Myanmar Struggles to Put Down Buddhist Attack on Muslims

Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters

A police officer outside a mosque that was set on fire in the northern city of Lashio, the latest outbreak of religious violence in Myanmar.

By THOMAS FULLER-May 29, 2013

BANGKOK — Security forces on Wednesday struggled to bring peace to a northern city in Myanmar after Buddhist mobs set fire to a mosque, a Muslim school and shops, the latest outbreak of religious violence in Myanmar and a sign that radical strains of Buddhism may be spreading to a wider area of the country.

The violence afflicting the city, Lashio, in the north near the border with China, is hundreds of miles from towns and villages affected by religious violence this year.

One Muslim man was killed and four Buddhists were wounded in the clashes, said U Wai Lin, an official with the Information Ministry in Lashio.

U Khun Zaw Oo, a freelance photographer reached by telephone in Lashio, said mobs of young men on motorcycles roamed the city with swords and metal rods.

“They are riding around neighborhoods and destroying,” he said.

Witnesses said Muslims had fled the city. A movie theater and Muslim shops were destroyed Wednesday, according to U Myo Myint, a member of the National League for Democracy, a political party, who witnessed the violence.

The burning of the mosque and other buildings took place on Tuesday evening and followed a pattern seen elsewhere in Myanmar of the police and military units’ being unwilling or unable to disperse angry crowds of Buddhists.

Lauri Nio, a student from Finland visiting Lashio, said the first police units arrived two hours after groups of men set fire to the mosque and began destroying shops. The police stayed for only a few minutes, he said, and when a larger contingent of police and military units returned later in the night, they closed off the streets but did not confront the rioters.

Groups of men gathered in the market “shouting, cheering and singing Burmese nationalist songs” as they destroyed shops, he said.

Video from the city posted on Facebook on Wednesday by the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Myanmar online news service, showed what now have become familiar scenes in the country of burned-out buildings and charred motorcycles.

As with previous bouts of violence in central Myanmar, journalists were singled out.

“They hit me on the head with a metal rod,” Mr. Khun Zaw Oo said. The mobs also removed and destroyed memory cards from his camera, he said.

Like a rampage in March in the central city of Meiktila, the violence in Lashio appeared to have been touched off by a relatively minor quarrel. State television said a Buddhist woman selling gasoline was attacked by a Muslim customer, who was later detained by the police.

Buddhist mobs surrounded the police station where the man was being held and reacted with fury when the police did not hand him over. Details of the quarrel could not be confirmed.

Ye Htut, a government spokesman, said the crowd outside the police station in Lashio included 80 Buddhist monks. The police opened fire on Wednesday to try to quell the violence, Mr. Ye Htut said.

Earlier on Wednesday, he said the authorities and religious and civic organizations in Lashio had been “cooperating with each other to avoid further violence in the city.”

At least 44 people have died since March, when Buddhist mobs rampaged through Meiktila, violence that followed a dispute in a gold shop between a Muslim proprietor and Buddhist customers. Most of the victims in Meiktila were Muslims.

Muslims make up about 5 percent of the population in Myanmar, but their presence is visible in nearly every large town and city.

The violence of recent months has strained Myanmar’s relations with Muslim countries and has underlined questions about the ability of its government, which is overwhelmingly staffed by Buddhists from the Burman ethnic group, to maintain long-term peace and stability among the country’s many other ethnic and religious groups.

Wai Moe contributed reporting from Yangon, Myanmar.

Dealing With Discrimination: Lessons For Sri Lanka From US Engineering

By S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole -June 2, 2013

Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole

American Asians – Engineering Demographics

The US population is 72% White, 16% Hispanic, 13% African American, and 5.6% Asian (2010 figures).  Asians are 13.1% of American engineers. Asians garner 16% of the prestigious Ivy League university admissions. According to the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE)  24.1% of engineering professors are Asian.

But all is not well. It is strongly suspected that Ivy League admission is based on secret discriminatory quotas. Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade says, “to receive equal consideration by elite colleges, Asian Americans must outperform Whites by 140 points, Hispanics by 280 points, Blacks by 450 points in the Scholastic Aptitude Test scores totaling 1600 (NY Times, 19.12.2012).

