Upswing in fighting in Ukraine sends civilians fleeing and puts truce in doubt

Eight Ukrainian soldiers are killed in past week, and another 40 wounded in attacks by pro-Russia separatists, in most intense clashes since Minsk ceasefire

 The remains of a residential building destroyed in a shelling attack in the city of Horlivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine Photograph: Nikolai Muravyev/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis

Alec Luhn in Kramatorsk-Sunday 3 May 2015

Ukraine is experiencing its most serious increase in fighting in three months, sending more civilians fleeing and raising fresh doubts about the viability of a shaky February truce.

Another Ukrainian soldier was killed this weekend bringing the death toll in the past week to eight, with another 40 wounded in attacks in eastern Ukraine by pro-Russia separatists, the most intense clashes since the ceasefire agreed in Minsk.

Upswing in Fighting in Ukraine Sends Civilians Fleeing and Puts Truce in Doubt by Thavam Ratna

The painful price of aging in prison

“Companion aides” share a room with elderly prisoners at Devens. Some low-security inmates are tasked with caring for elderly prisoners.

At Devens, incarcerated “companion aides” Tyrell Wells, left background, and Joshua Brandao assist an inmate in his 70s who suffered a stroke. Devens employs 60 nurses, along with social workers, dieticians, psychologists, dentists and physical therapists.

INSIDE COLEMAN PRISON, Fla.

Written by Sari Horwitz-May 2, 2015

Twenty-one years into his nearly 50-year sentence, the graying man steps inside his stark cell in the largest federal prison complex in America. He wears special medical boots because of a foot condition that makes walking feel as if he’s “stepping on a needle.” He has undergone tests for a suspected heart condition and sometimes experiences vertigo.

“I get dizzy sometimes when I’m walking,” says the 63-year-old inmate, Bruce Harrison. “One time, I just couldn’t get up.”

In 1994, Harrison and other members of the motorcycle group he belonged to were caught up in a drug sting by undercover federal agents, who asked them to move huge volumes of cocaine and marijuana. After taking the job, making several runs and each collecting $1,000, Harrison and the others were arrested and later convicted. When their sentences were handed down, however, jurors objected.

Full Story>>>

Freed Nigerian women tell of horror of Boko Haram captivity

Women displaced by Boko Haram violence residing at the IDP camp yola, are briefed before other women and children rescued from Boko Haram in Sambisa forest by Nigeria Military arrive at the Internally displaced people's camp in Yola, Adamawa State, Nigeria May 2, 2015.

YOLA, NIGERIA | BY ISAAC ABRAK AND EMMA ANDE- Sun May 3, 2015

(Reuters) - Boko Haram fighters killed older boys and men in front of their families before taking women and children into the forest where many died of hunger and disease, freed captives said on Sunday after they were brought to a government refugee camp.

The Nigerian army rescued hundreds of women and children last week from the Islamist fighters in northern Nigeria's Sambisa Forest in a major operation that has turned international attention to the plight of hostages.

After days on the road in pickup trucks, hundreds were released on Sunday into the care of authorities at a refugee camp in the eastern town of Yola to be fed and treated for injuries. They have been able to speak to reporters for the first time.

"They didn't allow us to move an inch," said one of the freed women, Asabe Umaru, describing her captivity in the forest. "If you needed the toilet, they followed you. We were kept in one place. We were under bondage.

"We thank God to be alive today. We thank the Nigerian army for saving our lives," she added.

Two hundred seventy-five women and children, some with heads or limbs in bandages, arrived in the camp late on Saturday.

Nearly 700 kidnap victims were freed from the Islamist group's forest stronghold since Tuesday, with the latest group of 234 women and children liberated on Friday.

"When we saw the soldiers we raised our hands and shouted for help. Boko Haram who were guarding us started stoning us so we would follow them to another hideout, but we refused because we were sure the soldiers would rescue us," Umaru, a 24 year-old mother of two, told Reuters.

The prisoners suffered constant malnutrition and disease, she said. "Every day we witnessed the death of one of us and waited for our turn."

