India’s Shame : Genocide In Kashmir

by Andre Vltchek

( February 9, 2015, Srinagar, Sri Lanka Guardian) Welcome to Kashmir! It is deep winter. The mountains are covered with snow and the naked trees above the lakes at sunset, look melancholic and magnificent, precisely like a completed Chinese brush painting.

Welcome to a nation overrun by the 700,000-strong security forces of the occupying power – India. Welcome to the continuous presence of barbed wire, of military columns, and ‘security checks’. Welcome to a brutality unimaginable almost anywhere else on earth!

India’s Shame Genocide in Kashmir by Thavam Ratna

AAP routs Modi’s BJP with historic win; Nangarhar councilwoman targeted in bombing; Pakistan facing water shortage

BY NEELI SHAH, COURTNEY SCHUSTER-FEBRUARY 10, 2015

Editor’s Note: New America’s Fellows Program is looking for talented U.S.-based academics in the field of international affairs to apply for our annual fellowships. We’re seeking to fund and create a community of bold thinkers with fresh perspectives on the major challenges facing our nation and our world, and support them as they work on projects that can communicate their ideas to broad audiences.
AAP Routs Modi’s BJP With Historic Win Nangarhar Councilwoman Targeted in Bombing Pakistan Facing Water Sho... by Thavam Ratna

Swiss leaks show deposit by daughter of China's ex-premier

 By DIDI TANG

BEIJING (AP) — Li Xiaolin, daughter of a former Chinese premier known for his support of the bloody military crackdown on the 1989 democracy movement, held as much as $2.48 million in a secret HSBC account in Switzerland, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has found.

The revelation, gleaned from a cache of leaked files that have been dubbed "Swiss Leaks," adds to the list of families of Chinese senior politicians who amassed huge wealth in the past couple of decades and stashed some of it in overseas accounts that can help them avoid detection by authorities back home.

Li did not respond to requests by the ICIJ for comments. People who answered phones Tuesday at a state-owned utility where she is chairman declined to forward calls to her or give information about how to reach her.

Despite the Chinese Communist Party's roots in socialism, party officials have leveraged their power to place family and friends in key positions of major industries such as energy, communications and banking, providing tremendous payoffs in what critics say comes at the expense of improving lives of the working masses.

In 2012, Bloomberg reported that the relatives of Chinese President Xi Jinping held investments in companies with total assets of $376 million, an 18 percent indirect stake in a rare-earths company with $1.73 billion in assets, and a $20.2 million holding in a publicly traded technology company, although no assets were traced to Xi himself, his wife or their daughter.

Also in 2012, The New York Times reported that relatives of former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao had controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion.

View gallery

In this March 4, 2011 photo, Li Xiaolin, chairwoman of the state-owned electricity giant China Power …

Last year, the ICIJ found through leaked documents that children of Chinese senior officials, known as the princelings or the Red Aristocracy, had stashed away wealth in offshore companies and accounts. Among them, Li Xiaolin was the director of two British Virgin Islands companies registered in 2005, according to the ICIJ.

The ruling party's own anti-corruption campaign launched by Xi after he took control of the party in late 2012 has uncovered numerous cases involving millions of dollars by party officials, their family members and associates. Allegedly corrupt cadres have been charged with taking bribes as well as using their positions to seek huge benefits for others.

Li Xiaolin, the only daughter of Li Peng, China's premier between 1987 and 1998, is the chairwoman of the state-owned electricity giant China Power International Development Ltd. She is widely known among the Chinese public by the nickname "Power Queen."

She has asserted that her family background has had no bearing on her success.

Li had a reputation for expensive tastes in luxury clothes, though she has switched to more modest attire and has even been seen using a reusable shopping bag since Xi took office.

In 2013, The Telegraph reported that Li brokered secret deals to help Zurich Insurance gain a major stake in the private insurer New China Life, before foreign investment in the insurance sector was allowed in China. Li denied the allegation, saying she had had no personal relationship with any insurance company.

On Monday, the ICIJ said Li and her husband were beneficial owners of a client account linked to five bank accounts that held as much as $2.48 million in 2006 and 2007. The accounts were held under the name of Metralco Overseas S.A., a Panama-registered company that was dissolved in 2012, the ICIJ said.