Furthermore our students may not like us – in AC Carle’s study of 10,392 Florida classes taught by 1120 instructors, minority instructors received “significantly lower” teacher ratings in face-to-face teaching, but that difference vanished in online classes. (Computers and Education, 53(2) 429-435, 2009). Yet these evaluations determine hiring and promotion.

Preaching Diversity: ASEE, NSF and IEEE

Devolving true power to the provinces is the way to diminish the abuse of power, and to move Sri Lanka forward.

Lessons for Sri Lanka From US Engineering by nelvely

WORLD: When we are dreaming of a torture free society

Torture: Asian and Global Perspectives

– Volume 2 Number 01, just issued-May 30, 2013

Torture is endemic! Every moment of every day torture takes place somewhere in the world which shows us the gravity of the social destruction and disorder. Having a dream for a torture free society is not an illusion but something that is attached to the complicity and the reality of what we all have to seriously consider.

While producing the first issue of volume 2, Torture: Asian and Global Perspectives; we would like to thank all those persons around the world that have contributed to our efforts and also our readers who encourage and strengthen us.

In this issue we were able to extensively cover the problems in Bangladesh, Israel and Palestine. Apart from that we present the differing views from a number of courageous writers.

We reproduce here the editorial of our latest issue:

Searching for Shadows in a Dark Hole

We are on the edge of the new era of extremism and fundamentalism which constantly challenges and curtails the personal liberty of the people, and that reduces mankind's desire for freedom to little more than a dream. We are in the miserable position of not just trying to fight these enemies, but also of just trying to understand what threat they really pose. It has become increasingly clear in recent years that the concepts and mindsets of previous decades are no longer suitable to explain or counter modern extremism.

Recent violence in countries like Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Pakistan demonstrate the very real dangers facing not just Asia, but the entire world, and this danger is not limited to insurrectionist movements or other nongovernment actors. The rise of government sponsored extremist organizations like the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) in Sri Lanka is also an emerging new trend of social disorder. Thousands of people were killed, thousands were injured, and countless more have become victims of social disorder due to acts by such groups. These violence based groups have been striking every aspect of a free society.

It has not only caused chaos among the communities in which they are active, but has also created an enormous opportunity for unjust regimes (who often come to power while showing that the electoral system is little more than the cynical manipulation of absolute power) to remain in power indefinitely. The creation of extremist originations is benefiting to those governments in many ways. They can manipulate public debate towards fighting some vilified portion of the population (whether real or imaginary) and away from necessary questions about personal liberty.

The government can close many avenues for peaceful political dissent by citing "national security". This excuse for extraordinary government power and the silencing of dissent opens the door for governments to abuse and exploit their citizens – plundering their businesses, farms, and homes, and breaking up families between "loyalists" and "traitors". Isolated and ostracized by  ne another, a society that was once peacefully coexisting is as hard pressed to find their way back from perpetual sorrow and grief as a man in a dark hole, searching for his shadow, without so much as a single candle.

In this edition we were able to extensively cover the institutional collapse in Bangladesh, a country which was created in 1971 after a bloody war for independence from Pakistan. Millions of people were murdered, including women and children, while hundred thousands of people were sexually assaulted over the course of the conflict. The independence fighters created a nation which can be measured in land, but were unable to create a peaceful place where people have an opportunity to enjoy their fundamental universal rights. Not only the non-state actors, but state law enforcement agencies as well, are falling afoul of the law and the citizenry. "Who can trust the law when you can buy the law at cheap prices?" a scholar from Dhaka disclosed to this writer a couple of months ago.

