associations across the country and stoking a heated debate about police use of force. Salt Lake City’s mayor, police chief and officials from the University of Utah apologized to Wubbels shortly after, saying she should never have been arrested for doing her job.
A scathing internal review by police found that Payne and his supervisor, James Tracy, had violated a range of department policies and disgraced the force. In mid-October, Payne was fired and Tracy was demoted two ranks from lieutenant to officer. Both men have appealed the decision.
Wubbels, who was an Olympic skier before she became a nurse, said Tuesday she was still processing the chain of events but was optimistic that the fallout from her arrest could ultimately help improve relations between police and nurses.
“This landed in my lap. This is not something I sought out,” she said. “But I’m also honored by the weight of it and honored to be the one to help make progress in our society at large.”
What do you suppose people in high positions at the FBI, CIA, Pentagon, State Department and other branches of government are thinking these days? And feeling? What actions are they considering around the “Trump Issue”? How about Congress?
I ask myself these questions a lot.
How are people in high positions dealing with the idiosyncrasies of President Donald Trump? How do they justify their reluctance to take the actions required to protect their constituents, us, from the vicissitudes of a president who, at the very least, lacks the qualities of good diplomacy and leadership and is the laughing stock of much of the world and, at worst, is launching us toward nuclear holocaust?
In the movie Mark Felt, Liam Neeson plays the Associate Director of the FBI (second in command), a man who struggles with these very questions during the Nixon administration. His conscience and sense of duty force him to expose the truth behind the Watergate break-in. He musters the courage to put his job and life on the line. He becomes “Deep Throat,” the source behind the media reports that overthrew President Richard Nixon.
These are the times that call for such a person again.
It seems as though every time I turn on the radio or pick up a paper I learn of another person who is speaking out against this White House, an administration that seems determined to cut taxes on the rich while increasing them for the rest of us, divide the country, and incite North Korea into launching a nuclear warhead,
And it isn’t just Democrats who are speaking out.
Republican Senator Jeff Flake (Arizona), addressing the Senate on Nov. 24, blamed the Trump administration for “reckless, outrageous and undignified” behavior and the “casual undermining of our democratic ideals.” Senator Bob Corker (Tennessee) a senior Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Trump’s policies, the “debasement of America.” Republican Senator John McCain (Arizona) referred to Trump’s political ideology as “half-baked, spurious nationalism.” As Senator McCain was awarded the prestigious Liberty Medal, he lamented that America’s global reputation and influence are shrinking under Trump’s leadership.
The words are being spoken. Sen. Flake to the Senate:
“We were not made great as a country by indulging in or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorifying in the things that divide us, and calling fake things true and true things fake. And we did not become the beacon of freedom in the darkest corners of the world by flouting our institutions and failing to understand just how hard-won and vulnerable they are. . . we must be unafraid to stand up and speak out as if our country depends on it, because it does.” (nytimes.com/2017/10/24/us/politics/jeff-flake-transcript-senate-speech.html)
Yes, the words are being spoken. But where are the actions? Isn’t it time for those who speak out – and those who have not yet spoken – to do something?
Mark Felt was not a speaker. He had been trained as an FBI Special Agent. Silence was part of his code. He never even admitted to his acts of heroism until 30 years after Nixon left office. But he did listen. He listened to those who spoke. Not just those in high positions. Not just the media. He listened to his constituent, We the People – women and men like you and me. He understood what needed to be done and he did it. He took the actions necessary to save his nation from allowing a man who undermined the very principles of the office of President of the United States to remain in that office.
It is time for all of us to send the message to the Mark Felts who are waiting in the wings: the people in high positions at the FBI, CIA, Pentagon, State Department and other branches of government. Including Congress. You and I have the power of social media on our side.
Please join me in letting everyone in your social media circle know that it is time for Donald Trump to do as Richard Nixon did.
