Anura Kumara new JVP leader

February 2, 2014, 10:35 pm 

Outgoing JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe hugs his successor Anura Kumara Dissanayake at the party’s seventh convention held at the Sugathadasa Stadium yesterday.

By Dasun Edirisinghe

JVP parliamentary group leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake was yesterday unanimously elected as the new party leader at its seventh convention held at the Sugathadasa Indoor Stadium in Colombo.

Dissanayake succeeds Somawansa Amarasinghe, who served as the Leader of the JVP from 1994 after demise of the founder leader Rohana Wijeweera in 1989.

An old boy of the Thambuttegama Central College, Dissanayake is a Physical Science graduate of the Kelaniya University.

Dissanayake was the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Lands and Irrigation in the UPFA government under then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga from 2004 to 2005.

General Secretary Tilvin Silva was re-elected at yesterday’s convention and a new post called National Organiser was awarded to Bimal Ratnayake.

The JVP media team said that former leader Somawansa Amarasinghe was elected the International Affairs Secretary, Vijitha Herath the Propaganda Secretary, K. D. Lalkantha the Administrative Secretary and Sunil Handunnetti the Finance Secretary.

The post of Finance Secretary was earlier held by Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

Meanwhile, two new members were elected to the party Politburo. Two new members are Bimal Ratnayake and Sunil Handunnetti. Other members of the Politburo are Somawansa Amarasinghe, Tilvin Silva, Anura Dissanayake, Vijitha Herath and K. D. Lalkantha.

The Central Committee was also increased by five. The new Central Committee of 30 Members was also elected unanimously. The policy framework of the JVP under the theme ‘Our Vision’ was adopted unanimously at the convention.

Members of the new Central Committee are Somawansa Amarasinghe, Tilvin Silva, Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, Vijitha Herath, K. D. Lal Kantha, Bimal Ratnayaka, Sunil Handunneththi, Jinadasa Kithulegoda, Ramalingam Chandrasekar, Lakshman Nipunarachchi, Nihal Galappaththi, Samantha Vidyaratna, Mahinda Jayasinghe, Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa, Gamini Ratnayaka, Wasantha Piyatissa, Attorney at Law Sunil Watagala, Samanmalee Gunasinghe, H.P. Dhammika, Chandrika Adhikary, Wasantha Samarasinghe, Samantha Koralearachchi, Sumathipala Manawadu, M.D. Wijeratna, Sisira Kumara Wahalathanthri, Namal Karunartna, Nalin Hewage, T.B. Sarath, Sudath Balagalla and Janaka Adhikary.

Shiranthi Brother SriLankan Chairman’s Girlfriend Couldn’t Wait

February 3, 2014 |

Just a week after local newspapers exposed SriLankan Airlines Chairman, Nishantha Wickremasinghe for ordering  a Colombo bound aircraft from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore just to pick him up en route it has now been revealed that he had once again intervened to  change another flight.

Nishantha Wickramasinghe, Chairman SriLankan Airlines delivered the inaugural speech at the second International Air Transport Association (IATA) Global Human Capital Summit, ‘Talent for Tomorrow’ | File photo

The Sunday Times  reported  that a SriLankan Airlines flight from Colombo to Paris was supposed to wait until a tour group of some 80 passengers going to the French capital arrived from the Maldivian capital of Male, but had suddenly taken off after “an influential crew member” had intervened.

“However after a short wait, it suddenly took off without the inbound passengers from Male. The 80 tourists were transferred to other carriers,” the Sunday Times report said.

“The talking point on the corridors of the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) was whether an “influential” flight crew member with connections to the top telephoned a big wig and said the long wait is troubling her. Instructions came for the flight to take off for Paris immediately” the newspaper reported.

Colombo Telegraph can now reveal that the flight crew member in question who made the impatient telephone call was Chathurika Muhandiramge. According to SriLankan Airline sources she is intimately involved with Chairman Nishantha Wickramasinghe. She had put a phone call through to the Chairman to ask him to order that the flight take off ahead of schedule to Paris.

The cost of rerouting the 80 passengers from Male on other flights would have had to be borne by Sri Lankan Airlines and therefore by the Sri Lankan tax payer since the airline is operating at a massive loss.