The collapse of the multi-stored clothing factory, which killed hundreds of innocent people, as well as the use of live bullets to kill protesters, are just two examples of a series of catastrophes in Bangladesh since 1971. The dark has never turned into light; political vulgarism has played its own role while fueling the fundamentalism that is now curtailing individual liberty. However,

the dream is still alive while reminding us of the words of Abraham Lincoln. "Among free men," he said, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs." Over the years, history taught us the bitterness of violence. Entire generations of young men, women, and children, in certain countries, are far too often lost and their dreams, buried. Violence has become a tool of spreading social fear and creating a "culture of silence". State as well as non-state actors are engaging in violence continuously while advancing their own explanations to justify their actions. In one of his speeches, the late Robert F. Kennedy said, "... violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul."

"For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter. This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all," he further

said. The late-Robert Kennedy suggested, "We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled nor enriched by hatred or revenge."

In this issue we attempted to present torture as a global phenomenon while publishing a variety of views and ground reports. This will give all of us a clear-cut picture of torture, as well as a better understanding that we must unite to fight against torture in this crucial time. Torture is a tool of cowards; it does not give us any permanent solution to any problem, but it will create frustration and resentment among all of mankind. Neither peace nor solutions to any problem can found by torturing a person. It only spreads misery and trauma to both the lives of the victim and the assailant.

In their lengthy report released recently, by the Constitution Project based in the US, again reveals the use of torture by the US government and their law enforcement agencies. "U.S. forces, in many instances, used interrogation techniques on detainees that constitute torture. American personnel conducted an even larger number of interrogations that involved "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment. Both categories of actions violate U.S. laws and international treaties. Such conduct was directly counter to values of the Constitution and our nation," the report, which is more than six hundred pages, observed.

Again, the report has questioned US policy towards developing countries that seeks to teach the ways of governance under democracy, while engaging mass abuses of human rights around the world. It has given an opportunity to authoritarian leaders, who manipulate public opinion advance oppressive policies. It has also served to actually smother the seeds of authentic dissent and has helped foment the creation of more angry and violence prone movements. When their common policy reads as, "do as we say; not as we do", the prospect for meaningful change largely evaporates.

International organizations, concerned about the grave destruction of state institutions rather than military interventions, currently makes up only a minority of the international community's response to regions in conflict. The bloody reality and its contrast to the initial dream of the Arab Spring demonstrates this better than any other current crisis. "The so called spring turned into autumn, and now those who joined the spring have lost their direction", said a human rights activist from Western Sahara, during discussions with this writer. Meanwhile, a Tunisian blogger said, "The conflict in Tunisia has changed."

There are deadly internal conflicts within the groups who fought against the former dictator. In these circumstances the situation has turned into a dilemma where the people have lost their confidence and solidarity."

Let us try to understand, who we are. What happened to us? Let us try to find a way to close the Pandora's Box, we have opened.  Without understanding the gravity of the problem, personal liberty is smokescreen. Acting against torture is one of the main actions that needs to be addressed, globally, and every section of society must understand that torture cannot be justified under any circumstances. We must realize that searching for shadows in a dark hole will never give us a chance to find any solution to any problem that mankind is suffering.

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China: New Leadership Should Address Tiananmen Legacy

Author: Human Rights Watch-Fri, 31 May 2013 

(New York) - President Xi Jinping and other senior Chineseleaders should demonstrate their commitment to the rule of law by acknowledging the government's responsibility for the massacre of unarmed civilians 24 years ago, and by allowing commemorations of the anniversary, Human Rights Watch said today.  

More than two decades after the deadly crackdown, the Chinese government continues to deny wrongdoing in the suppression of the Tiananmen protests. The government has covered up the killings, failed to bring to justice the perpetrators, persecuted victims and survivors' family members, and maintained tight control over freedoms of assembly and expression.

"Chinese leaders continue to try to simply expunge Tiananmen from the history books," said Sophie Richardson, China Director. "But the new leadership can choose to act differently and distinguish itself from its predecessors. A good start would be to ensure that family members and activists can commemorate the events of 1989 without fear of reprisals." 

In the run-up to this month's 24^th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, the Chinese government has tightened control over activist relatives of victims. Zhang Zianling, a member of the Tiananmen Mothers, a nongovernmental group made up of relatives of people who disappeared or were killed during the crackdown, was barred from leaving for Hong Kong to attend an event ahead of the anniversary. Other outspoken activists are also targeted during this "sensitive period." For example, Tang Jingling, a Guangzhou rights lawyer, was taken away from his home by the police, according to media and nongovernmental organizations' reports.

