Creeping politicization 

Indian Supreme Court Judges’ revolt stems from

2018-01-16

Last week India witnessed, for the first time in its history, the spectacle of an open and public revolt in its much respected Supreme Court.   

However, by the end of the week, a major and unsettling denouement seemed to have been averted with all sides saying that discussions will be held to sort out matters internally and appealing to outsiders not to interfere or make political capital out of the conflict.   

Even the four judges who had raised the banner of revolt against Chief Justice Dipak Misra, expressed the hope that a reasonable way out would be found for the sake of the credibility of the institution in the eyes of the public.   

Interventions by the all India bar and former judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts, and the studied silence of the government and the opposition parties have helped place the responsibility for resolving the issues at stake at the door of the Chief Justice and his judges so that they do not become part of partisan politics and worsen an already bad situation.  

However, the revolt gives an opportunity to the judiciary and the government to take a deep and hard look at the issues plaguing the Indian judiciary, including the Supreme Court. The issues relate both to internal management of the judiciary and its relations with the executive and political arms of the State.   

Political inclinations and caste, communal and regional considerations have shaped appointments in the judiciary. Governments and members of the judiciary have both used each other to promote their political and individual interests.   

When Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister and battling the powerful right wing old order called the “Syndicate”, she had introduced the concept of the “Committed Judiciary” to pack courts with judges of her political, economic and social persuasion.   

While this led to the legalization of her radical social welfare and equalitarian policies, it also destroyed the equally desirable concept of a neutral and independent judiciary. It harmed the theory of the Separation of Powers between the Judiciary and the Executive.

From then on, selection of judges became arbitrary. In 2013, parliament passed a law creating a joint government-judiciary structure to select judges, but this gave equal power to the Judiciary and the Executive. Therefore the body was not autonomous. At any rate, this law was struck down in 2014 as being “unconstitutional” and the judiciary reverted to the collegial system. But this too has not been working satisfactorily.   

There have been charges of corruption against judges and a judge had even been sentenced for it. Political, communal and caste considerations have continued to vitiate appointments.  

The extraordinary powers given to the Chief Justice have also come under criticism as these could be misused as the author of the Indian Constitution Dr. B. R. Ambedkar had warned in the Constituent Assembly in the late 1940s. He had said that the character of a Chief Justice could be as flawed as that of a common man and that there should be checks and balances against arbitrariness at the highest levels of the judiciary.   

What is disturbing is that while rules and norms have been established, there have been instances when judges have misused them. Rules and norms may appear to have been observed, but a closer look would reveal a violation of the spirit of these regulations

Misuse of Rules

What is disturbing is that while rules and norms have been established, there have been instances when judges have misused them. Rules and norms may appear to have been observed, but a closer look would reveal a violation of the spirit of these regulations.  

It is the issue of subversion of rules by Chief Justice Dipak Misra which was brought to the fore publicly when four of the 25 judges of the Supreme Court revolted and held the first ever press conference by judges to air an issue troubling them.

Justice J.Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, M. B. Lokur and Kurien Joseph called an urgent press conference on Friday and also issued a statement in which the main issue was the observance of norms regarding the assignment of cases to benches to hear important cases.   

The disgruntled judges did not dispute the primacy of the Chief Justice in deciding which one should hear a case, but they expected Chief Justices to be reasonable, unbiased and rational in deciding the bench to which a case should go. The judges suspected a political rat in Dipak Misra’s assigning judges to hear politically critical cases.  

The statement issued by the protesting judges said: “ There have been instances where cases having far reaching consequences for the nation and the institution had been assigned by the Chief Justices of the court selectively to the benches of their preference without any rational basis for such an assignment. This must be guarded against at all costs.”  

Justice Loya’s Death 

The statement did not allude to any particular case or cases, but the judges let it be known that they had in mind the case relating to the mysterious death in 2014 of Justice B. H. Loya of the Central Bureau of Investigation Special Court while he was hearing a case in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President, Amit Shah, was an accused.   

The case had to do with the extra-judicial killing of gangster Sohrabuddin. Suspicions were aroused and agitations were staged, when Shah was discharged in the case after the death of Justice Loya.   

