Indonesian police arrest 7 in seafood slavery case

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Two Indonesians and five Thais were arrested on charges of human trafficking connected with slavery in the seafood industry, Indonesian police said Tuesday. They were the first suspects taken into custody since the case was revealed by The Associated Press in a report two months ago.

The arrests were made Monday and late Friday in the remote island village of Benjina, said Lt. Col. Arie Dharmanto, National Police anti-trafficking unit chief.

Five Thai boat captains and two Indonesian employees at Pusaka Benjina Resources, one of the largest fishing firms in eastern Indonesia, were taken into custody. The arrests come after the AP reported on slave-caught seafood shipped from Benjina to Thailand, where it can be exported and enter the supply chains of some of America's biggest food retailers.

"They have committed an extraordinary crime, and we will not let it happen again in Indonesia," Dharmanto said. "We will not stop here. We will pursue those who are involved in this case, whoever they are."

Police will recommend they be charged by prosecutors. If the men go to trial, they could face jail sentences of up to 15 years and fines as high as $46,000, he said.

He said the number of suspects would likely climb because authorities are still investigating how thousands of foreign fishermen from Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand were put on fishing boats in Thailand — sometimes after being tricked or kidnapped — and brought to work in Indonesian waters where they were not allowed to leave. Many said they were beaten and forced to work up to 24 hours a day with inadequate food and unclean water. Most were paid little or nothing at all.

The yearlong AP investigation found that tainted fish can wind up in the supply chains of some of America's biggest food sellers, such as Wal-Mart, Sysco and Kroger. It can also find its way into the supply chains of some of the most popular brands of canned pet food, including Fancy Feast, Meow Mix and Iams. The companies have all said they strongly condemn labor abuse and are taking steps to prevent it, such as working with human rights groups to hold subcontractors accountable.

In April, a week after the story was published, Indonesia's Fisheries Ministry made a dramatic rescue when officials loaded more than 300 slaves and former slaves in Benjina onto six fishing boats for a 17-hour overnight voyage to the island of Tual where they have since been housed at a makeshift camp near the port.

With 59 Cambodians returning home Monday, most of those remaining are from Myanmar, otherwise known as Burma, but a few are also from Laos. More than 200 others have also been identified in Benjina and are waiting for travel documents to go home as well.

Dharmanto said authorities planned to fly all the suspects to Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, after the investigation is completed. Police were still questioning the company's security guards, who were also expected to be named as suspects, he added.

He said the police probe found that hundreds of foreign fishermen were recruited in Thailand and brought to Indonesia using fake immigration papers and seamen books and were subjected to brutal labor abuses. The suspects are accused of locking fishermen up for one to six months in a prison-like cell located in the company's compound in Benjina.

Police have seized five fishing boats allegedly used by the suspects for human trafficking and slavery-like practices as well as dozens of fake passports and seamen books.

Dharmanto said the arrests were made after police questioned more than 50 foreign fishermen from Myanmar and Cambodia along with 16 witnesses, including company employees, immigration and port officials.

____

Associated Press reporter Niniek Karmini contributed to this report from Jakarta, Indonesia.

The Exchange: Andrei Soldatov and Joe Weisberg Talk Russian Intel

Why do governments bother to spy at all?

BY FP STAFF-MAY 11, 2015

Ex-CIA officer Joe Weisberg debuted his TV show The Americans in January 2013, chronicling the lives of two “illegals”—deep-undercover Russian spies seemingly living a normal American existence. Weisberg’s series was partly inspired by 10 illegals who had been apprehended on U.S. soil three years earlier. That event also revealed something far more dramatic, according to investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov: Russian intelligence appeared desperate to relive the glory days of the long-defunct Communist International (Comintern), a Soviet-era organization that recruited party sympathizers from around the world, while strengthening state security in the meantime. Weisberg, whose show recently aired its third-season finale, and Soldatov, whose book on Russian surveillance, The Red Web, will be published in September, recently debated the merits of illegals, trusting agents, and the world according to Edward Snowden.