The Chinese government has stifled any discussion of the demonstrations and aftermath in the mass media and educational institutions, and systematically censored the internet for date signifiers, including 6/4 and 89 - and even obscure references designed to avoid scrutiny, such as the fake date of "May 35."

According to media reports, in recent weeks the General Office of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee issued a document on the "seven taboos," a gag order to universities directing them to avoid discussions of certain subjects, including "universal values" and the Party's past wrongs. Another document issued jointly by the Party's Central Organization department, Propaganda department, and the Ministry of Education's party committee at around the same time calls on universities to strengthen the "ideological education" of young lecturers. University students played a major role in the 1989 protests.

The Tiananmen crackdown was precipitated by the mass gathering of workers, students, and others in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and in other cities in April 1989 to peacefully demonstrate for a pluralistic political system. The government responded to the intensifying protests in late May 1989 by declaring martial law and authorizing the military to use deadly force.

On June 3 and 4, 1989, Chinese military opened fire and killed untold numbers of unarmed civilians, many of whom did not participate in the protests. Following the massacre, the government arrested thousands of people on charges of "counter-revolution" and other criminal charges, including disrupting social order and arson.  According to the research body Dui Hua,the last of those jailed for "counter-revolution" for more than two decades have only just been released. 

The Chinese government has refused to account for the massacre or hold any perpetrators legally accountable for the killings. The government initially maintained that the crackdown was a valid response to a "counter-revolutionary incident," and stressed that some protestors attacked army convoys and burned military vehicles, resulting in casualties. It has refused to conduct an investigation into the events or to release data on those who were killed, injured, disappeared, or imprisoned, though it now refers to the incident as one of "political turmoil" (zhengzhi dongluan) rather than "counter-revolutionary" activity. The group Tiananmen Mothers has established the details of 202 people who were killed during the suppression of the movement in Beijing and other cities.

After the massacre, the government passed the 1989 Law on Assembly, Procession, and Demonstration (the Assembly Law), which outlines a series of restrictive requirements that effectively bar citizens from exercising the right. For example, under the regulations, all demonstrations must be approved by the police. In practice, however, police in China rarely approve public protests, particularly ones that seem likely to be critical of the government. In the lead-up to the 24^th anniversary, activists were detained and harassed for applying to hold public assemblies to commemorate the occasion.

For many young participants in the pro-democracy protests in 1989, the events left an indelible mark on their lives and spurred them to become long-term activists, for which they have paid a high price. Liu Xiaobo, a lecturer turned protest leader in 1989, became one of China's best known dissidents and is now serving a 12-year sentence in prison for "inciting subversion." His wife, Liu Xia, is under unlawful house arrest in the couple's home in Beijing. Chen Wei, a student leader of the 1989 protests, went on to document human rights abuses in Sichuan Province and was sentenced in December 2011 to nine years in prison for "inciting subversion."

Chen Xi, a university staff member in Guizhou Province and a protest leader in 1989, became an organizer of the Guizhou Human Rights Forum and was imprisoned in December 2011 for ten years on charges of "inciting subversion." All three experienced their first imprisonments in 1989 as part of the government's nationwide crackdown on the pro-democracy protests.

"Government denial and repression make it impossible for the wound of Tiananmen to heal," Richardson said. "Justice and accountability have been critical to resolving countries' tragic histories all over the world - the question now is whether Xi Jinping is brave enough to face that challenge."

In Retrospect: Burning of Jaffna library and the genocide thread

Every nation, every ethnicity or grouping of people with a common identity has its own cultural icons that distinguish its values, aspirations and history.

BY TREVOR GRANT-

01 JUNE 2013

No icon defined Tamil culture more than the Jaffna library, a beautiful building of immense stature and aesthetic value to the entire country.

Most important, though, was its’ significance as a centre of knowledge and learning, with 95,000 books,  the personal collections of many revered scholars, centuries-old newspapers and ancient palm leaf manuscripts that were invaluable records in the contested history of Sri Lanka.