Banking Giant HSBC Sheltered Murky Cash Linked to Dictators and Arms Dealers

By Gerard Ryle, Will Fitzgibbon, Mar Cabra,Rigoberto Carvajal, Marina Walker Guevara,Martha M. Hamilton and Tom Stites

 

February 8, 2015, 4:00 pm

Team of journalists from 45 countries unearths secret bank accounts maintained for criminals, traffickers, tax dodgers, politicians and celebrities

Secret documents reveal that global banking giant HSBC profited from doing business with arms dealers who channeled mortar bombs to child soldiers in Africa, bag men for Third World dictators, traffickers in blood diamonds and other international outlaws.

The leaked files, based on the inner workings of HSBC’s Swiss private banking arm, relate to accounts holding more than $100 billion. They provide a rare glimpse inside the super-secret Swiss banking system — one the public has never seen before.

The documents, obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists via the French newspaper Le Monde, show the bank’s dealings with clients engaged in a spectrum of illegal behavior, especially in hiding hundreds of millions of dollars from tax authorities. They also show private records of famed soccer and tennis players, cyclists, rock stars, Hollywood actors, royalty, politicians, corporate executives and old-wealth families. 

These disclosures shine a light on the intersection of international crime and legitimate business, and they dramatically expand what’s known about potentially illegal or unethical behavior in recent years at HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks.

The leaked account records show some clients making trips to Geneva to withdraw large wads of cash, sometimes in used notes. The files also document huge sums of money controlled by dealers in diamonds who are known to have operated in war zones and sold gemstones to finance insurgencies that caused untold deaths.

HSBC, which is headquartered in London and has offices in 74 nations and territories on six continents, at first insisted that ICIJ destroy the data.

Late last month, after being informed of the full extent of the reporting team’s findings, HSBC gave a final response that was more conciliatory, telling ICIJ: “We acknowledge that the compliance culture and standards of due diligence in HSBC’s Swiss private bank, as well as the industry in general, were significantly lower than they are today.” 

The written statement said the bank had “taken significant steps over the past several years to implement reforms and exit clients who did not meet strict new HSBC standards, including those where we had concerns in relation to tax compliance.”

The bank added that it had refocused this part of its business. “As a result of this repositioning, HSBC’s Swiss private bank has reduced its client base by almost 70% since 2007.” 

How the offshore banking industry shelters money and hides secrets has enormous implications for societies across the globe. Academics conservatively estimate that $7.6 trillion is held in overseas tax havens, costing government treasuries at least $200 billion a year.

“The offshore industry is a major threat for our democratic institutions and our basic social contract,” French economist Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Centurytold ICIJ. “Financial opacity is one of the key drivers of rising global inequality. It allows a large fraction of top income and top wealth groups to pay negligible tax rates, while the rest of us pay large taxes in order to finance the public goods and services (education, health, infrastructures) that are indispensable for the development process.”

HSBC's questionable tax tactics

The secret files obtained by ICIJ — covering accounts up to 2007 associated with more than 100,000 individuals and legal entities from more than 200 nations — are a version of the ones the French government obtained and shared with other governments in 2010, leading to prosecutions or settlements with individuals for tax evasion in several countries. Nations whose tax authorities received the French files include the U.S., Spain, Italy, Greece, Germany, Britain, Ireland, India, Belgium and Argentina. 

It’s not illegal in most countries to maintain offshore bank accounts, and being identified as holding an HSBC Private Bank account is of itself no indication of any wrongdoing. Some who are named in the files may have had some connection to a Swiss bank account, such as a power of attorney, while not owning the money in the account, or owning only a share of it. Others in the files may not even have had a Swiss bank account.

Swiss citizen Tina Turner in an ad for Swisscom.Hollywood actor John Malkovich, for instance, said through a representative that he knows nothing about an account listing his name and conjectured that it might have to do with Bernard Madoff, the former stockbroker convicted of fraud who handled some of his finances. A representative for the British actress Joan Collins told ICIJ: “In 1993 my client deposited funds into a bank account in London and subsequently discovered that, without her instructions, the money had been transferred to the Swiss account referred to in your letter.” The representative added that no tax was avoided. 

The rock star David Bowie responded to ICIJ media partner The Guardian that he has been a legal resident of Switzerland since 1976. Tina Turner, though seen by many as a quintessentially American singer, has lived in Switzerland for nearly two decades and gave up her U.S. citizenship in 2013. 