Another freed captive, Cecilia Abel, said her husband and first son had been killed in her presence before the militia forced her and her remaining eight children into the forest.

For two weeks before the military arrived she had barely eaten.

"We were fed only ground dry maize in the afternoons. It was not good for human consumption," she said. "Many of us that were captured died in Sambisa Forest. Even after our rescue about 10 died on our way to this place."

The freed prisoners were fed bread and mugs of tea as soon as they arrived at the government camp. Nineteen were in hospital for special attention, Dr. Mohammed Aminu Sulieman of the Adamawa State Emergency Management Agency told Reuters.

CHIBOK GIRLS

Amnesty International estimates the insurgents, who are intent on bringing western Africa under Islamist rule, have taken more than 2,000 women and girls captive since the start of 2014. Many have been used as cooks, sex slaves or human shields.

The prisoners freed so far do not appear to include any of more than 200 schoolgirls snatched from school dormitories in Chibok town a year ago, an incident that drew global attention to the six-year-old insurgency.

Umaru said her group of prisoners never came in contact with the missing Chibok girls.

Nigerian troops alongside armies from neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Niger have won back swathes of territory from the fighters in the last couple of months.

Last year, the group exerted influence over an area bigger than Belgium. But a counter-attack launched in January has pushed them into Sambisa, a nature reserve. While the Nigerian army is confident it has the group cornered, a final push to clear them from the area has been curtailed by landmines.

President Goodluck Jonathan, who relinquishes power later in May after his election defeat to Muhammadu Buhari, has promised to hand over a Nigeria "free of terrorist strongholds".

Rampant corruption and a failure to stamp out the uprising in the north were factors that cost Jonathan the election won by Buhari, a former military ruler.

(Writing by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura; Editing by Peter Graff)

Shinzo Abe’s Sorry Apology

Japan's prime minister needs to actually apologize for his country’s crimes.

BY SUNG-YOON LEE, ZACH PRZYSTUP-MAY 1, 2015

It could have been a real victory lap. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s late April visit to the United States could have epitomized the great success of postwar U.S.-Japan relations, capped by the affirmation of an ever-closer military alliance, the promise of the major trade pact the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and Abe’s address to a joint session of Congress — the first by a Japanese leader. After all, the new bilateral defense guidelines allow Japan to take a much more assertive role in U.S.-led military operations in the region and beyond. In his historic speech, Abe did his best to underscore the trade pact’s long-term strategic value.

But instead, Abe’s visit will likely grow into a diplomatic irritant for U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration because of the prime minister’s omissions and equivocations related to Japan’s war crimes against other Asian countries in the first half of the 20th century. With many in South Korea and China — both victims of Japanese imperialism — paying attention to the prime minister’s congressional address, Abe assiduously avoided terms like “colonial rule,” “invasion,” and “heartfelt apology” — the crux of previous high-profile apologies by his predecessors. He made no mention of the Japanese coercion of tens of thousands women into sexual slavery, the victims of which are known by the grotesque Japanese appellation “comfort women.” Official reactions to the speech, as expected, ranged from “very regrettable” in Seoul, to admonition to reflect upon Japan’s “history of aggression” in Beijing, to condemnation of Abe and his supporters as “hooligans” and “psychopath[s]” in Pyongyang.

Abe’s latest historical revisionism will only further strain the Washington-Tokyo-Seoul triangle and invite exploitation by Pyongyang and Beijing. Japan and South Korea, two U.S.-dependent democracies aligned together against North Korea and its patron, China, remain at loggerheads over Tokyo’s backsliding on history. Japan’s increasingly assertive claim on Dokdo, an island administered by South Korea, further muddies the regional waters. By sanitizing systemic war crimes, Abe has done more to alienate Seoul, feed Beijing’s propaganda machine, and create strategic problems for Washington than any of his predecessors in the post-Cold War era.