Even as a case relating to the death was being heard at the Bombay High Court, Chief Justice Dipak Misra admitted a Public Interest Litigation seeking a fresh probe into Loya’s death and assigned the case to a bench under Justice Arun Mishra, who is 10th in the pecking order of the court’s 25 judges.   

The four protesting judges said that the nationally important Justice Loya death case should have been assigned to a bench of more senior judges.   

Additionally, the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Misra entertained a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) relating to the murder of Justice Loya even though the Bombay High Court was already hearing the case. The Chief Justice asked the Bombay High Court to send all the documents relating to the case.   

According to The Citizen the bench under Arun Mishra has two judges who are very junior. Justice Ashok Bhushan had risen very fast and become a Supreme Court judge as recently as May 2016. Justice Abdul Nazeer is the only Supreme Court who has never been a Chief Justice of a State. He became a Supreme Court judge only in 2017.  

The rebelling judges suspected an ulterior political motive in Dipak Misra’s admitting a petition to hear the Justice Loya death case even though the Bombay High Court was hearing it.   

The Citizen also pointed out that the Supreme Court had also taken up other cases under controversial circumstances. Lawyers Kapil Sibal and Rajiv Dhawan had objected to the court’s taking up the Babri Mosque-Ram temple case before the 2019 parliamentary elections. They feared that the ruling of the court could affect the outcome of the elections, given the sensitivity of the issue.  

Political inclinations and caste, communal and regional considerations have shaped appointments in the judiciary. Governments and members of the judiciary have both used each other to promote their political and individual interests

Sibal pointed out that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders Dr. Subramanian Swamy and Yogi Adityanath were anxious to carry out the construction of the Ram temple in place of the demolished Babri Mosque in the holy city of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh to please the Hindu majority before the 2019 parliamentary elections. Their plan to use the issue to win votes is being stymied by the fact that the matter is sub-judice.   

Sibal argued that since the case involved critical issues relating to Indian democracy and the fundamental character of the Indian State (whether it is secular or biased towards Hindu beliefs) it should not be heard hurriedly. He pointed out that the case involved studying 19,000 documents which would require time.   

It is not clear whether the revolt of the four judges will bear fruit or fizzle out for lack of support in the government and the polity. One only hopes that the crisis will make Indian politicians and the Indian intelligentsia look critically at the judiciary from top to bottom and come up with cures for its ills.  

India’s biometric database hacked: 1.2bn users at risk

Authorities have been widely criticized for their handling of the allegations, which if proven correct, could expose users to identity fraud and privacy invasions.

Courtesy: CNN 

( January 14, 2018, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Indian government has announced new security measures following reports of an alleged security breach in the country’s vast biometric database, which contains the personal details of 1.2 billion Indian citizens.

The announcement comes a full seven days after journalist Rachna Khaira first identified the alleged breach in an article in the Tribune newspaper, in which it was claimed reporters were able to buy access to citizens’ personal details, such as names, addresses, phone numbers and even photos, via an anonymous WhatsApp account for as little as $8.

The database, known officially as Aadhaar, was launched in 2009 as a voluntary program intended to help prevent benefit fraud, it has since grown, and is now home to the collected data — including fingerprints and iris scans — of more than a billion Indians, or upwards of 90% of the entire population.

Users are issued with a personal 12-digit identity number which they can then use to access welfare payments, and other government controlled services.

Authorities have been widely criticized for their handling of the allegations, which if proven correct, could expose users to identity fraud and privacy invasions.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is responsible for maintaining the database, initially denied the claims, dismissing the Tribune story as “clearly a case of misreporting being incorrect and misleading.”

This was followed by a tweet from the official account of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) referring to the report as “fake news,” last Thursday.

A day after Khaira’s report, the UIDAI filed a police complaint against her, the Tribune newspaper, and the anonymous individuals who allegedly provided them with access to the database, a move that served only to inflame the crisis further, and stoke wider concerns over diminishing press freedoms.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Paris-based NGO which publishes an annual index of press freedom, last year ranked India at 136 out of 180 countries, down 3 places from the previous year, and lagging behind the likes of Myanmar, Colombia and even Zimbabwe.