Timochenko, real name Rodrigo Londoño, will contest 2018 election
Farc guerrillas demobilised last year ending 52 years of war
Rodrigo Londoño, known by his nom de guerre ‘Timochenko’, waves during the opening of the Farc’s national congress in Bogotá in August. Photograph: Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images
For most Colombians, former rebel chief Rodrigo Londoño – better known by his wartime alias “Timochenko” – is more commonly associated with kidnappings and bomb attacks than voter polling and stumping on the campaign trail.
So an announcement that the leader of the demobilised Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Farc, plans to run for president in next year’s elections, has prompted widespread outrage in the Andean nation
.
His first test will be convincing a suspicious electorate that he has left his violent past behind. Within minutes of the announcement, “Timochenko” was trending on Colombian Twitter – with most users expressing anger.
The deal initially failed to pass a public referendum, with many voters objecting to the component that promised the rebels 10 uncontested seats in congress for two electoral cycles.
Though the peace accord was amended and later ratified through congress, Wednesday’s announcement is unlikely to assuage the fears that many Colombians harbour of a communist organisation in mainstream politics.
Some reactions on social media were more positive, however. “I prefer Rodrigo Londoño legally losing elections to illegally killing civilians, soldiers and police officers,” one user wrote.
The rebels launched their political party in late September following the handover of some 7,000 weapons, changing their name to the Revolutionary Alternative Common Force, and retaining the acronym Farc.
The group also announced the names of former fighters who will fill the promised seats in congress. Among them will be former commanders Iván Márquez, Pablo Catatumbo and Carlos Antonio Lozada. Londoño’s running mate will be Imelda Daza, the head of the Patriotic Union, a leftwing political party formed during a previous attempt to make peace with the Farc.
Despite the Farc’s Marxist roots, Daza told reporters that the party’s idea is not to change the country’s economic model but to improve it.
“We want a model that is more inclusive,” she said. “A model that is more humane.”
A potential spanner in the works of the Farc’s political foray is that ex-commanders will probably face trial for human rights abuses and war crimes as special transitional courts come into play. One component of the peace deal stipulates that special courts will try guerrilla members suspected of serious wartime crimes, albeit with lighter sentencing guidelines.
Colombia’s hardline right was unanimous in its condemnation of the Farc’s political ambitions.
Iván Duque, who is also expected to run for the presidency, tweeted his anger. “It’s an offense to the country that those who have committed crimes against humanity are aspiring to elected office without facing justice.”
Retaining their oppositional colours, the Czech Pirates are insisting on avoiding the muddying nature of coalition talks with the overall winners. (The dangers of compromising collaboration!) Their agenda is one that has become fairly known across its other incarnations: the abolition of internet censorship, the favouring of institutional transparency, and the revision of, amongst other things, punitive copyright laws. But other agenda items form their twenty point program, including improving the lot of teacher salaries and tax reform.[1]
The latter point is particularly appropriate, given the party’s experimentation with testing EU laws on the subject of pirate sites through its “Linking is not a Crime” stance. This was sparked, in large part, by attempts by the Czech Anti-Piracy Union to target a 16-year-old for that great terror of the regulator: linking to content designated as infringing of copyright law.
Launching several of their own contrarian sites, including Tipnafilm.cz and Piratskefilmy.cz, the latter carrying some 20,000 links to 5,800 movies, the Czech Pirate Party was overjoyed by the prospect of prosecution.
“Our goal is to change the copyright monopoly law so that people are not fined millions for sharing culture with their friends.”[2]
As Czech Pirate Party chairman Lukáš Černohorský said at the time, belligerent and defiant,
“Instead of teenagers, copyright industry lobbyists are now dealing with a political party which didn’t run the website for money but because of our conviction that linking is not and should not be a crime.”
The gains of the party showed a certain mood at work and, as has been the case in much of Europe, proved boisterously, and at stages angrily, anti-establishment. Across the political spectrum, the Czechs were again showing that they can add fuel to any political fire, setting matters to rights on the continent while tearing down assumptions. As with any fire, however, the consequences can be searing.