Unfortunately, Abe’s latest insult is nothing new. Since taking office in December 2012, Abe has visited and sent gifts to the controversial Yasukuni war shrine, has ordered a special government panel to re-examine Japan’s 1993 apology on the “comfort women” issue, and has pounced on Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun‘s retraction of a series of articles on enforced sexual slavery published in the 1980s and 1990s, in order to deny the coercive nature of the system. He also sent a special envoy to New York to request apartial retraction of a 1996 U.N. human rights report on wartime brothels and had officials try to persuade U.S. education giant McGraw-Hill Education torevise textbook passages related to “comfort women.”

In March, Abe articulated his views during an interview with the Washington Post. When the interviewer asked whether he was a “revisionist,” the prime minister replied, “On the question of comfort women, when my thought goes to these people, who have been victimized by human trafficking and gone through immeasurable pain and suffering beyond description, my heart aches.”

It does not take a grammarian to note that who actually did the trafficking is missing from this statement of empathy. Nor does it take a logician to note that Abe’s formulation identifies “comfort women” as victims of human trafficking, while omitting that Japan’s sexual slavery system victimized the women.Slurring causality and denying culpability leaves the reader only Abe’s aching heart.

Even though this stance is considerable different from Obama’s, Abe has stuck to his offensive formulation. In April 2014, Obama forcefully called Japan’s military sexual slavery a “terrible, egregious violation of human rights.” In March, Abe, who aspires to boost his country’s standing as a “proactive contributor to peace”intoned, “Hitherto in history, many wars have been waged. In this context, women’s human rights were violated.” With uncanny constancy, this contrived context-free concern for women’s wartime human rights surfaced again during Abe’s speech in Congress.

Abe’s latest non-apology will only further infuriate Seoul. South Korean President Park Geun-hye has expressed her willingness to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un without preconditions — but with Abe only after the prime minister directly addresses the “comfort women” issue. This deepening schism in Washington-Tokyo-Seoul relations will likely incentivize Pyongyang to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of its communist party this October — a party founded on an exaggerated narrative of anti-Japanese resistance — with provocations. And the schism will likely embolden Beijing to act more aggressively in the East China Sea, where it claims the Diaoyu — islands administered by Japan, which calls them the Senkakus — and further test the U.S.-Japan alliance. By playing on Japan’s wartime atrocities and the common psychic scars perpetuated by an unrepentant Tokyo, Pyongyang and Beijing may even impel an aggrieved Seoul to gang up together on Japan, to Washington’s consternation.

In the lead-up to Abe’s next major speech, on Aug. 15, the 70th anniversary of Japan’s declaration of surrender, the Obama administration should put its moral and diplomatic leverage to the test. It should insist that Abe make an unequivocal statement of apology for Japan’s war crimes, on atrocities like massacres of civilians and enforced sexual slavery — and that Abe not repeat platitudes about upholding past government’s positions behind a smoke screen of willful omission of facts and studied use of the passive voice.

Moreover, Abe should lend credibility to his words by offering compensation to the surviving victims of sexual slavery. He should also commission a high-level working group on historical issues composed of leading Japanese, South Korean, and Chinese scholars and that includes work on joint historical research with South Korea and China. Such efforts will take time to bear fruit, but public diplomacy is one area where process vindicates even incremental progress.

Beijing, for its part, should resist the temptation to hype up Japan’s wartime transgressions for political gain. Park, too, should show flexibility and directly engage the Japanese leader on security issues of common concern. The common security threat of North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal demands close cooperation between Seoul and Tokyo. Park’s late father, President Park Chung-hee, normalized relations with Japan in 1965, despite nationwide protests. That her father was an authoritarian leader with greater means to control public opinion should not blur Park’s recognition that Japan is her country’s tacit ally in responding to the North Korean threat.

For Japan to win Seoul’s hand in collective countermeasures against Pyongyang and to strip Beijing of a key excuse for bluster and military buildup would be meaningful gains in this commemorative year. For the world to welcome him as a proactive contributor to peace, Abe must first show that he is properly penitent for crimes of the past.

