MS offers olive branch to dissidents, rules out one-on-one with MR

* Way cleared for former prez to join general election fray
* SLFP prepares electoral reforms, consulting polls chief 

By Shamindra Ferdinando-April 12, 2015, 8:07 pm 

President Maithripala Sirisena has offered to meet his predecessor, Mahinda Rajapaksa as well as dissenting SLFP parliamentarians shortly to iron out differences, according to SLFP sources.

President Sirisena has said the issues should be discussed among members of the parliamentary group with the participation of the former SLFP leader. The President was responding to a request by MP Kumar Welgama and MP T. B. Ekanayake for one-on-one between Maithripala Sirisena and Mahinda Rajapaksa.

SLFP sources said that President Maithripala Sirisena had explained that current contentious issues couldn’t be resolved through him having secret talks with his predecessor. The President had called for an open dialogue, sources said.

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa agreed to hand over SLFP leadership to his successor at a special meeting at Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa’s official residence close to midnight on Jan. 14.However, President Maithripala Sirisena had told the former President’s emissaries that their request that Mahinda Rajapaksa be named the SLFP-led UPFA’s prime ministerial candidate at the forthcoming parliamentary poll was not acceptable, sources said.

President Maithripala Sirisena assured Welgama and Ekanayake that he wouldn’t object to the former President joining the parliamentary election fray from any district, according to sources.

Asked whether President Maithripala Sirisena anticipated any challenge to his leadership, SLFP sources said that the President was keen to resolve squabbling within the party ahead of the presentation of the 19 Amendment to Parliament within a week after Sinhala and Tamil New Year. A committee appointed by President Maithripala Sirisena was preparing electoral reforms in consultations with Elections Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya to prepare a set of proposals during the next several days.

The committee comprises Prof. G. L. Peiris, Mahinda Samarasinghe, Dilan Perera, Anura Priyadarshana Yapa and Opposition Leader Nimal Siripala de Silva.

President Maithripala Sirisena declared that parliament would be dissolved soon after the passage of the 19 Amendment.

An MP involved in ongoing deliberations said the proposal envisaged increasing the number of members of parliament to 250 from 225. According to him, their effort was to replace the existing proportional representation system with a combination of first-past-the-post system with limited PR.

Asked whether the SLFP would endorse the 19 Amendment, the MP said that the party felt that it could throw its weight behind proposed Amendment as a move to transfer executive powers to the Prime Minsiter had been abandoned.

Girl returned to Sri Lanka is first under Hague Convention

BY MASAMI ITO-

A 5-year-old girl was returned to live with her Japanese father in Sri Lanka in early April after being abducted by her mother and brought to Japan, a government official told The Japan Times on Wednesday.

It was the first time Japan fulfilled a court order mandating the return of a child to his or her country of habitual residence, in accordance with the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

The Convention aims to secure the swift return of children wrongfully taken across an international border by one of their parents.

The Foreign Ministry official added that another child was sent back to Spain earlier this month through court arbitration in Japan, after the parents involved reached an agreement. Another was returned to Japan from France in mid-April.

In the Sri Lankan case, media reports say the parents were both Japanese and that the daughter was born in Japan. The family had been living in Sri Lanka since February 2013, but when the mother returned to Japan with the daughter in June last year, she refused to go back.

The father sought his daughter’s return through the Hague Convention and the Osaka District Court issued a court order to that effect in November, the first such ruling since the treaty took effect in April last year. The High Court later upheld the ruling and the sentence was finalized in February.

Last month, the Tokyo District Court also ordered the return of a child to Turkey.

Mikiko Otani, an expert on the Hague Convention, welcomed the returns.

“The international community is closely watching the Japanese courts. . . . and these returns show Japan is acting properly in accordance to the Convention,” Otani said. “I think this will lead to Japan gaining trust from other countries.”

The lawyer, however, pointed out that while the returns meant the cases were closed for the Japanese government, that was not the case for the children or their families. But there is no official system that conducts follow-up investigations regarding what happens to the children in such cases, she said.