On this day 32 years ago, the Jaffna library, and its priceless contents, were a smouldering wreck, gutted by a fire deliberately lit by raging Sinhalese mobs helped by police and encouraged by the Sinhalese Government, which openly supported the regular pogroms that killed thousands of Tamils and destroyed their businesses and homes.

Those manuscripts that define ancient Jaffna culture and those records from the lives of the famous Tamil scholars were lost forever.

As Tamil people commemorated another tragic day in their modern history this week, it is worth recording the link between the state-run persecution of Tamils today and this 1981 travesty;  a travesty not just against Tamils but against a civilised world that places inestimable value on knowledge and education.

What happened then, and what is still happening now in Sri Lanka, is a genocide, plain and simple. No ifs, not buts.

When those mobs torched the 48-year-old Jaffna library building on May 31, 1981, it was a highly symbolic attack upon Tamil culture, one meant to send a message that Tamil knowledge and learning, which was so widely-recognised and respected in the world, was being snuffed out, killed off, reduced to ashes, a black, grey nothingness that would never again blossom.

No people or government encourages and participates in the destruction of such important symbols of culture for isolated reasons. This was pre-meditated, part of a genocidal plan that, in modern terms, can be traced back to the departure of the British in 1947 and the arrival into power of a Sinhalese chauvinist movement, hell-bent on ignoring a constitution supposedly meant to  protect the Tamils and other minorities’ rights, but which was nothing more than a green light for genocide.

Of course, the world today prefers to keep discussion on Sri Lanka confined to a relatively-recent human rights issue, but, as has been said many times, keeping within this framework might suit duplicitous world powers motivated by strategic interests in south Asia but it does nothing to get to the heart of the problem.

The world’s powers could easily connect the dots of genocide by looking straight into the torture chambers, the jails, the rapes, the Israeli-like land thefts and building of new Sinhalese settlements, the permanent Sinhalese militarisation of the north and east, the destruction of Hindu temples and replacement with Buddhist shrines, and the re-naming in Sinhala of Tamil streets and villages.

Instead, by using only a human rights’ framework, they are able to avert their eyes and talk limply about the need to inquire into atrocities on both sides of a civil war and, of course,  maintain engagement with a Government accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity because, they say, it can lead to reconciliation in the country.

It is, of course, a load of codswallop. As the South African truth and reconciliation commission showed in the 1990s, there can be no reconciliation without proper truth-seeking and justice to those who have suffered for generations through institutionalised oppression.... and certainly not while the oppression continues.

This engagement of countries, such as Australia and the UK, with the Sri Lankan Government is doing nothing more than giving a brutal regime elbow-room to carry on with its’ genocide and ethnic-cleansing programs.

As the Jaffna University academic, Guruperan Kumaravadivel, observed recently, without the history of Tamil oppression and the on-going structural genocide, the story of the Tamils has little meaning. People need to look at the disenfranchisement and oppression from which the Tamil Tigers emerged to understand the situation, then and today.

As he said, the language of terror paints absolutist pictures that remove the possibility of context and history.

The language of reconciliation also hides the stark reality of a genocide that is revealed in so many ways today. It’s there  in the scars on the back of a Melbourne Tamil man tortured only last month with heated metal rods in a Sri Lankan police station; in the deaths of at least 34 journalists who have sought to uncover the truth of this ruthless Rajapaksa regime.

It’s also there in the growing numbers of Tamils undertaking life-threatening boat journeys to Australia as they flee the unrelenting terror in their lives; and sadly, it’s there in the jailings, beatings and torture of Tamil asylum-seekers cruelly returned under the illegal, inhumane policies of the Australian and UK governments.

On this day of commemoration, let us not forget the common thread that links all these despicable, undeniable human rights abuses and the smouldering ruins of the Jaffna library 32 years ago today; a thread called genocide.

Image courtesy of Myra Veres | http://myraveres.wix.com

© JDS

---

Trevor Grant is a former chief cricket writer at The Age, and now works with the Boycott Sri Lanka Cricket Campaign and the Refugee Action Collective.