Photo credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Why won’t India criminalize marital rape? Because marriage is sacrament, the government says

A protester lights candles during a vigil to mark the first anniversary of the Delhi gang rape, in New Delhi on Dec. 16, 2013. (Reuters/Adnan Abidi)

By Adam Taylor-April 30
In recent years sexual violence has become a subject of fierce debate within India, with new legislation put in place in 2013 designed to protect women from harassment, assault and rape. Despite some progress made, critics say the government has failed to address a number of specific issues in Indian society related to sexual violence.

Why Won’t India Criminalize Marital Rape Because Marriage is Sacrament, The Government Says by Thavam Ratna



Americas region is declared the world’s first to eliminate rubella

Historic achievement follows similar "firsts" against smallpox in 1971 and polio in 1994

 

A rash of rubella on the skin of child's back is shown in a 1978 handout photo. Distribution is similar to that of measles, but the lesions are less intensely red.-Vancouver Sun‎

Wednesday, 29 April 2015

Washington, D.C., 29 April 2015 (PAHO/WHO) — The Americas region has become the first in the world to be declared free of endemic transmission of rubella, a contagious viral disease that can cause multiple birth defects as well as fetal death when contracted by women during pregnancy.

Americas Region is Declared the World’s First to Eliminate Rubella by Thavam Ratna

Transformative 19A Experience:The emergence of an equally Parliamentary and Executive President

by Rajan Philips-May 2, 2015

The transformative benefits of the 19th Amendment are arguably more in the experience of its passage – the whole business of its drafting, judicial preview, debate, enactment and adoption, than in the content of its provisions. First, the drafting itself was a very public and effectively contested process, easily without precedent, or parallel, in Sri Lanka’s chequered constitutional history. Second, the judges of the Supreme Court played their part with independence and without interference, breaking, hopefully once and for all, the servile tradition that began with the Second Constitutional Court under the 1972 Constitution and became entrenched in the Supreme Court after the 1978 Constitution.

Transformative 19A Experience the Emergence of an Equally Parliamentary and Executive President by Thavam Ratna

The FUTA Statement on the Attack on Dr Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri and Dr Kumudu Kusum Kumara

(Dr Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri and Dr Kumudu Kusum Kumara)

by FUTA.-02/05/2015 

On the 1st of May, a group of persons brutally attacked former FUTA President and current media spokesperson, Dr Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri and Dr Kumudu Kusum Kumara, also a prominent public intellectual, at Kirulapone. Dr Dewasiri and Dr Kusum Kumara had been near the May Day Rally organised by MPs Wimal Weerawansa, Vasudeva Nanayakkara and Dinesh Gunwardene. Those attacking Dr Dewasiri and Dr Kusum Kumara had been shouting that they were responsible for defeating former President Mahinda Rajapakse. Dr Dewasiri and Dr Kusum Kumara were fortunate to get away alive, thanks to the swift action of the police who had been providing security arrangements for the rally. The mob had even tried to attack the police vehicle which took away the two academics from the site.

This cowardly attack is a grim reminder of the kind of political culture that people thought they had defeated on the 8th of January 2015: lack of respect for political dissent; use of violence and complete intolerance of political opposition. It is extremely unfortunate, that these elements are allowed to behave as if nothing has changed. It is even more unfortunate, that they are provided a space in which to vent their hatred and intolerance and in fact are even encouraged to continue to behave in this manner, by elected representatives. As much or even more as we condemn the mob which engaged in this attack, we need to condemn the politics which engenders this kind of behaviour. It is the venomous political ideology spewed out b those who are no longer in power, after they have been defeated through democratic means, that is promoting the attitudes and actions that led to this attack.

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the attack on our two members and colleagues. We demand an investigation into this event and that those responsible be brought before the law. Finally, we would like to reiterate that as university academics who have fought to uphold the rule of law, democratic principles and the right of dissent, our members cannot be intimidated by such cowardly attacks. We will continue to work for these principles and support all endeavours to ensure that this country strives towards the political reforms which the people voted for on the 8th of January 2015.