“This is not the end for the children who are sent back . . . and that is what many people are concerned about,” Otani said. “A follow-up is necessary so that people can have accurate information and will have a better understanding of the Hague treaty.”

Deterioration Of The Legal Intellect – IV

By Basil Fernando -April 15, 2015

Basil Fernando

Deterioration of the legal intellect: (4) – UNHRC finds fault with the police, the forensic pathologist, the Attorney General, and the Supreme Court

A determination issued by the United Nation’s Human Rights Committee on 1^st April 2015, reveals extraordinary failures on the part of Sri Lankan State agencies – the police, the forensic pathologist, the Attorney General, and the Supreme Court – regarding a custodial death that took place at the Moragahahena Police Station on 26^th July 2003. The following Committee Members participated in the examination of the case in question: Yadh Ben Achour, Lazhari Bouzid, Sarah Cleveland, Olivier de Frouville, Yuji Iwasawa, Ivana Jelic, Duncan Muhumuza Laki, Photini Pazartis, Mauro Politi, Sir Nigel Rodley, Victor Manuel Rodriguez-Rescia, Fabian Omar Salvioli, Dheerujlall B. Seetulsingh, Anja Seibert-Fohr, Yuval Shany, Konstantine Vardzelashvili, and Margo Waterval.

The facts of the case are that Sunil Hemachandra (Sunil) was once a healthy and a literate man with no criminal record. He was a daily paid labourer, mostly engaged in tapping of rubber and climbing trees for plucking coconuts.

His misfortunes began, ironically, when he won a lottery ticket of a little over 3 million rupees (approximately USD $25,000). Through the lottery agent, the Moragahahena police learned about Sunil having won the lottery; the Officer-in-Charge of the Moragahahena Police Station sent a police officer with the message that Sunil should arrive at the Station, along with his ticket, and stay there for his own safety. Sunil did not comply this request. Instead, he went with his mother and aunt, en-cashed his winning ticket, and immediately deposited it in his aunt’s bank account. Thereafter, he bought a van for 1.2 million rupees, a three-wheeler for one of his nieces, and gave 5,000 rupees to his nephew as a gift.

A few weeks later, a team of police officers from the Moragahahena Police Station came looking for Sunil; they inquired from his aunt whether Sunil had spent his lottery money. One of the police officers warned, “his [Sunil’s] happiness would not last long”. The police officers left a message for Sunil to report to the Moragahahena Police Station.

On the same day, Sunil, accompanied by an acquaintance, Chanaka, and along with the son of the lottery agent, Lionel, went to the police station. At the Police Station, one of the police officers (a Sub Inspector) requested Sunil to pay money as “support”. Sunil had replied that the money was not with him and declined to pay. The same police officer then insisted on the payment of 25,000 Rupees “to cover the expenses of a procession of the Vidyaratne Temple in Horana”, to which Sunil agreed.                      Read More

Geoff Gunawardena attempts to seize Russian ambassador post!

Tuesday, 14 April 2015

Geoff Gunawardena, who was a consul general in the US during the Rajapaksa regime, is making attempts to get a posting in the Foreign Service under the ‘Yaha Paalana’ government too, say sources close to him. He was so corrupt that even the Rajapaksa administration sacked him from his consul general position.

The current defense secretary Basnayake is a close friend of this Jeff Gunawardana. The day when the latter took the duty Jeff Gunawardana rushed to Sri Lanka to attend the function. A relative of the defense secretary is working as a coordinating officer of the foreign minister Mangala Samaraweera and Basnayake has recommended Jeff Gunawardane's name through him. Jeff Gunawardana is blurting out to everybody in the US that he is going to be the next ambassador to Russia.

Central Bank reduces interest rates unexpectedly

Central Bank reduces interest rates unexpectedly

April 15th, 2015

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka has taken an unexpected move to reduce its policy interest rates which decide the interest rates of Sri Lanka’s commercial banks, from April 2015 though the government is continuing to borrow heavily to cover its expenditures.