The Exchange Andrei Soldatov and Joe Weisberg Talk Russian Intel by Thavam Ratna

Singapore teen guilty of insulting Christians in video blog

By JEANETTE TAN-

May. 12, 2015

SINGAPORE (AP) — Teen blogger Amos Yee was found guilty Tuesday of insulting Christians in a video monologue and of distributing an obscene image of Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew with former British leader Margaret Thatcher.

The 16-year-old Yee had faced three years in jail but instead will be put on probation. He was released on a bail of 10,000 Singapore dollars ($7,500) and probation officers will now interview him and his parents to determine what kind of probation he would receive and how long it would last. The result would be announced June 2.

Asked how he felt about the verdict, Yee — who was wearing a navy T-shirt and khaki shorts — told reporters: "I don't know. I can't decide. I don't know if I should celebrate my release or mourn my sentence."

District Judge Jasvendar Kaur rejected Yee's defense that he did not intend to insult Christians. She also noted she was concerned by the effect on teenagers that the image of the faces of the two leaders superimposed on the drawing of two figures engaged in sexual activity would have.

"The question I had to ask myself was: would any right-thinking parent or teacher approve of their children or students seeing it at home or in the school library? The answer is no... (They would register their) strongest disapproval," she said.

Yee posted the video blog laced with expletives as Singapore was mourning Lee's death on March 23. In the eight-minute clip that he posted on YouTube, Yee said Lee and Jesus Christ were "both power-hungry and malicious," among other derogatory comments mostly targeting Lee.

Such open criticism and lampooning of leaders is rarely seen in Singapore, where laws are strictly enforced. The government of the multiethnic city-state says the enforcement of the letter of the law is necessary to maintain order and stability among the various races and religions.

Kaur also said prosecutors had proved beyond reasonable doubt that Yee had intended to denigrate both Lee and Jesus Christ. She added that the lack of reactions to his comments stemmed from the fact that they were "not made by someone who is learned or who exerts special influence," but instead by a person who "plainly has a lot of growing up to do."

As part of the guilty verdict, Yee will have to remove the two posts.

Yee's parents said they will discuss with lawyers whether to appeal.

According to court documents shown to The Associated Press, Yee told police that he was raised Catholic but turned atheist by mid-2013.

Arrested and charged in March, he was bailed out by a stranger, then defied one of his bail conditions — refraining from posting any public material online — and jailed again.

When he re-entered custody on April 30, Yee was slapped in the face by a stranger outside court. The 49-year-old man, who was charged with voluntarily causing hurt, pleaded guilty on Tuesday, and will spend three weeks in prison. He faced up to two years in jail.

Third atheist blogger killed in Bangladesh knife attack

Police say Ananta Bijoy Das was attacked in Sylhet city, months after fellow bloggers Avijit Roy and Washiqur Rahman were murdered

Saad Hammadi in Dhaka and Agence France-Presse-Tuesday 12 May 2015

A secular blogger has been hacked to death in north-east Bangladesh, the third such deadly attack this year.

Police said Ananta Bijoy Das was murdered as he headed to work at a bank in the city of Sylhet, an attack that fellow writers said highlighted a culture of impunity.

Kamrul Hasan, commissioner of Sylhet police, said a group of about four masked attackers pounced on Das with machetes at about 8.30am on Tuesday on a busy street in Bangladesh’s fifth-largest city.

“They chased him down the street and first attacked his head with their machetes and then attacked him all over his body,” Hasan told Agence France-Presse. The attackers fled into the crowds and Das was taken to hospital but declared dead on arrival, police and medics said.

Hasan would not be drawn on the motive for the attack but fellow writers said Das had been on a hitlist drawn up by militants who were behind the recent killing of a blogger who was a US citizen.