Police yet to trace Dr. Dewasiri’s assaulters

May 2, 2015

The police are yet to disclose the unidentified mob that attacked Dr. Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri during a May Day rally held at the Lalith Athulathmudali Ground in Kirulapone on Friday (1) evening.

Police Spokesperson ASP Ruwan Gunasekara told Ada Derana that a police team has launched an investigation in connection with the incident. 

Dewasiri, who served as the Chairman of the Federation of University Teachers Associations (FUTA) from 2012-2014, was admitted to the Colombo National Hospital following the attack with minor injuries.

Dewasiri has been discharged from the hospital this morning (2), a hospital source told Ada Derana.

The Operation In Jaffna: July 1979; What Was Wrong?

By Rajan Hoole –May 2, 2015

Dr. Rajan Hoole

ByLaw Enforcement and the Security Services: Politicisation and Demoralisation – 11

According to dissenting officers, if a proper ‘Appreciation of Situation’ had been done, it should have led to an integrated operation with a political solution to address the root cause. Military force should only be used economically so as not to alienate the people. The Army can in the short run restore a sense of order, but then the politicians have to do their bit.

Asked what he thought was most wrong with the operation, one officer said, “Soon after the operation started, two corpses of youth were found in Jaffna town. If you are going to tolerate or encourage that sort of thing, then things have gone badly wrong. All right, the Police may have done it. But I was co-ordinating officer during the 1971 insurgency and I know how these police fellows operate if you allow them. After all, the militant youth are also human. You must win them over and correct them or take them into custody. What the Army did in Jaffna was to terrorise the civilians.”

A younger officer reflected, “What the Government did wrong was to treat the militant youth as criminals. By acting against them as terrorists to be eliminated, they were cornered. There should have been a dialogue.” A dialogue about what? Lalith Athulathmudali, the main author of the 1978 constitution, was very clear about it when he told Mr. Nadarajah, the Jaffna DDC Chairman just before the July 1983 violence, that there would be no devolution. The only thing on offer was some money to put up a few structures. This was the bottom line, and so the Army had to be pushed to do the impossible.

A New Culture

General Denis Perera took over as army commander in 1977 after General Attygalle had held that position for 10 years. General Perera did some major re-organisation and it was one of the best periods in the Army in recent times. The Commander was viewed as an impartial and courteous man who did what was best for the institution and the men. With adverse political changes, the Tamils had been leaving the Army. General Perera took pains to ensure that the Tamils stayed and got what was their due according to merit. There is a reply from General Perera in the files of the Civil Rights Movement. This was regarding terms on which women were to be recruited into the Army. The Commander acknowledged the CRM’s concerns and promised to look into them. In the coming years any meeting ground between two such institutions ceased to exist.

A good outgoing commander seeks to ensure that his successor is the best man, a man of character and moderation who commanded the respect of the men. Denis Perera duly recommended Justus Rodrigo whom he described as ‘a very straight man having the backing of the officers’. Denis Perera had an easy relationship with Jayewardene with whom he felt free to disagree. Here Jayewardene disagreed, and in a crucial manoeuvre after his own fashion, in October 1981, made Tissa Weeratunge army commander. From being a professional body, it changed the Army into an instrument of bludgeon, to deal with problems after the inclinations of the ruling clique. Two soldiers were killed in an ambush at KKS soon after Weeratunge became commander. These were the first army causalities.Read More

Tamil lunatic fringe anti-Muslim racism - Observation on Muslim-Tamil relations – 2

Izeth Hussain-May 1, 2015, 7:09 pm 

A clarification is required about the title of this article. I refer only to a narrow segment, a very narrow segment, of the Tamils, not the totality of them, or the generality or the majority of them. Does that very narrow segment of Tamils merit a two or three part article? I believe they do for several reasons. By and large the relations between Muslims and Tamils are quite satisfactory. In fact, I am told, that there is better rapport between the Muslims and the Tamils – the Tamil-speaking peoples - than there is between either of them and the Sinhalese. It is only in the Eastern Province that Muslim-Tamil relations are troubled, already I suspect to a fairly serious extent. There the Tamil lunatic fringe anti-Muslim racists could come to play a catalytic role in creating yet another monstrous ethnic problem in Sri Lanka.