While the Central Bank of Sri Lanka has taken steps to reduce its policy interest rates by 0.5 per cent, it has reduced the new interest rates to 06 and 7.5 per cent.

Sri Lanka’s inflation fell to 0.1 per cent last March while it had remained at 0.6 during February.

With the government’s attempt to increase the threshold of local borrowings through the issue of short-term Treasury Bills having failed recently, it may be forced to issue Treasury Bonds which carries a higher rate of interest than Treasury Bills for its borrowings, point out economic analysts.

Since the period of maturity for Treasury Bills is a year or less, it enables borrowings at lower interest rates like 07 or 7.5 per cent.

Sri Lankan Airlines Rs 338 Million Fraud: In Flight Duty Free ‘Day Light Robbery’ Still Continues

April 14, 2015  

The Board of Inquiry into the misappropriations of Sri Lankan Airlines findings highlights a massive figure of US $ 865,398 that was written off by Sri Lankan Airlines due to a retrospective amended change made to the original contract signed between the national carrier and Phoenix Duty Free Services. However Colombo Telegraph reliably learns that this particular finding led the airline to lose a further monumental amount of US $ 2,596,198 over the subsequent next two years of 2013/2014 & 2014/2015.

Raju Chandiram

The Board of Inquiries’ findings revealed that the former CEO Kapila Chandrasena, the former Chief Marketing Officer G.T. Jayaseeelan and Head of Finance Yasantha Dissanyake had submitted a board paper on the 26th September 2013 seeking the airline’s Board of Directors to retrospectively amend the agreement seeking approval to write off a figure of US $ 865,398.

This amendment which was approved and changed by the former Board of Directors for the financial year 2012/2013 has now proved be a suicidal decision the former Board of Directors of the airline made as it affected the bottom line of the airline for the next two completed financial years of 2013/2014 & 2014/2015.

The report’s highlighted loss of US $ 865,398 per annum was only for the initial contractual year ending 2012/2013.

This meant that with the guaranteed payment terms been defined on an ascending ‘year on year’ that amendment realistically affected the struggling airline a minimum of US $ 2,595,198, which is three times the said written off figure which should include the now completed financial years of 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 as well.

With the now commenced 4th operational year of this contract in effect as of 01/04/2015, the airline is set to lose out at least another US $ 2 million in the next two years when the contract eventually expires.

Read More

The Kiss.....

 

 Tuesday, 14 April 2015

She is pregnant, he had just saved her from a fire in her house, rescuing her by carrying her out of the house into her front yard,while he continued to fight the fire.

When he finally got done putting the fire out, he sat down to catch his breath and rest.

A photographer from the Charlotte , North Carolina newspaper, noticed her in the distance looking at the fireman

He saw her walking straight toward the fireman and wondered what she was going to do.

As he raised his camera, she came up to the tired man who had saved her life and the lives of her babies and kissed him just as the photographer snapped this photograph.

"The happiest people don't have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything.
Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God."

Libya migrants: Hundreds feared drowned in Mediterranean

About 400 migrants are feared drowned after their boat capsized off Libya, survivors have told Save the Children.

The Italian coast guard rescued 144 people from the boat on Monday and launched an air and sea search operation in hopes of saving others.

Hundreds more migrants rescued from boats in the Mediterranean are due to arrive in Sicily during the day.

More than 8,000 migrants have been picked up since Friday, and more boats are heading for the Italian coast.

Italy's interior ministry has instructed officials throughout the country to be prepared to house the new arrivals, many of whom are children.

'Migration season'

UN officials say well over 500 people have died since the start of the year, 30 times more than in the same period last year.

Survivors say that the latest tragedy happened after the boat, carrying about 550 migrants in total, overturned a day after leaving Libya.

Nine bodies have already been recovered, but no more survivors have been found since then.

Save the Children said that many of the survivors were "young men, probably minors".

Babies were among those rescued

Save the Children Italy was still trying to find out how many young people were on the boat, spokesman Michele Prosperi told the BBC. "A few minors" were among the survivors, he said.

The migration season had just started, and "when the weather improves... we may have many more arrivals", he added.