Recently Wckramasinghe diverted a commercial UL flight to Singapore to have himself, his wife and a guest picked up from Singapore’s Changi Airport. Telephoning the airline, Wickramasinghe ordered that the scheduled SriLankan direct flight from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Colombo be diverted to Singapore so that he and his entourage could be picked up on the way, the Sunday Times reported last week. This was because Wickramasinghe could not wait for the scheduled SriLankan flight from Singapore to Colombo that was to take off from Changi in just two hours. The National carrier has been running in to hundreds of millions of rupees of losses since its management was taken back from Emirates Airlines by the Rajapaksa Administration. Wickramasinghe is the elder brother of First Lady Shiranthi Rajapaksa and has no experience or formal education that qualifies him to be the head of an airline.

Government proves murder of journalists is unstoppable -police suppresses information that Mel is a journalist


(Lanka-e-News- 02.Feb.2014, 10.30PM) Following the return of President Rajapakse from his foreign tour, every opportunity that was offered to him on the platter in view of an important international Geneva conference that is in the offing, was allowed to go begging with the gory slaying of an international journalist at the crucial juncture. Just when the Geneva international human rights conference is around the corner and where a resolution is going to be adopted against SL, an internationally renowned journalist (female) was killed most brutally this morning. The deceased is Kalubowilage Melsia Gunasekera alias Mel Gunasekera.

She had been a correspondent for French news service on economics and research relating to SL until 2012. She was also a reporter for Sunday times and an Editor of Lanka business on line originally. Currently she had been working for the US Fitch rating agency.

She was living with her parents and brother at Battaramulla , and she is a 40 year old spinster .When her parents had gone to church since it was a Sunday, she had been alone in the house this morning . The murderer had in fact come in search of the victim to the house based on evidence . 

When her parents returned from church they had been shocked to see blood stains in the veranda ,and her body had been dragged to the center of the house. There were cut and chop marks caused by a sharp weapon on her neck and body. 

The cold blooded murder had taken place between 6.30 and 8.50 in the morning. The parents have informed the police emergency unit on 119 at 8.50 a.m. ,but the police had arrived only at 11.20 a.m. When the information of this heinous crime was passed immediately to the IGP commanding chamber and his information room , though the name , address and age had been recorded , her profession had been omitted in the record.

Interestingly and intriguingly , DIG Sumith Edirisinghe of western south Colombo division had informed the SSP Nugegoda office not to mention that the victim is a journalist. It is learnt that this is on the orders of criminal defense secretary Gotabaya.

Accordingly , in the statements recorded by the senior police inspector K C W Wickremesinghe OIC of Talangama police station under whose purview this incident comes and the OIC crimes division D R D Atapattu SI , it is not mentioned that the deceased is a journalist. The statement had been recorded in the heinous crime register 68/ 2014 of the Talangama police.

As is always the case under the lawless reign of the Rajapakses , no suspect has been apprehended so far.

When looking back on the history of the countless murders committed under this regime , it is clear that the government had always taken advantage of situations like this to allay any suspicion being directed against it , like in the timing of the present murder when people would doubt whether the government will commit such a ghastly murder when it has to face and answer at the Geneva human rights conference which is government’s biggest bugbear, is close at hand.

Meanwhile one suspect arrested by the police in the evening at Hanwella who was a painter.

Journalist assaulted after Navy rugby match

 Sunday, 02 February 2014 

The violence experienced at rugby matches where the Sri Lanka Navy team captained by the President’s youngest son, Rohitha Rajapaksa, has taken a new twist with a journalist being assaulted after yesterday’s match between the CR and FC team and the Navy team.

Sports journalist Shanaka Amarasinghe was reportedly assaulted at the Navy rugby grounds in Welisara after the rugby match.

Amarasinghe according to the local media had lodged a complaint with the police.

Amarasinghe has been a promoter of rugby for over a decade as a player, referee and a sports journalist.

He has explained that he was assaulted within full view of the military police.

He was walking to his car after the match when a person had grabbed his hand and dragged him to an open stage where four other persons had joined and assaulted and kicked him.

However, when Amarasinghe’s friend had started to shout and make a noise, the assailants had reportedly walked slowly to the Navy camp.

Shortage of water hits 2,000 farming families    

By Mirudhula Thambiah-February 3, 2014

The livelihood of more than 2,000 farming families has been affected by the lack of water to irrigate nearly 3,000 acres of paddy lands in Kumulamunai, Mullaitivu. This was revealed yesterday by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Northern Provincial Councillor, T. Raviharan, who added that the lack of water was due to the renovation work on the Kumulamunai –ThannimurippuTank not been completed.