‘Death fast’ by Sabaragamuwa students, two admitted to hospital

SATURDAY, 01 JUNE 2013 

The ‘protest fast’ launched on the 28th by four students of Sabaragamuwa University against the arbitrary suspension of student leaders, banning them from sitting examinations and demanding solutions for the burning issues of students in the university has turned to a ‘death fast’ from yesterday (31st). The protestors have abstained from taking food or water say student representatives.

Two students engaged in the ‘death fast’ were admitted to Pambahinna Hospital today (1st) morning and later they were transferred to Balangoda Hospital.

Meanwhile, a large number of students marched to Pambahinna junction today morning and are engaged in an agitation blocking the Colombo – Badulla road say reports.

Arrest and detention continues in Sri Lanka. Canadian lawyers association allege

Saturday , 01 June 2013

Arresting and detention activities still continue under the Terrorism Prevention Law without any reasons, even though war has come to an end in Sri Lanka.

 

Canadian lawyers federation pointed out at the human rights sessions during such detentions, court procedures in any forms not adopted.’

 

The 23rd session of UN Human Rights Council was held in Geneva and the Canadian lawyers submitted this allegation against Sri Lanka two days back.

 

 

 

Sri Lanka government has removed Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake through an illegal impeachment. Still the Terrorism Prevention Law is in existence in Sri Lanka. Arrest and detentions through this is still continuing. During these detentions, court procedures in any form are not adopted.

 

Concerning the impact on independence of Sri Lanka judiciary, the Human Rights Council should take attention was a request made by the Canadian lawyers association from Human Rights Council.

Students tear gassed, five arrested

SATURDAY, 01 JUNE 2013

Police and Air Force personnel carried out a tear gas and baton attack on an agitation held by students of Sabaragamuwa University protesting against the move to ban the Students Council, Faculty Councils in the University and suspend four student leaders including the President and the General Secretary of the Student’s Council.

The students held the agitation at Pambahinna junction on Colombo – Badulla road.

Five students including a former president and a secretary of Social Sciences and Languages faculties were arrested by the police while more than 50 male and female students have been injured due to the inhuman attacks carried out by the police and Air Force personnel say students.

Residents in the area vehemently condemn the attack carried out by the police and Air force personnel. Students say even those who were in hostels and homes were dragged out and assaulted by the police and Air force personnel.

WikiLeaks: JVP Expressed Great Concern Over US Prosecution For War Crimes Of Fonseka And Gota

June 1, 2013 

“The JVP expressed great concern over recent rumors of U.S. prosecution for war crimes of Chief of Defense Staff General Sarath Fonseka, and possibly Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, which could crush its election hopes.” the US Embassy Colombo informed Washington. 

The Colombo Telegraph found the related leaked cable from the WikiLeaks database. The ‘confidential’ cable recounts the details of a meeting the US Embassy had with the JVP MP Vijitha Herath  .The cable was written on November 06, 2009  by the US Ambassador to Colombo, Patricia A. Butenis.

The ambassador wrote; “In a meeting with PolOff, MP Vijitha Herath of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP, the People’s Liberation Front) offered guarded comments indicated the leftist-nationalist party was probably waiting for a more certain political climate to declare publicly its political intentions. Herath repeatedly underscored the need to abolish the Executive Presidency. He cited the economy and IDPs as central issues for the JVP, issues which he accused the GSL of largely ignoring.”

Read the relevant part of the cable below;

Why Did The 21 May Electricity Strike Fail?

By Kumar David -June 1, 2013 

Prof Kumar David

The strike was not defeated, it failed. Those who remember the July 1980 strike will appreciate the difference; the government attacked the strikers and demonstrators, sacked over 80,000 and arrested the leaders. JR and his fascistic thugs broke the strike. That is not what happened this time though the government used threats, enforced rigid attendance records and messed around with salary payment dates. Nevertheless this is not the main reason why the strike fizzled out; the reasons were more fundamental to the issue itself.