Last year, 170,000 migrants crossed the Mediterranean to Italy and as many as 3,500 died while making the journey, officials say.

The Italian government's maritime rescue operation was scaled back, amid concerns that it was encouraging migrant crossings, and a more limited EU border security operation took over.

However, the latest numbers show that the EU's policy of deterring people is not working, the BBC's James Reynolds in Sicily reports.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman Laurens Jolles told the BBC the capacity to rescue was not as strong as it had to be and a far greater response was needed.

Shots fired

Meanwhile the EU's Frontex border agency said that people smugglers had fired shots into the air to warn away another coast guard vessel rescuing migrants.

The incident on Monday happened about 60 nautical miles off Libya after an Italian vessel and an Icelandic coast guard ship came to the rescue of 250 migrants on a tugboat.

More than 8,000 migrants have been rescued from the Mediterranean since Friday

After most of the migrants were rescued, traffickers in a speedboat drove towards the rescuers, firing shots before retrieving the now-empty migrant boat.

The coast guard vessel was already carrying 342 migrants from a previous rescue.

Frontex says the incident shows that traffickers are running out of boats.

EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told the European Parliament: "The unprecedented influx of migrants at our borders, and in particular refugees, is unfortunately the new norm and we will need to adjust our responses accordingly."

Over 280,000 people entered the EU illegally last year, many fleeing conflict in Syria and repression in Eritrea.

Since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has been without a stable government allowing trafficking networks to thrive.

On Friday, humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres announced it would operate a search and rescue mission in the Mediterranean between May and October.

Are you in the area? Are you affected by the issues in this story? You can share your experiences by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk

Please leave a contact number if you are willing to speak with a BBC journalist.

Iraq: ISIS Escapees Describe Systematic Rape


The Khanke IDP camp outside of Dohuk is home to more than 18,000 Yezidis and other Iraqi families who were displaced by the conflict.
©2015 Samer Muscati/Human Rights Watch
APRIL 15, 2015
(New York) – The extremist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS) has carried out systematic rape and other sexual violence against Yezidi women and girls in northern Iraq. Human Rights Watch conducted research in the town of Dohuk in January and February 2015, including interviewing 20 women and girls who escaped from ISIS, and reviewing ISIS statements about the subject.

Iraq ISIS Escapees Describe Systematic Rape by Thavam Ratna

Obama removes Cuba from terrorism list

Barack Obama says he plans to remove Cuba from America's list of state sponsors of terrorism, as he seeks to restore diplomatic relations after a decades-long freeze.

WEDNESDAY 15 APRIL 2015

President Obama met his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro at the Summit of the Americas in Panama on Saturday - the first meeting between US and Cuban leaders in nearly 60 years.

Cuba's communist government had said normal relations between the two former cold war enemies would be impossible if it remained on the list, which includes Iran, Syria and Sudan.

The meeting followed an announcement in December that the US and Cuba were hoping to normalise relations.

The Caribbean island nation was placed on the list in 1982 when it was aiding rebel movements in Africa and Latin America, but Havana gave up supporting foreign insurgencies years ago. Its inclusion on the list continued to limit its access to international banking and overseas financial markets.

'Fair decision'

"The Cuban government recognises the fair decision made by the president of the United States to eliminate Cuba from a list that it never should have been included on," Josefina Vidal, the Cuban foreign ministry's chief of US affairs, said in a statement.

In a report to Congress, President Obama said the government of Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding six-month period," and "has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future".

Congress has 45 days to consider the president's decision before it takes effect, but it cannot stop it unless both chambers approve a joint resolution, a move that is highly unlikely. But a broader US embargo on Cuba will remain in place because only Congress can end it.

'Capitulating to dictators'

Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American and newly announced Republican presidential candidate, denounced it as a "terrible" decision, saying Cuba was helping North Korea evade sanctions and harbouring fugitives from American justice.

Republican Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, another Cuban-American, accused President Obama of "capitulating to dictators".