Raviharan said the tank was not renovated for the past 60 years. However, last year, under the Ministry of Economic Development Rs 396.4 million was allocated to renovate it. But the renovation was never carried out methodically and the villagers were disappointed.

"Since the villagers were disappointed over the renovation of the tank, they complained to number of authorities," he said. Raviharan stressed the renovation was below standard, therefore it has caused danger to the villagers. The water canals too had not been constructed properly, therefore adequate water could not be pumped to the paddy fields.


"I spoke to the irrigation engineer in Mullativu regarding the issue. He did accept the imbalances in the renovation process. He assured me that the specific construction company will complete the renovation very soon and 30% of the cost will only be given, if the construction is completed," he said.

Paint baas confesses to killing journalist He broke into house, thinking no one was at home  She was killed as she recognised the suspect Victim’s BlackBerry phone recovered from killer

Mel Gunasekera

by Dasun Edirisinghe-February 2, 2014, 

Police last evening arrested the prime suspect in the killing of journalist Mel Gunasekera at Battaramulla.

Police spokesman SSP Ajith Rohana told The Island last night that the officers of the special Crime Investigation Unit of the Mirihana Police had made the arrest at the New Road, Dompe. The suspect Samson Joseph Anthony (39) of the same address is a house painter and he had worked at Mel’s house three months ago.

The suspect has told the police that he had entered the house to rob it, thinking that there was no one there as he knew that the Gunsekeras went to church every Sunday morning. Unexpectedly, he had seen Mel and killed her as she recognised him.

SSP Rohana said that the police had recovered the slain journalist’s BlackBerry phone in the possession of the suspect.

The suspect had been identified by the footages of the CCTV cameras fixed in the house, the SSP said.

Police probing the murder of journalist Mel (Melicia) Gunasekera (40), yesterday morning said the investigations were in progress on the basis of fingerprints and CCTV footage obtained from her home at Gemunu Mawatha, Sri Subhuthipura, Battaramulla.

Addressing a hurriedly summoned press conference at the police headquarters, Police spokesman SSP Ajith Rohana said that seven special police teams under DIG Sumith Edirisinghe and Nugegoda SP Mervyn Wickremesinghe had been deployed to investigate the killing.Melicia had been killed between 6.15 am and 8.15 am while her family members were attending a church service, SSP Rohana said. Although there had been four dogs at home, no neighbour had heard them bark in the morning, he said. Therefore the killing may have been committed by a person or group of persons the dogs were familiar with.

The police spokesman said that footage of three CCTV cameras of the neighbours of the murdered journalist had also been obtained and the investigators expected that they would provide valuable leads to investigations.

Gunasekera’s body was found in her kitchen by her family members upon returning home from church. Her throat had been slit.

Police found parts of a knife and a screwdriver suspected to have been brought to the house by the killer/s who gained entry by removing the grille of a French window.

Police had brought in K-9 assistance to trace the whereabouts of the killer. Rockey, a police dog of the Mirihana police station, led the team of policemen for about one kilometre along the road and police suspect that it was the route taken by the killer after committing the crime. The footages of the CCTV camera fixed by the house owners along this road were recovered by the investigators.

According to the evidence gathered during the preliminary investigations, the police suspect the killer/s had jumped over the parapet wall of the two-storeyed house of the journalist, and removed the grille of one of the windows to enter the house.

Neighbours living in the house opposite the Mels’ had heard her scream and come out to check but had seen nothing suspicious.

Police said that the four dogs had been unleashed in the garden. Thus the killer/s should have been familiar to them, police said.

Police are also investigating to find the whereabouts of some masons who had been working at the house sometime back.

Kaduwela Acting Magistrate Kamal Wijesiri visited the scene and conducted the preliminary magisterial inquiry.

Mel’s father is an accountant/businessman, who owned two factories including one near his residence. But they were closed in recent years after he had fallen ill and his two children, Mel and a younger brother, who is also an accountant, were not interested following in their father’s footsteps.

Armed with a degree from the University of East Landon, Mel joined The Sunday Times Business Desk in 1996 and she soon became the News Editor Business. From there she went to be the founder Editor of the lbo.lk. She also had a stint with the international news agency Agence France Presse (AFP), Colombo as a correspondent. She was working as one of the Assistant Vice Presidents of Fitch Ratings Lanka at the time of her death.