It can also be argued that the JVP as well as the other political parties over-politicised the issue. That is, electricity cost is not specifically a working class or trade union demand, but a mass issue, hence the basis of the organisation should have been as a people’s action and not a trade union action. Readers who know about the Great Hartal of August 1953 will recall that the LSSP, which led the event, organised a mass protest and civil disobedience movement in the towns, the villages and in the unions too. Like the electricity price issue, the immediate trigger was mass economic protest against the rice subsidy cut. The leaders strategized correctly, and the people responded massively. Nevertheless, the main reason for the failure of the 21 May strike was not strategic or tactical mistakes by the leading political actors, though these were contributory. The fundamental reasons were to do with the issue itself.

To say that the strike was unsuccessful is not to say it was a flop. It was not a flop because there was a good turn out in the private sector and a radicalised mass of young workers participated with enthusiasm. Even in the public sector there were pockets in which participation was good – government press, the railways (though not enough to perceptibly affect train services) and teachers in some districts. Buses seemed to run normally, this reduced the visible impact of the strike.

Three main reasons

There are three fundamental reasons which are more important than the tactical manoeuvring of the government and the strike leaders that explain the reduced impact of the strike.

a)      The concession granted to low-income households consuming up to 60 units a month.

b)      The broad realisation that some increase in electricity prices was unavoidable.

c)      Bills on the new tariff scheme have not yet reached households; the shock is still to hit.

Households consuming up to 60 units a month will not face any price increase at all. This is a major victory for the protest movement. The President backed down when he saw the rising tide of the anger and made a panicky May Day announcement retracting part of the tariff hike proposal. Power Minister Pavithra Wanniararchci told a press conference that 48% of electricity consuming households belong to this 60 or less category; if this is true, nearly half the electricity users in the country who belong to the low income bracket will face no price increase. They have no reason to join a strike; this divided the lowest rung of the working class.

The second reason is that everybody knows some electricity price increase is unavoidable. The average cost of supply of a unit (kWh) of electricity up to the consumer’s plug-point is estimated at Rs 20 to Rs 21 for 2013. Adding together unit-charges, fixed-charge and “fuel adjustment”, the averaged charge per unit, for a consumer using 30, 60 and 90 units a month is Rs 4.75, Rs 6.20 and Rs 12.73, respectively. Even a consumer using 100 units a month pays at an average rate of Rs 20.30 per unit after including all charges. Only when a consumer reaches 105 units a month does the average price reach the cost of supply. (Middle and upper income households pay an exorbitant price compared to supply cost. At 200, 250 and 300 units per month, households pay an average price of Rs 33.08, Rs 38.22 and Rs 41.65 per unit, respectively).

It has long been known that electricity is sold below cost to low and middle income households and a price increase was going to come at some point. I believe some government and private sector workers accepted this as inevitable. It is the middle and upper-middle class household that is in for a shock when the bills start arriving!

So this brings me to the third factor. Bills had not arrived by May 21 for the great majority of users. When they do come there are shocks to expect. A household using 61 units will be hit by 80% price increase – a 60 unit user will pay Rs 372 and have no increase, but a 61 unit user will get a bill for Rs 763! New bills on the way and percentage increase compared to the previous bills are as follows; 91 units a month Rs 1696 (72% increase); 121 units, Rs 2814 (50% increase); 181 units, Rs 5498 (41% increase). Consumers in the 300 to 500 units a month range face increases of 20% to 25%, but the bills and absolute amounts payable are huge.

Business, hotels, industry and government offices pay less than domestic consumers using over 105 units. That is, these households are cross-subsidising business and commercial premises, hotels and tourists, government offices and industry, in addition to subsidising low-end domestic consumers! If the public is agreeable to this as a matter of principle, I have nothing to add, but how can the public agree or disagree when none of this has been brought into the open?

Corruption and inefficiency

The reason why generation cost is higher than it should be is not because past corruption has added a huge burden to the capital cost of plant. The bribes that were taken and given in the 1990s and early 2000s, though large, are not large compared to the capital cost of power projects. The real problem is that instead of building coal power-plants 10 to 20 years, due to corrupt influences and also because of pressure by environmentalists, coal was delayed over and over again while oil-fired plant was built. Coal power can be brought to the plug point for less than Rs 15 per unit, but electricity from oil-fired plant costs between Rs 30 and Rs 40 by the time in arrives at the plug point.