In many instances the records do describe questionable behavior, such as bankers advising clients on how to take a range of measures to avoid paying taxes in their home countries — and customers telling bankers that their accounts are not declared to their governments.

The reporting by ICIJ and a team of media organizations from 45 countries go deeper into the dark corners of HSBC than a 2012 U.S. Senate investigation, which found that the bank had lax controls that allowed Latin American drug cartels to launder hundreds of millions of ill-gotten dollars through its U.S. operations, rendering the dirty money usable.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’ extensive report on HSBC also said some bank affiliates skirted U.S. government bans against financial transactions with Iran and other countries. And HSBC's U.S. division provided money and banking services to banks in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh believed to have helped fund Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the report said.

Later in 2012, HSBC agreed to pay more than $1.9 billion to settle U.S. criminal and civil investigations and entered into a five-year deferred-prosecution agreement.

A subcommittee staff source said Senate investigators had sought the HSBC Private Bank account records from HSBC whistleblower Hervé Falciani and French authorities, but never received the data. The new documents show the bank’s activity in many other parts of the world and reveal a new range of questionable clients and actions by the bank. 

The ICIJ revelations also come after The Wall Street Journal reported in January that a progress report by the independent monitor appointed to the bank, a synopsis of which is expected to be made public in April, will show HSBC is failing in its attempts to reform.

Encouraging Facets of Academic Developments in the Physiotherapy Profession-in the UK and Sri Lanka

 by Bertie Samarasinghe-February 8, 2015

It was so gratifying to reflect on the academic achievements in physiotherapy that I was prompted to write this article to update my colleagues, relevant officials of the Health Ministry, professional organizers lecturers, member of the Sri Lanka Society of Physiotherapy and readers.

Encouraging Facets of Academic Developments in the Physiotherapy Profession-In the UK and Sri Lanka by Thavam Ratna

The search for an Ebola cure is gearing up — but there may be too few patients.

A member of the cleaning team scrubs the decontamination zone at the Alliance for International Medical Action Ebola Treatment Unit in Nzerekore, Guinea on Jan. 24. (Jane Hahn/for The Washington Post)

A mobile lab sits in front of the National Center for Blood Transfusion in Conakry, Guinea on Jan. 28. (Jane Hahn/For The Washington Post)

By Amy Brittain February 10 at 3:30 AM

CONAKRY, Guinea — The race to find a cure for Ebola is heating up, with scientists launching experiments in West Africa that are among the most ambitious ever aimed at taming the devastating disease.
The Search for an Ebola Cure is Gearing Up — but There May Be Too Few Patients. by Thavam Ratna

Tamils across North-East Sri Lanka demand release of disappeared in new wave of protests

February 2015 Hundreds of Tamils protested across the North-East demanding the new government to release and reveal the whereabouts of their detained and disappeared, whilst calling for an international probe into the whereabouts of the disappeared. In Jaffna, hundreds of men, women and children carrying photos of their missing loved ones, marched from Jaffna central bus station to the Jaffna Divisional Secretariat building to hand over a memorandum to Sri Lanka’s new president demanding that the whereabouts of the detained were revealed and that they were immediately released, reports Uthayan.

Tamils Across North-East Sri Lanka Demand Release of Disappeared in New Wave of Protests by Thavam Ratna

Exploring International and Domestic Modalities for Truth and Justice in Sri Lanka

AFP PHOTO/LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHILAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI/AFP/Getty Images via FT blog

by Bhavani Fonseka 

- on 02/09/2015 

The ‘Declaration of Peace’ by the Government of Sri Lanka at the 67thIndependence Day Celebrations held on 4th February 2015 is a notable shift in its recognition of the past and the need for healing and unity. The Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) made a similar recommendation, as did the United Nations Secretary General’s Panel of Experts (PoE). Recognizing the past is the first in a process needed to address past violations, provide answers regarding missing persons, initiate independent mechanisms to hold alleged perpetrators to account and end the culture of impunity.
Exploring International and Domestic Modalities for Truth and Justice in Sri Lanka by Thavam Ratna

SLMC-UPFA Alliance in Eastern Provincial 

Council

Serious blow to Tamil-Muslim reconciliation

By Latheef Farook-FEBRUARY 9 2015

In the east of the island the destiny of Tamils and Muslims remains intertwined and, inevitably, they share both adversity and prosperity. Thus it goes without saying that it is always in the interest of the two communities for their political parties to work together. Under such circumstance the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, SLMC,   entering into an agreement with the United Peoples Freedom Alliance, UPFA, to form the Eastern Provincial Council Administration with a controversial Muslim as Chief Minister, without Tamil participation, is a serious blow to Tamil-Muslim Unity which is bound to have serious consequences.