The controversy led Edward Snowden, the former US National Security Agency contractor and high profile whistle blower, to weigh in with a tweet offering his support to Khaira, Tuesday.

“The journalists exposing the #Aadhaar breach deserve an award, not an investigation. If the government were truly concerned for justice, they would be reforming the policies that destroyed the privacy of a billion Indians. Want to arrest those responsible? They are called @UIDAI,” said Snowden.

The agency quickly backtracked, and by late Tuesday afternoon had tweeted its support for press freedoms and its apparent willingness to work with the Tribune to investigate the problem.

It remains unclear, however, whether the UIDAI has in fact dropped its police complaint against Khaira.

Security measures

The newest government security measures, announced late Wednesday, will allow users to generate a randomly-generated virtual ID or token to avoid sharing their direct Aadhaar number for authentication, according to the government notice. A second security measure prevents secondary agencies from storing an individual’s Aadhaar number.

Experts say the move will go some way in addressing issues raised in the Tribune report, as well as broader safety concerns.

Amber Sinha, a senior program manager at the Centre for Internet and Society, a research institute based in Delhi and Bangalore described the government’s announcement as a welcome measure.

“There have been various kinds of security incidents, but tokenization can definitely address some of them,” said Sinha.

According to Sinha, the database’s biometric data, which contains the most sensitive information, such as retinal scans, has not been breached and reports in the press are related to demographic data, which can also exist in separate databases, owned by different government agencies or state governments.

Though implemented under the previous administration, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has championed the database, and pushed to make Aadhaar cards mandatory.

The new security measures come a day after a report from a research institute affiliated with the Reserve Bank of India labeled the database “a prime target.”

“Thanks to Aadhaar, for the first time in the history of India, there is now a readily available single target for cyber criminals as well as India’s external enemies … The loss to the economy and citizens in case of such an attack is bound to be incalculable,” said the report by the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology.

While the authorities did not cite a specific reason for the new security measures, they did say there were “heightened privacy concerns,” according to the statement from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

Orange passports for India's migrant workers create 'second class citizens'

Rina Chandran-JANUARY 15, 2018

MUMBAI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - India’s plan to introduce orange-colored passport jackets for some migrant workers is discriminatory and could increase the vulnerability of workers often duped by middlemen who promise them jobs, said legal experts and campaigners.

The Ministry of External Affairs said last week migrant workers who need emigration clearance - those who have not passed 10th grade at school - to travel to a group of 18 countries, mostly in the Gulf region, would soon be issued orange passports.

“Passport holders with ECR (Emigration Check Required) status would be issued a passport with orange color passport jacket and those with non-ECR status would continue to get a blue passport,” spokesman Raveesh Kumar said on Friday.

Indian passports, barring official and diplomatic passports, are navy blue.
The government’s plan was roundly criticized.

“You cannot divide people on the basis of educational qualifications; it’s discriminatory,” said S. Irudaya Rajan, professor at the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram in the southern state of Kerala, from where many migrant workers originate.

“An orange cover shows a person is not well educated, and makes them vulnerable to exploitation. These are already vulnerable people who need more protection, not discrimination,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

There are an estimated six million Indian migrants in the six Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman, many of them trafficked and exploited.

Many are duped by job agents, and trapped in low paying jobs with few benefits or protections.

“Treating India’s migrant workers like second class citizens is completely unacceptable,” Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition Congress party, said in a tweet.

 

The government has not released any other details of the plan, including a timeline for implementation.

“The government could argue that these passports are for the workers’ protection, but to a worker it may not seem that way,” said Sehjo Singh, a director at advocacy group ActionAid India.

“The government must make clear how this system will work in favor of the workers.”

Bangladeshi forests stripped bare as Rohingya refugees battle to survive

By Mongabay | 16th January 2018

Rohingya refugee men carry wood branches at the Balukhali refugee camp near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh December 17, 2017. Source: Reuters/Alkis Konstantinidis

LOOK out from the high-ground in the middle of Kutupalong and two sights fill the eyes: 

Myanmar’s green hills silhouetted in the east and dehydrated, denuded mounds pocked by the blue-black tarpaulin sheets of makeshift shelters everywhere else.