Hence though Lanka has 30 to 35% hydro and now about 16 to 18% coal, when the unavoidable oil-fired power is added, the average cost (fuel, capital repayment, interest, maintenance, management) is Rs 20 to Rs 21 per kWh. This is not an unreasonable if you recall that the best managed systems in the world like Hong Kong,Singapore,New Zealand and theUK apply an electricity tariff in the range of Rs 25 per kWh. (These systems have little or no hydro so their generation costs are higher). Therefore the argument that the CEB is highly inefficient is not true. The main problem is the high use of oil power. We are stuck with much oil-fired capacity due to wrong and/or corrupt project decisions in the past.

Governing without policy

This government has no industrial policy; it lives by day to day decision making. The confusion in electricity pricing is the tip of the iceberg. The government has undertaken a great deal of infrastructure development, some of it very creditable, some useless white elephants, but on industrial policy it is directionless.

Lanka’s electricity price increase will render exports less competitive, discourage investment and further slow down growth that has been stalling since August 2012. There is no long-term thinking, planning or strategy. The mish-mash in the electricity sector, the President jumping this way and that, the inability to reform the CEB for enhanced productivity and a similar state of affairs in the petroleum sector, all have the same root; absence of, policy, managerial discipline, and political will or understanding. You can’t teach old dogs new tricks; this government will not learn or reform.

Dikkam people file case against land confiscation

Saturday , 01 June 2013

31 land owners’ natives of   Dikkam locality situated in the Point Pedro divisional secretariat are on preparation to file petition in courts, regarding their lands getting confiscated for the construction of military camps.

Meanwhile the area people from the Anaicottai Koolavadi area have already filed cases against their lands getting confiscated.

Land confiscation notification was displayed last April 12th indicating eight acres of land belonging to 31 persons from the J/499 grama sevaka unit located in Point Pedro for the construction of camp to the Military 16th Wijayabahu infantry.

Land surveyors visited the said areas to survey but they were sent back by the land owners.

In this situation, the Tamil National Alliance parliament members Mawai Senathirasa and M.A.Sumenthiran visited the said region yesterday evening processed registrations to file petitions.

Similarly in many areas in the peninsula against the military land confiscation, the relevant owners have come forward to file their case was said.

CID ordered to publish ads calling for witnesses in Matale mass grave case 

by Dasun Edirisinghe-May 31, 2013

Matale Magistrate and Additional District Judge Chathurika Silva yesterday ordered the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) to publish advertisements in all three languages, Sinhala, Tamil and English, asking the relatives of those who disappeared during the 1987–‘89 period, in the Matale District, to come forward and give evidence in the mass grave case.

When the case was called yesterday, the Magistrate also told the CID that they should start DNA testing on 155 skeletons and other remains after receiving the report from the International Police, Interpol, on the bone samples sent to it.

Earlier, the CID told in the Court that the bone parts were being currently investigated by the international police and the report was pending.The Judge also ordered that statements be recorded from the then Medical Superintendent of the Matale hospital, doctors and administrative officers. The CID informed court that they had already started recording statements from those persons.

Watagala said that another 22 relatives of disappeared persons, in the Matale District, had also submitted their affidavits to the Court saying that their sons and daughters were forcibly taken by the Army personnel from their homes.

The Magistrate would announce its decision as to whether the Court would accept their affidavits and include them as witnesses in the case at the next hearing date on June 28.

Forensic and archeological experts have confirmed that the skulls and other skeletal remains, unearthed from the mass grave in the Matale hospital grounds, belong to the 1987–90 period. Around 155 skeletons were unearthed from the site.

Sunil Watagala, Upula Kumarapperuma and eight other lawyers appeared on behalf of the victims in the case and the JVP parliamentary group leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake also appeared before the Matale Magistrate Court yesterday.