ஊடகவியலாளர் மெல் குணசேகர குத்திக் கொலை

இலங்கையின் முன்னணி பெண் ஊடகவியலாளர்களில் ஒருவரான மெல் குணசேகர குத்திக் கொல்லப்பட்டுள்ளார்.

கடைசியாக பிரசுரிக்கப்பட்டது: 2 பிப்ரவரி, 2014Translate this page 

மெல் குணசேகரவின் சடலம் கூரிய இலங்கையின் போர்க்காலத்தில் ஏஎஃப்பி செய்திச் சேவைக்காக ஊடகவியலாளர் மெல் குணசேகர கொழும்பிலிருந்து பணியாற்றினார்.

ஊடகத் தொழில் காரணமாகத் தான் அவர் கொல்லப்பட்டாரா என்பது உடனடியாகத் தெரியவில்லை என்று செய்தியாளர்கள் கூறுகின்றனர்.

இலங்கையில் கடந்த பல ஆண்டுகளில் பல ஊடகவியலாளர்கள் கொல்லப்பட்டுள்ளனர்.

இந்தக் கொலைகள் எதற்கும் இன்னும் நீதி நிலைநாட்டப்படவில்லை என்ற குற்றச்சாட்டுக்களும் இலங்கை அரசாங்கத்தின் மீதுள்ளன.

Journalist stabbed to death by Mel Gunasekera

Mel Gunasekera

Mel Gunasekera stabbed and killed one of the leading women journalists in Sri Lanka.

Mel Gunasekera pointed ayutamonr's body has been recovered from his home in Colombo with the stabbed wounds.

Mel murdering a journalist for the news of the war in Sri Lanka, Colombo served eehppi.

Media professionals killed because he did not immediately say that the journalists.

Many journalists have been killed in Sri Lanka in the past several years.

The charges have yet to be established for any of the murders, the Sri Lankan government's mitullana justice.

An Eulogy: Mel Gunasekera

By Rohan Samarajiva -February 2, 2014 

Dr. Rohan Samarajiva

On the morning of the first Sunday of February 2014 I felt as though the ground I stood on suddenly disappeared.

I learned from a tweet that my friend and leading economic journalist Mel Gunesekera had been murdered in her home. How could this happen?

She was in the prime of her life. She was not sick. She was not run over by a bus.

She was stabbed and killed in her home, a place I had dropped her off at. How could this happen? Let posterity settle the why question. But how could this happen to someone so good, so vivacious, with so much to give?

I met Mel in 1998. I had come from the US and just started work at the Telecom Regulatory Commission. She was also recently returned from the UK after her degree and was working at the Sunday Times.

I recall her telling me how she walked home from work preferring the exercise to being groped in the bus.

Mel

I got to know a lot of journalists during my time at the TRC, but she and Asantha Sirimanne were special. In these young people I saw the possibility of an enlightened public discourse on economics, a subject sadly neglected by our media.

She then moved to Lanka Business Online to become its editor. She kept suggesting that I should write a column when we met on and off after my return in 2002.

And finally, a month after the 2004 tsunami over dinner at my house, I said yes. Thus began my Choices column in LBO, now going for almost nine years. What she told me in the nicest possible way about keeping it short and having lots of paragraphs, I followed. Mel will live on in my head, telling me to keep it short.

She should be writing my eulogy, not me hers. The young should not predecease the old. We should have built a country where a young journalist could take the bus with no fear and spend a Sunday morning in her own house without getting murdered. The war brutalized us. Killing became nothing.

We built fortified houses that were death traps should the perimeters be breached. What should we do? Put electric fences and fortify them further like my friends in South Africa have done? Or break down the walls and encourage eyes on the street?

I would have so loved to have this and many other conversations with Mel. Why were we too busy to enjoy her company while she was alive?

You lived well, Mel. We are bereft.

Thailand vote results stalled after protests

SUNDAY 02 FEBRUARY 2014

Thailand's election commission says it is unable to announce the results of nationwide elections after anti-government protesters force the closure of hundreds of polling stations.

Speaking at a news conference in Bangkok, election commission chairman Supachai Somcharoen said that the requirements of election law had not been met.

"The election laws require that elections be composed of results from voting units, results from election districts and those who vote outside their district," Supachai said.