Tamil Lunatic Fringe Anti-Muslim Racism - Observation on Muslim-Tamil Relations – 2 by Thavam Ratna

Kerry warns Sri Lanka that Tamil reconciliation will 'take time'

US Secretary of State John Kerry poses with Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena ahead of a meeting at the Presidential Secretariate in Colombo on Saturday.

2

May

2015

AFP/Colombo

US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Sri Lanka on Saturday that "true reconciliation" with Tamils after the island's devastating ethnic conflict will take time as he praised the new reformist government.

Kerry hailed President Maithripala Sirisena's administration for reaching out to the Tamil minority after the end of a 37-year ethnic conflict that claimed more than 100,000 lives, saying Sri Lanka was at a "pivotal moment".

"Peace has come but true reconciliation will take time," Kerry said during a speech in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo.

He called for Sri Lanka to investigate the cases of thousands who went missing in the final stages of the brutal conflict in 2009 and find answers "however painful... the truth may be".

Since coming to power in January elections, Sirisena, who took most of the Tamil votes in the polls, has vowed to pursue reconciliation efforts more vigorously than predecessor Mahinda Rajapakse, a hardline Sinhalese nationalist who oversaw the crushing of the Tamil rebels.

"They (Sri Lankan government) talked to me about a truth commission and other efforts developing the process, working with the UN, and I know they are really deeply committed to working this through," Kerry said.

Sirisena has also begun delivering on his pledges to reduce some of the powers of the president, effectively reversing changes that Rajapakse had brought in to tighten his grip.

Lawmakers voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday in favour of restoring a two-term limit for the president and reviving independent bodies to manage key institutions such as the police and the judiciary.

"Today we have talked about the enormous progress Sri Lanka has made in just a few months," said Kerry as he appeared alongside Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera.

"I'm here today because I want to say to the people of Sri Lanka that in (this) journey to restore your democracy the American people will stand with you," added Kerry.

'Special friendship'

"There is progress on democratic institutions, progress on creating more accountable government, passage of (the) 19th amendment in which the president kept his promise to reduce powers of the presidency," he said.

Colombo was now "laser focused" on improving human rights, he added.

"Until just recently, our diplomats routinely clashed with yours on this matter... but now with the new government we have an opportunity to turn the page and work together."

Samaraweera, who was on hand to welcome Kerry at Colombo airport, had equally warm words for his guest, the first US secretary of state to visit Colombo in a decade.

"Today is the beginning of a very, very special friendship," said the foreign minister.

"Today, Sri Lanka is well on its way to becoming a fully-fledged parliamentary democracy, laying the foundations for a new Sri Lanka, built on the pillars of democracy and ethnic harmony."

During Rajapakse's rule, Washington was close to slapping sanctions on Colombo for refusing to allow investigations into claims of mass killings and rights abuses at the end of the war between the Tamil Tiger rebels and government forces.

As Sri Lanka's relations with the West and regional powerhouse India soured, Rajapakse turned increasingly to Beijing, with Chinese-funded investments projects springing up across Sri Lanka.

Since coming to power, Sirisena has tried to reset the diplomatic balance, choosing New Delhi for his first foreign visit and offering the hand of friendship to other key players who fell out with his predecessor.

Kerry was instrumental in persuading Rajapakse to accept the results of the January 8 election that brought an end to a nine-year rule marred by rampant nepotism and corruption allegations.

Amid rumours Rajapakse might try to cling to power by force, Kerry spoke to him at the time to press what he called "the importance of maintaining a peaceful process no matter what".

Kerry afterwards hailed the "peaceful change of power" in Sri Lanka, mindful of the contested outcome of several recent elections in South Asia.

Kerry will meet the leaders of the main Tamil political group, the Tamil National Alliance, on Sunday morning before flying to the Kenyan capital Nairobi.