That jarring contrast in Bangladesh’s landscape is new. It’s an indirect consequence of brutal military operations in Myanmar that forced 650,000 Rohingya refugees into the country, the majority since August 2017. Most of their journeys have involved witnessing horrendous atrocities, flight from burning villages, and then stumbling through forests or battling monsoon-charged waters in search of safety.

Along the way, they pitched camp wherever they found space and turned to the local forest for everything from shelter to fuel. Satellite images show a clear difference in forest cover between October 2016 and November 2017 that looks similar to the aftermath of clear cutting. They continue to rely on the forest in Bangladesh.

As the refugees poured in through various points along the border, the Bangladeshi military tried to round them up around the existing Kutupalong and Balukhali settlements – in such numbers that they merged into the world’s largest refugee camp.

The weight and rate of that influx have created an additional environmental crisis in Bangladesh’s sensitive border district, stripping away 4,000 acres (1,618.74ha) of forest land, according to numbers from an internal Bangladesh forestry department report shared with Mongabay. Crucial groundwater supplies have also been depleted and contaminated, according to the World Health Organisation.

SEE ALSO: Diphtheria hits Rohingya camps amid rising evidence of genocide

It is a crisis borne of chaos that has not only tipped a delicate balance on Bangladesh’s water-scarce and cyclone prone southeastern tip but also accentuates the humanitarian challenges for both refugees and an overwhelmed local population.

There are now almost one million refugees, including those from previous influxes, living in an area hit by cyclones in each of the previous three years and where, in the worst parts, refugees say they have to live on two pots of water a day.

“It was like a jungle, all of this. There were trees and fruit plantations,” said Rehana Begum, a local Bangladeshi whose home now lies in the middle of the mega-camp. “Now there are so many homes here but they only appeared over the last two or three months.”

Those homes are simply tarpaulin sheets fastened to bamboo poles and pinned into patches of earth the refugees hacked from the hills.  From inside the Kutupalong-Balukhali camp, the lines of those tents and hills they cling to are impossible to see past – a sea of dust and plastic that repeats into the horizon, scarcely a tree in sight. Satellite imagery provides a startling overview of those 1.5 square miles (4sq km): from August 2017 onward, Kutupalong’s brown mass creeps steadily outward, eating farther into the government Teknaf Game Reserve that surrounds it until it joins with the smaller Balukhali camp to the south.

A group of Rohingya men take a break on the long route home from collecting firewood from Bangladeshi forests. Source: Kaamil Ahmed/Mongabay

“From the late seventies, whenever the Rohingya people came to Bangladesh, they settled down in Teknaf and Ukhia areas and basically in forest land, as there is no [other] available space in those areas,” said Ali Kabir, the Bangladeshi forestry department’s officer for Cox’s Bazar South, the district the Kutupalong-Balukhali camp falls under.

While the Muslim minority from Myanmar’s western Rakhine state have previously fled to Bangladesh in the tens of thousands after operations by the Burmese military in 1978, 1991 and with increasing frequency over the past 10 years, the most recent influx, and corresponding changes, have been far more intense.

“They are cutting down the hills, they’re chopping all the trees, herbs, shrubs then erecting their shelters. As a result, the topography of that area has been greatly damaged,” Kabir said.

The view by satellite also shows a not-quite-browned but visibly thinning ring of green around the camps, especially to the west.

Increasing needs

It is from the west that every day, all day, a constant stream of Rohingya men, as well as some women and children, are found wading through puddles, bowed under the loads of firewood each has to go hunting for several times a week. Eight hundred tons of fuel wood are now needed daily, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The sheer weight of that demand created by the refugees in just the Kutupalong-Balukhali camp’s surroundings – and more spread through other camps –  has forced the forests to rapidly recede. That doesn’t include the thousands of babies who will be born in coming months.

The camp’s overwhelming brownness does gradually give way to more greenery on foot-beaten paths that lead away from it, but mile upon mile of vestigial tree stumps and scythed-down shrubbery offer no more than a hint of how far the forest has retreated. What had been a 6-mile (9.6km) round trip when the newest Rohingya refugees first arrived has doubled into 12 miles (19.3km) with entire days spent walking and cutting trees.