While the Pirates did well, the Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD), a strident right wing outfit, nabbed similar numbers from the other side of the spectrum, sporting its own anti-EU, anti-immigrant brand. As its leader, Tomio Okamura, insists,
“We want to leave just like Britain and we want a referendum on EU membership.”[3]
Billionaire fertilizer tycoon Andrej Babiš, the sort of oligarchic figure who should always trouble democratic sensibilities, weighed in the elections with some 30 percent of the vote with his ANO party. His version of politics, another confection of anti-politics dressed for disgruntled consumption, reprises that of the businessman turned party leader. The claim made here is common: that the machinery of governance is somehow analogous to running a business.
Traditional parties, foremost amongst them the long performing Social Democrats, with whom Babiš had been in coalition with after gains made in 2013, found themselves pegged back to sixth position in the tally.
The swill stick of politics did not tar Babiš all that much, a figure who has managed to develop a certain Teflon coating in a manner similar to other billionaire leaders (think Silvio Berlusconi and a certain Donald Trump in the White House). He had become the focus of suspected tax crimes, and lost his job as finance minister. European subsidies, it was claimed, had found their mysterious way into his pocket.
Such suggestions merely touched the tip of a considerable iceberg, one which also consists of allegations of previous employment with the Czechoslovak secret state security service Stb. According to Slovakia’s Institute of National Memory, his code name for collaboration during his espionage stint was BureÅ¡.[4]
The billionaire seemed distinctly unperturbed, and his party’s showing suggested that some water will slide off a duck’s back.
“I am happy that Czech citizens did not believe the disinformation campaign against us and expressed their trust in us.”
He roundly insisted that his was “a democratic movement” positively pro-European and pro-NATO “and I do not understand why somebody labels us as a threat to democracy.”[5]
These elections, however, will be savoured by a party that promises a fresh airing of a stale political scene, and one not nursing those prejudices that provide all too attractive gristle. Legislation, should it be implemented, may well remove the cobwebbed fears long associated with the Internet. But facing these newly elected figures will be ANO and an invigorated, indignant right-wing of politics, a far from easy proposition.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
In 2014, Channel 4 News investigated sexual harassment in Westminster. An exclusive survey of parliamentary staff uncovered a widespread and deep-rooted problem across all political parties.
A third of respondents said they had personally experienced some kind of sexual harassment. And, in the majority of cases we heard about, the victim was under 25.
In the wake of our investigation, political parties pledged to take action. They promised to set new rules, introduce complaints procedures, and make it easier for victims to come forward.
But now, the scandal has emerged again, with allegations of inappropriate behaviour by dozens of MPs and ministers.
So what has actually changed since 2014? Have political parties stuck to their promises to help tackle the problem?
However, they were under no obligation to sign up – it was “on a voluntary basis” only.
The Conservatives also made clear that individual cases were for MPs to handle themselves, rather than the party. In theory, that could mean that staffers have to complain to the very people who are harassing them.
In a letter to MPs, the party’s chief whip said: “I hope you may consider adopting [the code of conduct] your office,” but explained it was “entirely a matter for you to handle”.
Reports say that David Cameron, who was then prime minister, tried to introduce a create a mandatory code of conduct which would have given staffers the right to seek arbitration. But the Evening Standard revealedthat this was blocked by the party’s powerful 1922 Committee of backbench MPs.
The committee’s chairman, Graham Brady, told the newspaper: “Our view was that matters of that sort should be for the whole House of Commons, not one side.”
Channel 4 News asked the Conservative Party whether it had made any further changes to its harassment policy since 2014. We were directed to a statement from a Conservative minister made this week, which did not address any internal party procedures and instead focused on what the House of Commons can do as a whole.
On the Conservatives’ website, we could not find any guidance on how to report abuse – although this may be in restricted members-only areas of the site. We are also not aware of any procedures available for protecting victims’ anonymity.
Labour
Under the leadership of Ed Miliband in 2014, the party pledged to introduce an individual complaints process, which it said would be in force after Easter of that year.
Labour confirmed to FactCheck that rules were indeed updated in May 2014 which provided “a procedure for complaints against Labour MPs by MPs’ staff”.