Imran Sarker, head of a Bangladeshi bloggers’ association, said Das was an atheist who wrote blogs for Mukto-Mona, a website formerly moderated by Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi-born US citizen who was stabbed to death in the capital, Dhaka, in February.

Sarker told the Guardian: “They [the government] should not stay in power, if they are not able to bring the perpetrators to justice. One after another incident is happening and they are not able to do anything.”

Debasish Debu, a friend of Das, said the 33-year-old banker was also an editor of a quarterly magazine called Jukti (Logic) and headed the Sylhet-based science and rationalist council.

Debu said Das had been receiving threats for his writing and that their frequency increased after the killing of Roy. “He had written about superstitions, but he wasn’t among the writers that would hurt the sentiments of religion,” Debu said.

According to the Mukto-Mona site, Das won the publication’s annual rationalist award in 2006 for his “deep and courageous interest in spreading secular and humanist ideals and messages”.

While most of Das’s output for Mukto-Mona focused on science and evolution, he wrote a number of blogs that criticised some aspects of Islam and also of Hinduism. He also wrote a poem eulogising the famed Bangladeshi secular writer Taslima Nasreen, who fled to Europe in 1994 after protests by Islamists.

In comments on Facebook posted early on Tuesday, Das criticised the local member of parliament from the ruling Awami League party for criticising one of the country’s top secular and science fiction writers.

His murder comes a week after al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent claimed responsibility for Roy’s killing on 26 February in which his wife was badly injured. An Islamist has been arrested over his murder. Another atheist blogger, Washiqur Rahman, was hacked to death in Dhaka in March. Two madrassa students have been arrested over that attack.

Bangladesh is an officially secular country but more than 90% of its 160 million population are Muslims. There has been an increase in attacks by religious extremists in recent years. Supporters of Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party, which is banned from standing in elections, have been accused of being behind a spate of firebombings this year aimed at toppling the government.

Since 2013, at least five bloggers have been attacked by Islamists after another hardline group, Hefazat-e-Islam, publicly sought the execution of atheists who organised mass protests against the rise of political Islam.

Hefazat, led by Islamic seminary teachers, also staged a massive counter-protest against the bloggers in May 2013 that unleashed violence and left nearly 50 people dead.

Fresh earthquake brings panic, damage and death to Nepal

A 7.3 magnitude earthquake killed at least 41 people and spread panic in Nepal on Tuesday, bringing down buildings already weakened by a devastating tremor less than three weeks ago and unleashing landslides in Himalayan valleys near Mount Everest.

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BY KRISTA MAHR AND ROSS ADKIN-Tue May 12, 2015 

Most of the reported fatalities were in villages and towns east of Kathmandu, only just beginning to pick up the pieces after the April 25 quake that left more than 8,000 people dead.

The new earthquake was centred 76 km (47 miles) east of the capital in a hilly area close to the border with Tibet, according to coordinates provided by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Villagers who watched their homes collapse said they only survived because they were already living in tents.

Aid workers reported serious damage to some villages in the worst affected Charikot area and said some people were still trapped under rubble. Witnesses said rocks and mud came crashing down remote hillsides lined with roads and small hamlets.

"We still don't have a clear view of the scale of the problem," said Dan Sermand, emergency coordinator at Medecins Sans Frontieres, which surveyed the area by air and saw multiple landslides.

The United Nations has only raised 13 percent of the $423 million it said was needed to help Nepal recover from the April tragedy, and relief workers warned that even more funding would now be needed.

In the town of Sangachowk, residents were outside receiving government food aid when the quake struck.

"It was really lucky. If we were inside, it would have been a lot worse," said Purushottam Acharya, 38.

FAMILY WATCHES HOUSE DISAPPEAR

A family sat on the edge of road where their house had just fallen down the hill, rubble spread over hundreds of feet below.

"We watched it go down slowly, slowly," said Ashok Parajuli. 30.

In Charikot, where at least 20 bodies were recovered, hotel owner Top Thapa said the quake was at least as strong as last month.