A Rohingya boy chopping wood from tree stump he freed from soil near Kutupalong-Balukhali refugee camp on Bangladesh. Source: Khaamil Ahmed/Mongabay

The route winds on and on, offering no shade from the Bangladeshi dry season’s unfiltered sun. Everywhere there is either someone carrying loads or sat down by the side on one of the numerous breaks they have to take. Barefoot, both men and women wrap themselves in simple pieces of cloth, known as lungis, paired with a vest or blouse and no protection from the elements. Few carry water and some even drink from muddied puddles created a few days earlier by unexpected rains.

“I don’t know how to count the miles I’m walking but I start very early in the morning and get to the forest by about 10 o’clock,” said Ayub Ali, who fled Maungdaw township in Myanmar in September. He spends an hour hacking away at the trees with his machete, the universal tool of Rohingya and Bangladeshi villagers, before ambling his way home, resting regularly by leaning against a stack of branches taller than himself.

SEE ALSO: Blockchain technology employed to give Rohingya refugees identity cards

Now in his 60s, Ali has never before had to actually collect wood but now makes the arduous journey two or three times a week. Few of the refugees recall ever having to do such work in Myanmar, where they would simply buy wood or gas from local suppliers.

With the search for firewood becoming more strenuous and many worried about what they will do when the impending cyclone season adds extra challenges and strains, some Rohingya appear to be stockpiling the treasured commodity. While most houses have branches drying out on their roofs, some have stacks taking up whole corners of their homes.

Around 1,000 football fields worth of timber would be needed to supply the refugees for a single year, according to Graham Eastmond, who coordinates the shelter sector for the international humanitarian response.

A Rohingya boy chopping wood from tree stump he freed from soil near Kutupalong-Balukhali refugee camp on Bangladesh as another walks past with a load of wood. Source: Kaamil Ahmed/Mongabay

Many out collecting firewood are children, some with adults but others sent along with siblings and friends by parents who also have to make sure they are in the camps to collect their aid supplies – which usually offer no alternative fuel for cooking on.

Not everyone is able to walk the whole way, especially some of the youngest children. Instead, they can be found along the route, or even in the camp itself, hacking at the ground to free left behind tree stumps or pulling at wiry roots – a task almost as tedious as the longer journey because of how little fuel they can scavenge.

A lot of that fuel also poses health risks for the refugees as it produces more smoke that becomes trapped in their confined living spaces.

“When they’re cooking green fuel, they’re going to get sicker a lot faster; eye infections, respiratory infections,” said an environmental consultant involved in the emergency response, who could not be named as he was not cleared to speak to media. “It’s just really unhealthy to be cooking green wood and its worse for the forest too because if you’re cooking green wood, it means you’re cooking on the last of it.”

Local tensions and profiteering

The majority of deforested land has been government-owned, according to forestry official Kabir. Almost half of that land was part of the 15-year-old government Social Forestry Program – now decimated.

The program relied on public land and quick-growing trees that could, within a decade, provide local communities a sustainable income through selling the highly-valued timber used for furniture.

“About 2,000 acres of social forestry has been completely destroyed…almost 1,000 poor people are involved in this programme,” Kabir said, noting that local Bangladeshis have handed in a petition requesting the government compensate them for the lost land.

“It is continuing, so the area of destruction is increasing day-by-day.”

In contrast to previous influxes of Rohingya refugees, many local Bangladeshis have tolerated the Rohingya – if not willingly, at least after prompts by Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina – but also grumble about how long they will stay.

Rehana Begum, the area resident who saw dozens of refugee families move in around her, said she accepted them as fellow Muslims but complains about how much the area has changed and even accuses the refugees of stealing from her. But a nearby group of Rohingya say it is not their fault, and there was nowhere else for them to settle.

While there have been genuine concerns for local Bangladeshis about the damage done to the environment and increasing pressure on resources, many do appear to have taken advantage of the situation. Some refugees have reported Bangladeshis demanding small fees from them while collecting wood or for settling on nearby land, and there are signs of a growing trade in firewood.