Despite some disruption, voting proceeded relatively peacefully.

Polling stations closed at the end of Sunday with no reports of violent clashes, easing fears of bloodshed a day after gun battles in Bangkok left seven people wounded.

"Today was a lucky day. There was no violence," said election commission official Somchai Sisoothiyakorn.

'A peaceful election day'

"Thank you everyone from both sides for contributing to a peaceful election day. The election today didn't cause any loss of life," he added.

The national focus was on capital Bangkok where 488 of the capital's 6,600 polling stations were shut and several skirmishes broke out between protesters intent on disrupting the vote and frustrated would-be voters.

The election commission said the closure of polls affected more than six million registered voters.

In one Bangkok suburb, voters who had been deprived of their chance to vote decided to hold a mock election.

Residents of Ratchathewi district took over an abandoned polling station, set up beer crates as ballot boxes and used scrap paper to vote.

Voters doubled as officials and said that about a thousand people cast their vote.

New voting date

The organizers said they will take the results of their mock election to the police.

The Election Commission is expected to meet on Monday to decide on a new voting date for those who were not able to cast their ballot on Sunday.

Anti-government protesters accuse Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra of carrying on the practices of her billionaire brother Thaksin, a former prime minister they allege used the family fortune and state funds to influence voters and subvert democracy.

Yingluck called the early polls, hoping to reaffirm her mandate after facing strident street proteststhat threatened to result in prolonged violence.

But anti-government forces, who have been demonstrating since November, want an unelected interim government to hold office for up to two years to implement political and electoral reforms to fight corruption and money politics.

India police: Village council ordered woman's gang rape

Village councils are not legally binding in India

The Associated Press Posted: Jan 23, 2014 

Demonstrators marked the first death anniversary of the Delhi gang rape victim in New Delhi in December 2013. An outpouring of anger was seen across India after a 23-year-old woman died following a gang rape on a moving bus. (Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters)

A 20-year-old Indian woman said she was gang-raped on the orders of a village council because she fell in love with a man from a different religion, police said Thursday.

Thirteen men have been arrested in the Monday night attack, police official C. Sudhakar said. The woman told police that she lost count of how many men raped her. She was hospitalized Thursday in serious condition.

• Will India gang-rape death sentences change anything?
• ​Delhi's voices, women and rape in India

Television footage showed the woman, her face covered by scarves, being led into a hospital with an IV tube in her arm.

According to police, the village council in Subalpur village ordered the woman to pay a fine of 25,000 rupees (nearly $500 Cdn) when her relationship with the man was discovered. But when her family said they were too poor to pay, the council ordered the gang rape.

A rash of high-profile rapes in India over the past year has sparked widespread outrage over chronic sexual violence and government failures to protect women.

The West Bengal case is particularly troubling, because it was allegedly ordered by a council made up of village elders. Such councils are not legally binding in India, but they are seen as the will of the local community. The councils decide on social norms in the village, and in some cases they dictate the way women can dress or who they can marry. Those who flout the councils risk being ostracized.

Subalpur is about 180 kilometres north of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal.

Four years ago, a village council in Birbhum district ordered a young woman paraded naked through the village. She was accused of falling in love with a man from a different caste.

Annie Raja, general secretary of the National Federation of Indian Women, said that such local councils destroy women's rights.

"They are dead set against giving basic human rights to women," she said. "These are non-constitutional bodies and the West Bengal government should take stringent action against them."

India's Supreme Court has in the past issued opinions condemning the councils as illegal bodies. Several legal organizations are pushing Parliament to pass a comprehensive law that would make edicts by local councils illegal.

Woody Allen's adopted daughter accuses him of sexual abuse

SUNDAY 02 FEBRUARY 2014

Film director Woody Allen's adopted daughter Dylan Farrow renews allegations the film director sexually assaulted her when she was seven, in an open letter to the New York Times.

Dylan Farrow claims in 1992 Allen led her to a "dim, closet-like attic" at the family's Connecticut home and "then he sexually assaulted me."

The letter to columnist Nicholas Kristof was posted online on Saturday and is the first time the 28-year-old has spoken publicly about the allegations.

She wrote: ""He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother's electric train set. Then he sexually abused me".

"That he got away with what he did to me haunted me as I grew up.

"I was stricken with guilt that I had allowed him to be near other little girls."