SLMC-UPFA Alliance in Eastern Provincial by Thavam Ratna

Sri Lanka Seeks U.S.-U.N. Backing for Domestic Probe of War Crimes Charges

The immediate aftermath of the war saw thousands of tourists flocking to the region, gawking at the remnants of a bloody past. Their numbers have since dwindled and a war tourist trail now remains mostly deserted. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 6 2015 (IPS) - Sri Lanka’s newly-installed government, which has pledged to set up its own domestic tribunal to investigate war crimes charges, is seeking political and moral support both from the United States and the United Nations to stall a possible international investigation.

Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera is due in the United States next week to press the country’s case before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“Any domestic investigation would not negate the need for continued international action and engagement to ensure justice and accountability in Sri Lanka, or Sri Lanka’s need to cooperate with the United Nations." -- David Griffiths

The United States was one of the prime movers of a resolution adopted last March by the 47-member Human Rights Council to appoint a U.N. panel, headed by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, to probe into “alleged serious violations and abuses of human rights and related crimes by both parties in Sri Lanka” at the end of decades-old war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) back in 2009.

During his visit to New York, Samaraweera is also scheduled to meet with representatives of Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Asked about the new government’s proposed “domestic mechanism”, HRW’s Asia Director Brad Adams told IPS, “We do not expect the government to conduct a serious investigation.”

He specifically mentioned the former Army Chief Sarath Fonseka – who led the armed forces to victory against the LTTE – being a member of the current government thereby politicising any such domestic investigation.

Adams also hinted the investigation could get embroiled in local politics since the newly-elected president, Maithripala Sirisena, is planning to hold island-wide parliamentary elections in June this year.

“The United Nations should continue to be at the centre of the current process,” he added, but still complimented the government for reaching out to HRW.

“We are very encouraged and we are happy to meet with the foreign minister,” Adams said.

David Griffiths, deputy director for Asia-Pacific at Amnesty International, told IPS President Sirisena and other officials in the new administration have promised Sri Lanka will restore rule of law and conduct domestic investigations into alleged crimes under international law.

He said commitments have also been given to investigate the killing of journalists.

“These are important pledges which are to be welcomed, provided that the investigations are conducted promptly and in good faith, with independence, adequate resources and effective witness protection, and provided that where sufficient admissible evidence exists, they lead to the prosecution of those suspected of the crimes, regardless of their rank or status.”

What’s crucial, said Griffiths, is that a change in rhetoric must be matched by a change in political will and followed by action.

He pointed out that Amnesty International has documented Sri Lanka’s long history of ad hoc commissions of inquiry that have not delivered justice – the new administration must address this legacy of impunity.

“Any domestic investigation would not negate the need for continued international action and engagement to ensure justice and accountability in Sri Lanka, or Sri Lanka’s need to cooperate with the United Nations,” he declared.

Asked about the remote likelihood of Sri Lanka being hauled before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Dr. Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka’s outgoing Permanent Representative to the United Nations and a former chief of the U.N. Treaty Section, told IPS, “The ICC acquires jurisdiction over an alleged violator of its provisions only after the relevant state becomes a party.”

Sri Lanka is not a party, but a state could voluntarily submit to the jurisdiction of the court.

Importantly, said Dr. Kohona, it is individuals and groups who can be indicted before the ICC because crimes are committed by individuals and groups.

“An individual can be indicted if his country is a party to the ICC Statute, or if the Security Council has referred the matter to the ICC or if a state voluntarily accepts the jurisdiction of the ICC,” he explained.

A prosecution is not automatic. It follows a long process of investigation, he added.

According to the United Nations, the United States included Art 98 (2) which prohibits a person being surrendered to the ICC contrary to the provisions of a state’s treaty obligations.

The United States has concluded 143 bilateral agreements, including with Sri Lanka, for this purpose. The United States signed but did not ratify the Rome Statute that created the ICC.