SEE ALSO: Burma, Bangladesh to agree plan for repatriation of Rohingya refugees

Though Kabir denied any wood was being brought in from outside the camp area, as they have existing stringent checks for smuggled timber along the route, the signs are there.

Muhammad Araf, 27, is a new arrival in the Balukhali refugee camp and one of the Rohingya who have gone into business buying bundles of wood for about 25 cents each and then selling them for about a 12 cent profit per bundle.

A young Rohingya boy hacks at roots on a hill inside the Kutupalong-Balukhali refugee camp to gather what remains for use as fuel. Source: Kaamil Ahmed/Mongabay

Every morning small electric buggies carrying bundles of firewood wrapped in red string head for the camps and surrounding villages.

He said it was local Bangladeshis who were bringing the wood in from somewhere north of Kutupalong, though he did not know exactly where. Without the government monitoring it, it is hard to know exactly how much the trade in wood is also affecting the forestry even beyond the camps’ immediate surroundings.

Water

The Cox’s Bazar and Teknaf districts that run along Bangladesh’s border with Myanmar have long had problems with water. Usable groundwater supplies in some parts are much deeper than usual, which makes getting to them hard and limits how much can be used in an area that already had around 300,000 Rohingya refugees living in it, mostly from influxes since 1991.

That problem, according to a 2012 study by the University of Dhaka, is caused by a high amount of rainwater running off into the nearby River Naf and Bay of Bengal – a problem expected to be exacerbated by mass deforestation reducing the amount of vegetation to pull water into the underground aquifers. The IUCN also highlighted the region as one of 10 in Bangladesh that are severely vulnerable to saline water from the sea contaminating sweet-water sources locals may otherwise have been able to draw from.

Rohingya men wade through water after heavy rains while returning from collecting firewood. Source: Kaamil Ahmed/Mongabay

“The more water that goes, the less that gets recharged into the aquifers because that water runs right out to the sea. It doesn’t trickle down like it’s supposed to,” said the environmental consultant who asked to have his name withheld.

In the Hakimpara refugee camp, a quarter of shallow tube wells have already dried up, according to aid group Doctors Without Borders.

Adding to the pressure on water supplies is the fallout of a chaotic response to the rapid influx. Latrines were installed hastily to meet one of the fastest movements of refugees in a generation and many were poorly built or not put in the right areas.

Leaking latrines, open defecation and tube wells placed too close to latrines have polluted the groundwater, leading to more than 60 percent used by the refugees being contaminated, the WHO warned.

Finding solutions

Kabir, the Bangladeshi forestry official, says the easiest solution is to begin repatriating the refugees. While the government has signed an agreement with Myanmar and even submitted a list of the first 100,000 refugees, such a process would be long even if not opposed by both international organizations and the refugees themselves, who fear being exposed to exactly the same dangers if returned without their rights being guaranteed.

More realistically, plans are being made to harness existing nurseries and nurture more in order to start reforestation around the camps. Part of that will include eco-terracing – quickly plugging some greenery back into the stripped-down hills to provide some protection against landslides when monsoon rains, and potentially cyclones, hit in the coming months.

SEE ALSO: UN flags plight of ‘forgotten’ Rohingya children in central Rakhine

By using existing nurseries as well as offering cash-for-work, aid agencies are hoping to involve the local population and ease tensions between the two communities.

They are also hoping to limit how many Rohingya are turning to the forests for firewood by improving the stoves they use and offering alternatives fuels like gas or briquettes based on harvested rice husks or coconuts – though some of these options are limited by season.

Shelter coordinator for the international humanitarian response Eastmond said the scale of the environmental impact and the discussions they are now having has highlighted how little priority has been placed on providing disaster victims with fuel supplies.

A Rohingya man walks through the Kutupalong-Balukhali refugee camp with some roots he pulled out of nearby land, to use as fuel. Source: Khaamil Ahmed/Mongabay

“It should be a sector in itself, it never gets looked at quick enough – that’s the argument,” he said.

In the meantime, Rohingya refugees like Sunjuddin, who arrived after an attack on his village in Maungdaw during the Muslim Eid festival in September, said he can see the trees disappearing but they have no other option.