Labour says that complaints are initially considered by a sexual harassment panel, with all names kept anonymous. Under the system, victims will “never be required to confront the respondent face to face”.
The party has also set up a dedicated hotline for its members which gives advice on how to make a formal complaints and get support.
Lib Dems
In 2013, the Lib Dems were rocked by allegations of sexual harassment by one of the party’s most senior figures, Lord Rennard, following a separate investigation by Channel 4 News. The peer strongly denied the allegations and a police investigation was dropped due to insufficient evidence.
But a review commissioned by the party criticised the way complaints had been dealt with by officials. It said there was a “reluctance to investigate”, and that “much more could and should have been done”.
The report added: “The addressing of complaints needs to be a higher priority for the party and not just something to be dealt with in a crisis.”
The Lib Dems told us that rules were changed in 2014 to lower the burden of proof needed to disqualify members over harassment allegations. They were changed from criminal standards (to prove allegations “beyond reasonable doubt”) to civil standards (based on “the balance of probabilities”).
The party told us that members are able to make complaints anonymously and that the party tries its best to maintain this anonymity if the victim requests it.
It is not clear how this works in practice. Guidance available on line says complaints should be lodged using an online form which “gives us permission to show [the information] to the person in question”. But there does not appear to be any option for anonymity on the form – although it’s possible that it is done on a more ad hoc basis.
It also appears that the Lib Dems either missed or fluffed a scheduled review of its complaints guide that was due last year.
When FactCheck reviewed the online guidance document on Monday, it was dated 2014 and stated: “This policy will be reviewed every 2 years. Next review date: Feb 2016.”
This suggests that either the review did not take place, or was not published. However, a party spokesperson claimed: “The guidance was reviewed in 2016 and is kept under review. The website is in the process of being updated.”
After FactCheck asked the Lib Dems about this, the document has been edited and is now dated 2016. It says: “This policy is kept under review. This is a living document and changes may be made to it prior to the review date.”
Speaker
The Speaker, John Bercow, is the highest authority in the House of Commons and remains impartial from party politics.
In 2014, he set up a confidential hotline for MPs’ staff, which he said was a “safety net designed to complement existing pastoral care”.
The phone line is open to all parliamentary staff who have been bullied, harassed or abused.
The latest figures show that staff made almost 500 calls over the last two years. On average, that’s roughly one call every other day.
But the service has been criticised because it does not actually take any action against abusers. One union official called it “about as useful as a phone call to your mum”.
She explained: “There is no Human Resource department. The helpline can’t help you. It can offer advice but ultimately it will suggest you contact the MP directly.”
You’ve changed your mattress, changed your sleeping style, adjusted your posture at your workstation with two Central Bank Annual reports under the computer monitor and a Colombo City directory under your feet. But nothing alleviates your neck and back pain. The only thing you haven’t done already is sleep on a wooden plank like a geisha. But that’s taking sleeping to a whole new level.
The solution may be as simple as changing your pillow. People hardly realize that sleeping patterns differ according to physique and preferred sleeping style. There are people with wide shoulders, narrow shoulders, broad hips and narrow hips. Some are side sleepers while some are back sleepers, yet a few others sleep on their stomach. Then there are those who like to sleep with a pillow between their legs, under their stomach, under their feet, on the side, on either sides...well, you get the drift. The point is, the generic pillow at the supermarket may not be right for everyone.
Health issues
According to sleep expert – didn’t know there was such a thing till now – Michael Breus, PhD, a clinical psychologist and author of Beauty Sleep: Look Younger, Lose Weight, and Feel Great Through Better Sleep, Pillows can not only impact the quality of our sleep, but also how healthily we rest and recharge.
That’s the right pillow. The wrong pillow can lead to headaches, neck pain, shoulder and arm numbness, discomfort, sneezing and wheezing, according to orthopaedic surgeon Andrew Hecht, MD. Don’t be silly, a pillow can’t give you the wheeze, but it sure as hell can exacerbate underlying health problems.