"We saw houses falling, collapsing along the ridge," said Thapa, owner of Charikot Panorama Resort. He said he saw five or six multi-storey buildings come down.

Politicians dashed for the exit of Nepal's parliament building and office towers swayed as far away as New Delhi. The tremors that began at around 12.30 could be felt in Bangladesh and were followed by a series of powerful aftershocks.

Parents clutched children tightly, and hundreds of people frantically tried to call relatives on mobile phones. Shopkeepers closed their stores and the streets were jammed with people rushing to check on families.

Elsewhere, people huddled in public spaces, too nervous to venture inside.

"I am very scared and I am with my two sons. The school building is cracked and bits of it, I can see they have collapsed," said Rhita Doma Sherpa, a nurse with the Mountain Medicine Center in Namche Bazaar, a departure point for trekkers headed to Everest.

"It was lunchtime. All the kids were outside. Thank god."

"WE SAW THE MOUNTAIN FALL"

May is peak season for climbing and trekking in Nepal's high altitude valleys and peaks, but the usually bustling lodges and tea-houses were close to empty after thousands of tourists fled the April quake.

Dambar Parajuli, president of Expedition Operators' Association of Nepal, said there were no climbers or Nepali sherpa guides at Everest Base Camp. Mountaineers seeking to scale the world's tallest peak called off this year's Everest season after 18 people died when last month's quake triggered avalanches on the mountain.

"All of them have already left," Parajuli said.

In Lukla, the departure point for treks to Everest, buildings cracked and small landslides were triggered when the ground shook. At least three school children were injured.

Susana Perez from Madrid was on a 10-day trek with her husband to Island Peak in the Everest region and was about to reach Lukla.

"We saw the mountain in front of us fall down - earth and rocks. There were some houses underneath but it was not clear if they were hit," Perez said.

In Nepal the death toll reached 41, with 1,066 injured, police spokesman Kamal Singh Bam said. Five people were killed in Indian states bordering Nepal, according to officials, and Chinese media reported one person died in Tibet after rocks fell on a car.

Indian and U.S. military aircraft flew more than 60 wounded people to Kathmandu from affected areas.

Nepal had barely begun to recover from the devastation caused by last month's 7.8-magnitude earthquake, the country's worst in more than 80 years, which killed at least 8,046 people and injured more than 17,800.

Hundreds of thousands of buildings, including ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples, were destroyed and many more damaged.

Some foreign rescue teams have returned home from Nepal, but may need to be pressed into service again.

At a welcoming ceremony for an Israeli military rescue delegation on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "I know that you are already prepared for the next mission, anywhere it might be required. And to judge by the news, it is possible that such a mission now faces us."

Wojtek Wilk, CEO of the Polish Center for International Aid, said the new quake presented a funding challenge. Last week, World Food Programme head Ertharin Cousin said that the scale and number of global humanitarian crises was straining donors.

(Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma in KATHMANDU, Rupam Jain Nair, Doug Busvine, Tommy Wilkes, Sanjeev Miglani, Andrew MacAskill and Frank Jack Daniel in NEW DELHI and Dan Williams in JERUSALEM; Writing by Paritosh Bansal and Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

WARNING: What Your Microwave is Actually Doing to Your Food

Imagine finding a cure for something so widely understood like the common cold.Everyone knows what a cold is, everyone has suffered from one. But what if you found a cure, but were told to keep your mouth shut.

Just think about it, you found a cure and big Pharma sues you. They give you a gag order, thus ensuring that your cure doesn’t spread so they can sell more over-the-counter pills and “remedies”.What would you do if you had such good news but weren’t allowed to share it?

Hans Hertel – Swiss Scientist Didn’t Discover The Cure For The Common Cold

In 1992, Hertel conducted a very thorough study on microwave cookery, in which he tested 8 healthy humans’ blood before and after eating raw vegetables, cooked veggies, and microwaved ones. According to the research, microwaving food changes the food’s molecular structure. Radically.