“This is difficult, it’s draining to do this every day,” he said. “But we need to eat and there’s nothing else to cook on.”

This article is by Kaamil Ahmed, a foreign correspondent who has reported on conflicts, labor and the environment in South Asia and the Middle East. You can find him on Twitter at @kaamilahmed. Originally published on Mongabay.

Man ruptures throat by stifling a sneeze

16 January 2018

fling a sneeze by clamping your nose and mouth shut can cause serious physical damage, doctors are warning.

Medics in Leicester treated a 34-year-old man who ruptured his throat while trying to stop a high-force sneeze.

With nowhere to escape, the pressure ripped through the soft tissue, and although rare and unusual, they say others should be aware of the danger.

Trapping a sneeze could also damage the ears or even rupture a brain aneurysm, they warn in journal BMJ Case Reports.

The man said he felt a "popping" sensation in his neck when it happened and then immediately experienced pain and difficulty swallowing and speaking.

When the doctors checked him over they found he had swelling and tenderness around his throat and neck.

The black arrow points to the air streaks (in black) in the soft tissue area

An X-ray revealed air escaping from his windpipe into the soft tissue of his neck through the rupture.

The man had to be fed by a tube for the next seven days to allow time for the tissues to heal.

After spending a week in hospital, the man was sent home and made a full recovery.

• Capturing the fluid flow of sneezes
• Sneezing into a trombone
• Why deaf people sneeze silently

Doctors from the ear, nose, throat department at Leicester Royal Infirmary, where the man was treated, said: "Halting a sneeze via blocking nostrils and mouth is a dangerous manoeuvre and should be avoided."

Sneezes can spread diseases, so although it is good to "let them out", make sure you catch them in a tissue, say experts.

With flu season in full swing, children and adults should be encouraged to cover their mouth and nose with a tissue when they cough and sneeze and then throw the tissues away in a bin and wash their hands to stop the spread of germs, says Public Health England.

Keppapulavu residents observe Thai Pongal at protest site, almost a year since protests started

14Jan 2018

Residents of a Mullaitivu village observed Thai Pongal at the site of their almost year-long protest for the return of their lands from the Sri Lankan Army.

Keppapulavu residents set up the traditional pongal pot in front of a shed adjacent to the army camp, originally erected as a short-term shelter for the protesters, but which still provides refuge for the ongoing protest.

While some 133 acres of land was officially handed over to the district’s government agent, the landowners still have not gained full access to their properties.

Many protestors still have not had their land marked for release and have continued with the protest, with those who have had theirs returned also continuing in solidarity.

Related Articles: 

01 January 2018 : No release from militarisation: soldiers get involved at Keppapulavu temple

29 December 2017 : No access to land for Keppapulavu residents despite military fanfare over release

22 August 2017 : Resettlement minister confirms 178 million allocated to army for return of Keppapulavu

Reconciliation process suspended till after elections

By Jehan Perera-January 15, 2018

The outcome of the forthcoming local government elections will be significant as they come at the mid-point of the national election cycle. There will be 30 political parties contesting the forthcoming local government elections. But it is the contest between three of them that is riveting. The question is who will do the best and who will do the worst out of the UNP, SLFP and SLPP. The last presidential and general elections were held in 2015 and the next are scheduled for 2020. The SLPP, which has become the vehicle for the Joint Opposition led by the former President, has been stating that voters should simply consider whether they are pro-government or anti-government when casting their votes. A poor performance by the two parties forming the government alliance would therefore be construed by the Joint Opposition as a rejection of the government and its policies on all major issues, not simply ones pertaining to local government.

Among the key issues at stake at the local government elections will be the government’s reconciliation process which has two primary components—constitutional reform which will ensure improved sharing of power between the ethnic majority and minorities, and transitional justice which will ensure accountability for past rights violations in the context of the country’s three-decade long war for separation. Although the reconciliation process is broader than these two components, and includes improvements in the day-to-day life of people, including economic wellbeing and return of land, constitutional reform and transitional justice are reconciliation components that have evoked considerable political controversy. A poor performance by the parties of the government alliance would be construed as a rejection of the measures in this regard taken so far by the government, in addition to a whole slew of other matters.