Farrow didn't specify Allen's actions but described how Allen would have her get in bed with him, and at other times "place his head in my naked lap and breathe in and breathe out."

'Doing things I didn't like'

She continued: "For as long as I could remember, my father had been doing things to me that I didn't like.

"These things happened so often, so routinely, so skillfully hidden from a mother that would have protected me had she known, that I thought it was normal."

Dylan was adopted by Woody Allen and his then-partner, actress Mia Farrow, in 1980.

Allen was investigated on child molestation claims for the alleged incident in 1992, but prosecutors elected not to charge him.

The letter comes not long after Allen was honoured at the Golden Globes with the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award.

Allen, who denies the allegations, and former partner Mia Farrow declined to comment.

'Probable cause' to charge Allen

The handling of the investigation was criticised after Litchfield County state attorney Frank S. Maco said in a press conference there was "probable cause" to charge Allen, although he chose not to.

A disciplinary panel found that Maco may have prejudiced the then-ongoing custody battle between Allen and Mia Farrow by making an accusation without formal charges.

The 1992 allegation came shortly after Allen became involved with Mia Farrow's adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.

Allen was not the adoptive father of Previn, who was about 19 at the time. Allen was in his mid-50s.

The two married in 1997 and have two adopted daughters.

Though many fans never forgave Allen for his romance with Previn, the director's career was largely uninterrupted.

He has continued to release a new film almost every year, with his latest, "Blue Jasmine," earning three Academy Award nominations, including a screenwriting nomination for Allen.

Bayer Pharmaceutical CEO: Cancer drug only ‘for western patients who can afford it’

By Scott Kaufman-Sunday, January 26, 2014

In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Bayer CEO Marijn Dekkers said that his company’s new cancer drug, Nexavar, isn’t “for Indians,” but “for western patients who can afford it.”

The drug, which is particularly effective on late-stage kidney and liver cancer, costs approximately $69,000 per year in India, so in March 2012 an Indian court granted a license to an Indian company to produce to the drug at a 97 percent discount.

Bayer sued Natco Pharma Ltd., but in March of last year, the High Court in Mumbai denied its appeal. Bayer CEO called the compulsory license issued by the Indian court “essentially theft,” then said “[w]e did not develop this medicine for Indians…[w]e developed it for western patients who can afford it.”

In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Bayer CEO Marijn Dekkers said that his company’s new cancer drug, Nexavar, isn’t “for Indians,” but “for western patients who can afford it.”

The drug, which is particularly effective on late-stage kidney and liver cancer, costs approximately $69,000 per year in India, so in March 2012 an Indian court granted a license to an Indian company to produce to the drug at a 97 percent discount.

Bayer sued Natco Pharma Ltd., but in March of last year, the High Court in Mumbai denied its appeal. Bayer CEO called the compulsory license issued by the Indian court “essentially theft,” then said “[w]e did not develop this medicine for Indians…[w]e developed it for western patients who can afford it.”

[Image of Bayer CEO Dekkers via 2010 Annual Report]

Scott Kaufman
Scott Eric Kaufman is the proprietor of the AV Club's Internet Film School and, in addition to Raw Story, also writes for Lawyers, Guns & Money. He earned a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of California, Irvine in 2008.

Sen. Tom Harkin Visits Cuba, Is Pretty 

Impressed With Its Public Health System

National Journal 

The Iowa Democrat drove for 186 miles over three days to examine the country's

health care situation.

 

By Elahe Izadi

-January 29, 2014

It makes sense that as chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Tom Harkin would want to check out how other countries are doing when it comes to public health. So he spent last week in Cuba, where he saw all sorts of things that made quite the impression on him.

Cuba is a "poor country, but they have a lower child mortality rate than ours," the Iowa Democrat said to reporters Wednesday. "Their life expectancy is now greater than ours. It's interesting—their public health system is quite remarkable."

Harkin, who made a 186-mile trek over the course of three days, also cited low infection rates in Cuban hospitals and the country's success in reducing smoking among citizens through public health campaigns.

Harkin has been to Cuba before. In 2003, he visited and called on Cuba to release 75 dissidents there. Indeed, other congressional lawmakers have traveled to the Caribbean island, which hasn't had diplomatic relations with the U.S. since 1959. The most recent high-profile visit came in 2009 when members of the Congressional Black Caucus went to Cuba and met with Fidel Castro.