The way microwaves work is, they cook the food by blasting your meal with electromagnetic radiation. “There are no atoms, molecules or cells of any organic system able to withstand such a violent, destructive power,” says Hertel.

First, the microwave super-heats the water molecules that make up your food. Then, they’re directly agitated to make frictional heat, which destroy the cells nutritional value and creates a by-product in the organic material (or food) called radio lytic compounds.

Hertel discovered that far more radio lytic compounds come from cooking with the microwave, even though scientists argue there are radio lytic compounds created in food from normal cooking. The food damaged from the microwave has nasty effects on our bodies.

These effects include: Decreased white blood cells,lower hemoglobin (which carries oxygen from the lungs to your muscles) and cholesterol levels. Cells in your body literally have to change – adapt into an emergency production mode.

Your body has to make energy in an alternate way – anaerobic glucose fermentation, instead of normal cellular oxidation (cells getting oxygen).

Anaerobic glucose fermentation is when your body converts glucose (sugar) into acids, which becomes your cells’ way to produce ATP (energy). Note that this is a cancerous situation.Anaerobic glucose fermentation is how cancer cells survive and thrive.

Back To The Nukes

An EU appliance trade organization lobbied the court for a gag order on the findings, as soon as Hans Hertel discovered the dangers of using the microwave. This was in 1992. However, Hertel stood his ground and in 6 years he was able to reverse the ruling.

There were early U.S. warnings about microwaving baby formula and stored breast milk, in order to save the babies’ mouths from “unexpected heat surprise”. As a result, we now know that nuking our food destroys its nutrients, and can be harmful to us as well.

While cooking, the microwave lets off radiation.At the start of this short video we provided, you’ll see how microwaves are tested for radiation, even from several feet away. The shocking results will have you standing 15 ft. away from the microwave next time you’re reheating a meal.

Go Cold Turkey

Before your next microwaved meal, you should think of this story: In 1991 Norma Levitt went in for a normal hip surgery and died. Before blood transfusions, the plasma must be heated to normal body temperature, and for Norma the blood was microwaved. She died almost immediately after the infusion.

Wild life protection is one thing but permitting these human lives to suffer worse than animals for 26 years is another

(Lanka-e-News- 11.May.2015, 12.25 PM) The residents of Sidhampuram and Poonthottam , Vavuniya  displaced during the war  and now in refugee camps are  experiencing untold hardships for the last 26 years , and are continuing to suffer because the authorities have not taken adequate measures to re settle them.

In these refugee camps there are 243 families comprising 513 members . They have not been re settled because in Kilinochchi and Mulaitivu where they resided earlier they don’t own any lands.

These displaced refugees say , though the Vavuniya district secretary took action to  re settle them in fresh lands in Nedunkarni , that has not been implemented yet .

Right now , these abysmally suffering refugees in the two refugee camps have no facilities except water in the wells; they have no other basic facilities including those conducive to hygiene and health , sanitation  and schooling .Besides , because these refugees do not get even their dry rations ,they have to go to the neighboring villages and earn a meager  livelihood on a daily basis by doing menial work .

They are in a most pitiful state for the last 26  long years , in a country where there are many to sympathize with animals , trees and stones  , yet there is  none to show sympathy towards these forlorn humans devastated mentally , physically and emotionally for no fault of their own .

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by   Photo and report – Dinasena Rathugamage from Vavuniya   (2015-05-11 07:17:09)

Sri Lankan intelligence photographs participants at TCSF 'Right to Remember' event
11 May 2015
Sri Lankan state intelligence took photographs of people participating in a discussion on the ‘Right to Remember’ at Jaffna Library on Sunday. 

Photographs: Tamil Guardian

The event, organised by the Tamil Civil Society Forum, looked to discuss issues on remembrance.

Lecturer in Law at Jaffna University and TCSF Co-Spokesperson, Guruparan Kumaravadivel, added that a plurality of narratives was possible within the collective memory of a political community using Tamil nationalism as an example.