Until the declaration of local government elections two months ago, the government was making slow and shaky progress on both constitutional reform and transitional justice. These included a highly contested report by the Steering Committee of the Constitutional Assembly which presented options for the most contentious issues in the constitutional reform process, including the questions of whether Sri Lanka would remain a unitary state or move in the direction of a federal state, and the foremost status of Buddhism in the constitution. Both of these options evoked outrage from nationalist sections of the majority Sinhalese population with the highest levels of the Buddhist hierarchy taking positions that it would be better not to have constitutional reform at all.

CAUTIOUS APPROACH

In recognition of the politically sensitive nature of the constitutional reform and transitional justice processes, and to their vulnerability to being exploited by nationalists, the government has put both of these issues on the backburner from the time that local government elections were declared. The last that was heard of constitutional reform was during the parliamentary debate on the report of the Constitutional Steering Committee in October last year. The Office of Missing Persons which is at the centre of the current transitional justice initiatives has been in a state of limbo since its gazetting by the President in September of last year. Its commissioners have still to be appointed.

The halt to the reconciliation initiatives in the run up to elections is not surprising. The parties that comprise the government alliance are acutely sensitive to the fact that controversy on the subject of ethnicity and religion could spark off a polarizing debate to their detriment. As a result of not taking these reconciliation issues up, the election campaign does not have them as a main feature. Instead other national issues have taken the centre stage. At the helm of these is the Central Bank bond scam in which the former governor of the Central Bank and a former finance minister of the government have been implicated. This has been an ironic reversal as the government’s main campaign at the national elections of 2015, when it was in opposition, was good governance and anti-corruption.

However, the fact that the official reconciliation process is on the backburner does not mean it is not being considered as important by the government. Speaking to a Youth Parliament last week, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that the government would decide on its course of action with regard to constitutional reform after the local government elections. He said they would be making an effort to reduce the gaps between various proposals put forward by different groups and said "We will be looking towards devolving more powers to the provincial councils while bringing laws to prevent the division of the country." This was an implicit acknowledgement that the divisive potential of the draft constitutional proposals which generated massive opposition from powerful sections of the polity, especially religious clergy, made it injudicious to bring it to the fore at this time.

ONGOING RECONCILIATION

In addition, government programmes that are directed towards reconciliation are continuing, albeit out of the political limelight. Last week the Ministry of National Integration and Reconciliation that functions under the President conducted a one-day conference for District Reconciliation Committees appointed by the President in his capacity as Minister of National Integration and Reconciliation. The objective of these committees is to resolve ethnic and religious tensions at the community level in accordance with a vision of a plural, multiethnic and multi religious society in which diversity is recognized as a source of strength. Members drawn from all the districts of the country attended this event to reflect on their roles in the light of values of dignity, respect, diversity, equity, inclusiveness, fairness, tolerance, empathy, friendship, kindness, compassion, justice and human rights.

Secretary General of the Secretariat for Coordinating Reconciliation Mechanisms, Mano Tittawella, who functions under the Prime Minister’s Office, addressing the meeting of District Reconciliation Committees consisting of religious clergy, government officials, police and civil society members, gave a hopeful view of the post-election scenario. He said that apart from the Office of Missing Persons which has been established in law, two more of the reconciliation mechanisms promised by the government, the Office of Reparations and Truth Seeking Commission, would be presented to parliament and to the general public in the aftermath of the elections. He added that the draft laws on outlawing Enforced Disappearances and a replacement to the Prevention of Terrorism Act would be enacted in the coming months.

The optimistic scenarios presented above will be possible if the parties of the government alliance do well at the forthcoming elections. If the SLPP, which has been hostile to the reconciliation process as dividing the country and sacrificing it to foreign forces, outperforms the ruling parties and is able to capture a majority of local government authorities, the government’s ability to move forward on controversial issues will be crippled. This will make it especially difficult for the government to move forward on the reconciliation process which the Joint Opposition has described as paving the way to the division of the country while punishing the gallant soldiers who won the war. The government’s cautious strategy of putting off issues of constitutional reform and transitional justice until after the local government elections will hopefully only be a temporary phenomenon.