When a pillow is past its prime skin cells, mould, mildew, fungus, and dust mites accumulate in it. In fact, according to Breus these make up more than half of an old pillow's weight. Yuk! A rule of thumb is to buy a new pillow every 12 to 18 months. It should definitely not exceed two years.
Sleeping style
Your first criteria for picking a pillow should be your sleeping style. In doing so you should keep in mind that the function of a pillow is to keep your head level with the spine, in what’s referred to as ‘neutral alignment’. Your head should not tilt too far back or too far forward.
Back sleeper tip: Back sleepers need thinner pillows so their heads do not bend too far forward. Extra cushion at the bottom would support your neck, but this type of pillows is hard to come by in the Sri Lankan market.
However pillows with extra cushion effect at the bottom is available online.
Side sleeper tip: Side sleepers need thicker pillows to make up for the distance between the shoulder and the head. Most of the pillows in the Sri Lankan market would do fine for side sleepers. But if you are prone to neck pain, take care to buy a pillow that’s not too plump, so your head wouldn’t tilt too far to one side. Pick a soft pillow with extra cushion effect.
Stomach sleeper: Pick a very thin, flat pillow. In fact, you might not even need a pillow. To align the spine you might want to tuck a pillow under your stomach.
Stuffing
Pillows are available in various stuffing options even in Sri Lanka from foam, natural rubber, kapok, poly fibre, to the slightly more expensive antibacterial, micro gel and even goose feather pillows. In foreign markets there are combination stuffing and memory foam pillows as well.
The head and neck support provided by a pillow may actually depend on the stuffing. For example a normal poly fibre type maybe too firm. Kapok pillows are cool and healthy as they are all natural and therefore also hypoallergenic, but have the tendency to ball up over time making the pillow uncomfortable. Besides, it can turn into a breeding ground for microorganisms and bacteria. The trick is to sundry the kapok pillow every two days.
Foam pillows also provide ample neck and head support as long as you pick the right density. The higher the density more the support and lesser the breakdown.
What matters most is how the pillow feels. If you don’t have the option of trying the pillows out lying down try them against the wall. For example if you’re a side sleeper, stand with the side of your arm against the wall and put a pillow between your head and the wall. If the pillow is too plump or firm it’ll tilt your head away from the wall. Vice versa and your head will tilt towards the wall. Remember the trick is to maintain the natural alignment. You’re neck has to remain straight. Same can be done for any other sleep style.
So feel free to poke, prod lie down when your pillow shopping, never mind the onlookers and sales people who might think you’ve lost your marbles. Because, after all picking the right pillow is a difference between a good night’s sleep and waking up with a neck and back pain.
UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, Pablo de Greiff, recently expressed his strong disappointment at the failure of the government to implement the commitments it made more than two years ago in Geneva to the UN Human Rights Council. On that momentous occasion in October 2015 the government succeeded in reversing the deterioration in relations between Sri Lanka and the international community which had been threatening to isolate, and economically further undermine, the previous government headed by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. There was a looming threat of further international sanctions to follow upon the European Union’s withdrawal of the GSP Plus tariff concession that had led to the closure of large numbers of garment factories, resulting in a severe blow to the national economy.
At the UN Human Rights Council in October 2015 the government pledged to set up four new institutions that would promote transitional justice in the country. Specifically, the government committed itself to establishing in a two-year period (which lapsed in March of this year) mechanisms in four different areas including, truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence. Transitional justice is the process of transformation that the UN system has sanctioned for countries that are transiting from situations of war, authoritarian rule or largescale violations of human rights, or all of them, to more democratic and human rights-respecting ways of governance. The transitional justice process is not something that is recommended only for Sri Lanka in particular but for any and all countries that have found themselves in the unfortunate situation that Sri Lanka found itself.
In his strongly worded report, the UN Special Rapporteur bemoaned the fact that "the process is nowhere close to where it should have been more than two years later. These expectations were not merely those of the international community but of the government of Sri Lanka and of Sri Lankans generally." Justifying the strictures he passed on the government is the observation that the government had yet to implement even one of the four mechanisms it promised in Geneva. These four mechanisms include a truth commission to ascertain the truth of what actually happened during the course of the war. This one takes on particular relevance in view of the controversy that has reopened about the number of casualties in the closing stages of the war. British Lord Naseby has said that the figure of 40,000 generally mentioned by the international community is excessive.