The Real Singapore’s owners charged with sedition

The duo behind The Real Singapore, Ms Ai Takagi (right) and Mr Yang Kaiheng (second from left), arriving at Court on April 14, 2015. Pic: Goh Chiew Tong. 

By Carlton Tan Apr 15, 2015

The couple behind one of Singapore’s most popular alternative news websites, The Real Singapore (TRS), was charged in court yesterday (April 14) with seven counts of sedition. The prosecution alleges that the duo published content that has the “tendency to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different groups of people in Singapore, namely, between ethnic Indians in Singapore and Philippine nationals in Singapore”.

The Real Singapore’s Owners Charged With Sedition by Thavam Ratna

​Online Support–and Mockery–Await Chinese Feminists After Release
The outpouring of derisive comments pretty much proves the activists' point -- China's got a misogyny problem, and the government isn't helping. 

BY BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN-APRIL 14, 2015

April 13, Chinese authorities released on bail five feminist activists detained for over a month without formal charges. Despite tight censorship surrounding their detention, support on Chinese social media and thinly veiled media criticism showed that many in China opposed the detention. But an outpouring of online mockery directed at the women, their campaign, and feminism in general also demonstrates the uphill battle that feminist activists face in the world’s most populous country.

The five activists — Li Tingting, age 25; Zheng Churan, age 25; Wei Tingting, age 26; Wu Rongrong, age 30, and Wang Man, age 33 — were detained shortly before International Women’s Day on March 8, a widely celebrated holiday in China when they had planned to distribute leaflets protesting sexual harassment. Their detention prompted an international outcry: Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State John Kerry, and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power have all called for the women’s release. Although the five activists are no longer in detention, they remain the suspects of an ongoing criminal investigation and face restrictions on their movement.

Tight information control initially surrounded the women’s detention — Chinese media did not report it until April 9, and even then only cited foreign media reports. When the news finally broke, many expressed online support for the activists. Some focused on the lack of sufficient legal and procedural protections afforded to average citizens. “Who knew a few young women opposed to groping on public transportation could frighten the authorities this much?” wrote one user on Weibo, China’s most popular microblogging platform. “Two of them were taken in the middle of the night, by people from the public security bureau who did not have a warrant for their arrest,” wroteanother user, who identified herself as a 25 year-old woman. “This could one day happen to the people around us or even to us, all it takes is for the public security bureau to think we are guilty.” Equally distressing to many was the women’s apparent punishment for opposing sexual harassment. The activism was supporting a “national policy of gender equality. If spreading such positive messages gets you arrested (or stops activism from ever happening),” one Weibo user concluded, “let’s also arrest everyone who hands out flyers for restaurants that use gutter oil,” referring to a fetid recycled cooking oil at the center of several national food safety scandals.

But even though few directly backed the women’s detention, not everyone agreed with the messages the feminists had been trying to convey. A significant minority of commenters alternately mocked the women’s campaign, blasted the entire gender for being demanding, or denied the need for feminism in China altogether. “Real feminism should be ‘I am willing to bear the same social responsibility as men,” wrote one 27 year-old man in a popular comment. “But ‘I want this, I want that, I want everything’—that’s not feminism, it’s ‘queenism.’” Another wrote, “Feminism is like so-called ‘animal rights activism’ — they’re actually extremist organizations.” Onemale user in Beijing, a graduate of a martial arts academy, wrote.“Seriously, aren’t women’s rights in China the best in the world?”He concluded that those looking for a true example of gender inequality should “hurry off to India.” A man in the northern city of Tianjin, whose Weibo profilefeatured regular posts giving women advice about how to make themselves appealing to men, commented, “Nowadays it’s dangerous to be a man.”Such comments hint at the underlying sexism that feminist activists believe is entrenched in Chinese culture. In February, activists slammed the annual Chinese New Years Gala, a widely watched variety TV show for what they viewed as degrading to women. Baidu, a Chinese search engine, became the focus of pointed criticism for a homepage homage to women on March 8, which depicted a dainty ballerina dancing inside a jewelry box. Critics compared the image to Google’s homepage that same day, which showed women as scientists, teachers, and astronauts.