Speaking on the blurred liens between perpetrators and victims, after highlighting that the Tamil people’s right to memory had been violated on 18^th May and November 27^th, human rights activist Ruki Fernando, said,

“One man’s Hero is another man’s villain. How do we reconcile the blurred lines between victim and perpetrator?” 

Attorney at Law and Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) Bhavini Fonseka, noting that the previous government created their own official narrative for remembrance, added that there must be room different narratives. 

See also:

TCSF to hold seminar on 'Right to Memory' at Jaffna Library (07 May 2015)

Northern Provincial Council member vows to continue remembering Tamil war dead at Maveerar Naal (07 May 2015)

NPC member summoned by Sri Lanka police for involvement in commemorating Tamil war dead (04 May 2015)

Three arrests over Maaveerar Naal posters (26 Nov 2014)

Death threats posted in Jaffna university (24 Nov 2014)

Teachers' union condemn military presence at Jaffna Uni (14 Nov 2014)
Tamils remember Maaveerar in North-East despite SL military violence and intimidation(27 November 2013)
Escalating repression of Maaveerar remembrance met with Tamil defiance (26 Nov 2013)

Also see our earlier posts:

Eastern Uni students protest over student arrests in Jaffna (04 December 2012)

More arrests of students feared as military watches over uni (03 December 2012)

Army says it was deployed for 'security' (02 December 2012)

Jaffna University students arrested by Sri Lankan TID (01 December 2012)

Jaffna uni teachers protest in solidarity (30 November 2012)

Attacks have pushed reconciliation even further away - TNA MP (29 November 2012)

US embassy 'greatly concerned' about attacks on students (29 November 2012)

Security forces attack youth in Jaffna (28 November 2012)

Military storm Jaffna uni hostels, students attacked (27 November 2012)

Armed intelligence officers roam Jaffna Uni campus (27 November 2012)

Security forces engulf Jaffna University (27 November 2012)

Tamils defiant as SL state attempts to quash remembrance (27 November 2012)

"We will rise and rise again" - Jaffna Students on Remembrance Day (27 November 2012)

Wilpattu: Environmentalists Prostitute With Extremists

By Hilmy Ahamed –May 11, 2015

Hilmy Ahamed

The assault on the innocent Muslim “Forgotten People” of the Northern Province continues unabated. The media, the Janatha Vimukthu Peramuna (JVP) and the most popular politician in saffron robes, Battaramulle Seelarathana thero of SIRASA and Janasetha peramuna fame have joined the bandwagon of racism. The Environment Conservation Trust Director Sajeewa Chamikara has confirmed in interviews that these returning Muslim IDPs have not encroached in to Wilpattu National Reserve, but have settled in reserves demarcated by the forest department. This is quite a different song from the previous charge of destroying the Wilpattu National park for future generations. Yes, the forest department will certainly have claims to these lands because they were abandoned for 25 years since the eviction of Muslims from their lands and there certainly would be obvious jungle growth. The Government agent and other state officials from the area have confirmed that there has been no land grab from unallocated land and all resettlement processes were undertaken with state approval. There have been claims that these public servants have been forced to make these statements by Minister Bathiudeen. They should now have learnt their lessons if they are lying because even respected public servants in the caliber of Lilith Weeratunga are facing probable jail terms for breaking the law and dancing to the tune of his masters. The JVP’s firebrand Lal Kantha

confirmed from the location that as per the information they have received and witnessed, there is no transgressions by the Muslim IDPs. Questions have been raised by the JVP as to the number of returning IDPs. It is quite obvious that the numbers would not be the same after 25 years of displacement as families have naturally expanded.