REVERSE BENEFIT
The issue of what happened during the final stages of the war has been controversial and murky. The ICRC and other independent actors were asked by the then government to leave the final battlegrounds for their own safety. This led to various speculations about what actually happened, including the death toll, with claims that it ranges from about 7000 to more than 100,000. The figure, which Lord Naseby has sought, will be one among many such figures. Ascertaining the correct figure will be one of the primary tasks of the Truth Commission that the UNHRC resolution calls for, and which the government has promised to implement. There is a need for a figure that is arrived at through a process that is acceptable to all sides.
Similarly, in Geneva in October 2015, the government promised to establish an Office of Missing Persons to find out what happened to the large numbers that went missing during the war. There is already documented evidence of about 20,000 missing persons during the course of the entire conflict, and not only its last phase, and this figure is with various government commissions of inquiry set up on previous occasions, but little has been done to find out more about them. The government has passed legislation to establish this mechanism, and also called for applications for commissioners. So far this is the only transitional justice mechanism about which anything concrete has been done. The government has yet to do anything concrete with regard to the Office of Reparations to compensate the hundreds of thousands who lost their properties and loved ones, and finally a special court to investigate the many allegations of war crimes.
Ironically, however, the UN Special Rapporteur’s strictures against the government for not implementing the promised transitional justice mechanisms may help rather than hurt the government when it comes to the local electorate, especially with local government elections around the corner in January 2018. It will strengthen the government’s defense that it is not betraying the country at the bidding of the international community as alleged by the opposition. It is notable that in the runup to the local government election, the Joint Opposition is narrowing its campaign down to the issue of betrayal of the country. Overzealous members of the opposition appear to be running amok on this emotive issue even calling for the execution by hanging of those who call for war crimes accountability and the bombing of parliament if the government’s constitutional reforms strengthen the devolution of power to the Tamil and Muslim majority parts of the country.
US EXAMPLE
In these fraught circumstances it would be helpful if international expertise on the transitional justice process is brought to bear on the special circumstances in Sri Lanka, even as the UN system and international human rights organisations continue to put pressure on the government to deliver on its commitments. The difficulty for the government is that it has to engage in a transitional justice process for which there is currently little or no support from the ethnic majority population. It will also be an uphill task to convince the ethnic majority population in the need, and legitimacy of a process that could lead to the punishment of the political and military leaderships that defeated the LTTE on the military battlefield.
So long as Sri Lanka is a democracy, any government will need to obtain ethnic majority support in order to win elections, remain in power and implement its plans. There is a need to be realistic in assessing what any Sri Lankan government can and cannot do. It would be like convincing the majority of American and British people through an education process that the political leaderships and pilots who conducted the "thousand bomber raids" of German cities and the atomic bombing of Japanese cities during the closing stages of World War 2 are not war heroes but should be condemned for what they did. So far in the world it appears that the only successful nationally driven transitional justice process in which accountability and punishment were at the centre has been where either the victim population was a majority (South Africa) or where the ethnic minority won (Rwanda) or where military dictatorships were overthrown (South America).
Realism suggests that the textbook approach will not work and will either lead to the downfall of the government or will lead to a box-ticking exercise that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights ZeidRa'ad Al Hussein warned against when he said in September this year that "This should not be viewed by the Government as a box-ticking exercise to placate the Council, but as an essential undertaking to address the rights of all its people." The key to a more viable approach would be found in one of the UN Special Rapporteur’s observations that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to transitional justice. A nationally driven truth commission that would educate the Sri Lankan people about what happened during the war with a view to binding up the nation’s wounds in the spirit of post-civil war United States under its great president Abraham Lincoln coupled with an internationally supported programme of reparations to those who lost in the war, on all sides, may be the Sri Lankan path to a shared future that would leave behind our divided past.