While the women’s initial detention was ignored in Chinese media for days, their release appears not to have been reported in any mainstream press at all.Searches for “five feminists released” on Weibo areblocked. But one media outlet has published a rare criticism of the detention itself, albeit one veiled as historical commentary.

On April 13, the state-run Legal Daily ran an articledetailing the 1913 detention of Chinese feminists under General Yuan Shikai, the first president of the Republic of China, whose autocratic rule and bid to instate himself as emperor have made him a reviled figure in modern Chinese history. The article, written by Chinese women’s studies researcher Zhang Hongping, began by hailing the feminist movement that Yuan crushed in 1913, writing, “Yesterday they were still heroines, but today they have become national criminals.” Zhang described how the women had risked their lives in an effort to overthrow the weak and corrupt Qing Dynasty, helping to establish China’s first republic on Jan. 1, 1912. But Yuan had rebuffed the women’s attempts to secure their right to political participation in the newly formed government, and in 1913 he had many of them arrested. “With political retrogression,” the article concluded, in a thinly disguised indictment of the current government’s actions, “Chinese social trends rapidly turn conservative and reactionary.” (Historical allegory in service of criticism of contemporary rulers has a dubious history in China. In 1965, Communist Chairman Mao Zedong took exception to a historical drama called Hai Rui Dismissed From Office, a play in which an honest official loses his position after criticizing the corrupt emperor. Mao believed it to be a critique of his own policies, and he launched a political witch hunt in response.)

Both the detention and the online misogyny that greeted its reporting underscore the uphill struggle that women face in China, where it is still common for employers to reject female applicants on the basis of gender despite laws to the contrary, and where a traditional preference for male babies has created the world’s largest gender imbalance despite laws barring sex-selective abortion. As one Weibo user wrote, “Who knew that even the feminist movement itself was illegal in China?”

AFP/Getty Images

Saudi Arabia beheads Indonesian maid despite pleas from Jakarta

Siti Zaenab Duhri. Image via Amnesty International Website. 

By Asian Correspondent Staff Apr 15, 2015

An Indonesian maid has been beheaded in Saudi Arabia more than 15 years after she was arrested for stabbing her employer to death.

Amnesty International reported that Siti Zaenab Duhri, who was suspected to be suffering from mental illness, was beheaded Tuesday in what it described as “the latest in the recent macabre spike in Saudi Arabia’s state-sponsored killings.”

Siti’s two children and the Indonesian authorities were not told in advance that the beheading would take place.

“The government filed a protest with the Saudi Arabian government for not informing Indonesian representatives in Saudi Arabia, or the convict’s family, about the timing of the execution,” Indonesia’s foreign ministry said.

The Jakarta Post reports that the Indonesian government last month requested Saudi Arabia’s deputy foreign minister to approach and ask for forgiveness from the victim’s family, as well as offering diyat (blood money) worth Rp 2 billion (US$154,410). The moves failed to prevent the execution.

“Imposing the death penalty and executing someone with a suspected mental illness smacks of a basic lack of humanity,” said Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Programme Director at Amnesty International. “This practice has been widely condemned on the world stage and Saudi Arabia should take this opportunity to reconsider its stance on the death penalty.”

Siti, 47, arrived in Saudi Arabia in 1997 before being convicted of murdering her employer in 2001, following her 1999 arrest.

Indonesia imposed a moratorium on sending migrant workers to Saudi Arabia 4 years ago following the beheading of 54-year-old Ruyati Satubi, who was also convicted of killing her employer.

Indonesia has also come under intense international pressure this year over its use of capital punishment, which is unlikely to have helped in its efforts to save Siti. It executed six drugs convicts in January and the death of 10 more drug smugglers by firing squad looks imminent. These include Australian nationals Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, members of the ‘Bali 9’ smuggling ring. Jakarta has ignored pleas for leniency from foreign governments and human rights groups, saying the executions are an essential part of its “war on drugs”.

RELATED: Capital punishment: Where and why it’s practiced in Asia