There seems to be no doubt that these environmentalists and others with political ambitions have swallowed the bitter pill of racism that has been dispensed by the Bodu Bala Sena and other extremist Buddhist groups. They fail to realize that Mahinda Rajapaksa was sent home because of his nexus with racists. Further, none of these patriots and environmentalists has taken up the complaints made by the Tamils and Muslims of the blatant colonization of these areas with Sinhalese from other districts. Residents from the area claim that the following numbers of Sinhalese from Hambantota district and families of military personnel have been settled in the former war affected areas since the end of the war in 2009.

1 Veratenna – 520 families
2. Bogaswewa 1- 500 families
3. Bogaswewa 2 – 560 families
4. Namalgama – 470 families
5. Senaleenigama – 450 families
6. Nandamitragama – 360 families

These 2860 resettled families have been provided with thousands of acres of land. Their lands have been cleared for resettlement, grants and allowances disbursed, and all other facilities including schooling have been provided by the state. From where did the land for these settlers come? No one talks about the jungle and reservations that have been cleared for this purpose.

While one should encourage co-existence with mixed populations in all parts of the country, these colonization schemes should not be undertaken at the expense of other communities who have traditionally been living in these lands.                                      Read More

WINNING PEOPLE’S SUPPORT WILL ALSO ENSURE SECURITY--JEHAN PERERA

 11 May 2015

President Maithripala Sirisena has revoked an agreement with the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka to allocate 800 acres of land for investment projects in Sampur and released the land to be used to resettle people who had been displaced from the area. He had also directed that a navy camp set up there should also be relocated to enable the resettlement of the displaced people. The people were displaced in 2006 when the Sri Lankan military retook the Sampur area, which had been under LTTE control. The LTTE used the strategic location at Sampur to fire artillery into the nearby Trincomalee Harbour and naval base. Thereafter the land was taken over by the government for its own purposes including a naval camp and high security zone.

Sections of the opposition have been critical of the President’s decision and said that he is jeopardising national security. However, the Governor of the Eastern Province Austin Fernando, who was also a former Defense Secretary, has responded that the decision had been made after discussion with the military authorities, including the Navy Commander. The President’s actions indicate that his thinking on security is not focused only on control of physical assets, such as land, but also on winning hearts and minds.

The value of Sampur is not limited to its strategic significance. The location of the planned Indian coal fired power plant is also in the Sampur area which increases the economic attractiveness of the land to prospective investors. Land has been taken over by the government not only in Sampur but also in other parts of the country, including Colombo for investment purposes. However, the decision of the former government to vest the land in Sampur in the state, and to designate it as an investment zone was not done with the consent of the people or after finding them alternative lands to meet even their minimal satisfaction. The net effect was that they were arbitrarily evicted and had to spend nearly a decade in welfare camps.

The forcible expulsion of people from their homes and lands where they have traditionally lived is a fate that all communities living in Sri Lanka, and particularly in the former war zones of the North and East, have had to face. The Muslims living in the North experienced this fate on the largest scale at the hands of the LTTE in 1990. It was only after the final military defeat of the LTTE in 2009 that the door opened for them to return. There were also smaller villages in the border areas inhabited by people of each of the three communities who were forced to leave their homes and flee, and are today too scattered to return. There is however a significant difference between war time displacements and the post-war displacements that took place during the period of the former government.


EXEMPLARY ACTION
During a time of war each of the warring sides would give maximum priority to strategic considerations and to their security concerns. However, the inexcusable action of the former government was that even after winning the war, they persisted with the takeover of land on a large scale. They acquired the land of those who were poor and powerless giving security related reasons, but they took over land in such excess that they used it to build hotels and golf courses and even for agricultural usage of the security forces. While the main target was the land inhabited by Tamil people, as evidenced in the takeover of 7000 acres of land in the Jaffna peninsula, they also took land in Sinhalese inhabited areas, most notoriously Panama, the remote and beautiful Sinhalese village in the east. These were all taken over after the end of the war.