Another possibility, as in the case of non-ICC member Sudan, is that the Security Council can decide on hauling Sri Lankan individuals before the court.

But any such resolution in the Security Council could be vetoed either by China and Russia, or both, since they have close political ties to Sri Lanka –at least to the former government President Mahinda Rajapaksa, which denied war crimes charges and refused to cooperate with the U.N. investigations.

Amnesty’s Griffiths told IPS the adversarial relationship promoted by Sri Lanka’s former leadership vis-à-vis the United Nations was unhealthy and unproductive, and the new Sri Lankan government has now vowed to “prioritize” its engagement with the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

The Sri Lankan government has committed to a large number of important reforms in a very short period of time, and international expertise and technical assistance could help it to fulfil its reform agenda, particularly where truth seeking, reparation and justice are concerned, he added.

“Amnesty International cannot stress enough the need for justice for the victims of appalling human rights abuses and their families,” Griffiths said.

Last year, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein criticised the former Sri Lankan government for its refusal to cooperate with the investigation.

“This continuing campaign of distortion and disinformation about the investigation, as well as the insidious attempts to prevent possible bona fide witnesses from submitting information to the investigating team, is an affront to the United Nations Human Rights Council which mandated the investigation,” he added.

“The Government of Sri Lanka has refused point blank to cooperate with the investigation despite being explicitly requested by the Human Rights Council to do so,” Zeid said.

“Such a refusal does not, however, undermine the integrity of an investigation set up by the Council — instead it raises concerns about the integrity of the government in question. Why would governments with nothing to hide go to such extraordinary lengths to sabotage an impartial international investigation?” he said.

The report of the U.N. panel is expected to go before the next session of the Human Rights Council in March. But Sri Lanka is seeking a deferment.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

TGTE Wants UNHRC To Complete Its Mandate On Sri Lanka War Inquiry

February 9, 2015

The Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) Ministry of International Affairs has today written to all members of the UNHRC to strictly adhere to the mandate given to the OISL, stating that it is important that the March 2014 resolution for an international independent investigation is not compromised but completed and report presented to Council on 25 March 2015 as planned, with recommendations for further action and referral to the ICC with an action plan for implementation.

Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran – PM – TGTE

“On behalf of the victims of the Mullaivaikkal war and for the dependents of those thousands killed, for justice, accountability and for closure of the pains and sufferings for the families to move forward, it is paramount that the UNHRC exercise its authority that human rights abuses, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide should never be accepted or tolerated. Failure to enforce this resolution on Sri Lanka will only further encourage other dictators or regimes to take advantage and pursue state terrorism on its own people with impunity.” says the TGTE.

The TGTE said; “The lessons from Rwanda (never again) and the failure of UN to prevent the massacre in Sri Lanka, and the relevance of UNHRC for hope, justice and accountability comes into question for all victims and for the future of humanity. There needs to be a warning and a deterrent (R2P) before it happens again anywhere. UNHRC has this responsibility.

“The new Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL), which consists of the same perpetrators from the Mahinda regime, continues its arrogance and refuses to cooperate with UNHRC and still denies access to the UN investigators into the nation. It further wants to delay justice and accountability, protect the perpetrators, to cover and deviate the human rights and war crimes issues by proposing yet another “domestic” commission.

“The agenda of the new regime is no different from the previous Mahinda regime, and is continuing with its genocidal intent. It still refuses demilitarization, army is instilling fear and terror, is now planning to use the army for police duties, refuses to release women, children and political prisoners, refuses to provide list of those in custody, refuses to release confiscated lands by the army, there are still 50 000 internally displaced families refused entry into their own homes and farms, human rights violations are continuing by armed para military groups. Missing persons are still unaccounted for.

“Only a UNHRC mandated comprehensive independent international investigation will be accepted by the victims, their dependents, by the Tamils worldwide, and to all other victims worldwide waiting with hope for justice and accountability, for the truth on how, why and by whom this massacre took place.

“TGTE request the international community to come forward and ensure OISL completes its mandate, for the victims and for justice and accountability, knowing the past history of deceit and deviation by the successive Sri Lankan regimes, with continued subjugation under the military, it is now the responsibility and obligation of the international community (and through this report), to take urgent appropriate action on the plight of the Tamils in Sri Lanka.”