President Sirisena’s decision to return the land to the people is an exemplary act of political leadership. He did it without hesitation, without propaganda or fanfare. Only decisive political leadership could have accomplished this victory for justice. In the past there have been many attempts made by the displaced people, with the backing of civil society groups, to obtain justice from the state but without success. In the case of the land taken over in the Jaffna peninsula, there are some 2000 cases outstanding in the courts. One of the civil society organisations that has been most active in this regard has been the Centre for Policy Alternatives.

In a statement issued after the President’s decision to release the land in Sampur, CPA said that in 2007, a High Security Zone was created preventing around 12,000 people from returning to their land. After CPA filed a case in the courts on behalf of the affected people, the size of the HSZ was reduced, allowing some to return to their land but continuing the displacement of several others due to the existence of a smaller HSZ. Subsequently the establishment of the Special Zone for Heavy Industries in 2012 perpetuated the displacement of the people even after the war. This calls for the government to re-examine the existence of arbitrary HSZs and the occupation of land by security forces and others without adherence to due process.


COUNTERING FRUSTRATION
Another example would be the village of Mullilkulam on the sea coast in the northern Mannar district. This too has been taken over by the military for a naval camp after the end of the war. Today nearly six years after the end of the war, these people continue to live in cadjan huts next to scrub jungle. Their livelihoods are gone. Their church is in the middle of the navy camp. They have access to his church, but it is not the same as having the church in the middle of their village as it used to be. Most of the irrigation tanks that they used for cultivation are no longer accessible to them. The continuing neglect of Mullikulam does not reflect positively on the spirit with which the government’s intention to promote reconciliation in the country.

The people of Mullikulam are amongst the large group of people who lived in the North and East, who got displaced several times during the course of the thirty year war. They had been first displaced in 1984. They returned after two years, but they were displaced again, and yet again. On every occasion they nurtured the hope that they would be able to return one day to their old homes and homesteads. Mullikulam is a Catholic village. The distress of some of the Catholic clergy I met was evident. They spoke about structural disempowerment and the need for power to decide for themselves because they could not trust those from outside their region to decide fairly and justly.

After seeing the continuing plight of the people of Mullikulam, and the broken promises of the government, I could see why these ideas continue to hold sway amongst sections of the Tamil people both locally and in the Tamil Diaspora. There is currently a growing sense of frustration amongst sectors of the Tamil polity that the government is not engaging in political reform that will address the grievances of the Tamil people. The passage of the 19th Amendment which reduces the powers of the presidency, and shares it with parliament and other independent institutions, is a first step in the process of power sharing. The other reforms will happen as the reconciliation process gathers strength. The return of land, in Sampur, Jaffna, Mullikulam and Panama is part of rebuilding trust between the government and the people, which is the best guarantee of national unity.

The continually loss-making Central Bank puts nation on red alert 

Monday, 11 May 2015

Central Bank making losses in two consecutive years
There is an ominously dangerous Trojan horse that has been placed in the Central Bank by its previous administration led by the so-called Monetary Board which still continues in perpetual succession. That horse is the mounting losses it has made consecutively for two years in 2013 and 2014 under its management.

The Continually Loss-making Central Bank Puts Nation on Red Alert by Thavam Ratna

An open letter to Opposition Leader Nimal Siripala de Silva

• • 
    
  • by Harim Peiris 
  • - on 05/11/2015 

Hon. Nimal Siripala de Silva MP
Leader of the Opposition
Sir Marcus Fernando Mawatha
Colombo 7.

My dear Honorable Sir,

I thought of writing to you, due to the upcoming general election and the choices that face the SLFP in that context. My interest stems from my own personal association with the Party and is also motivated by my late father having been a founding member and Central Committee member of the SLFP in the 1950s, which fact seem to have been known to President Sirisena, who as the then General Secretary called and condoled with me on his demise last year.  However, I hasten to add that, though I previously served as Presidential Spokesman and currently as the Chairman of the Resettlement Authority, that the views expressed in this letter are strictly my own.

Firstly let me belatedly express my congratulations to you on the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution by a near unanimous vote, an achievement for which the SLFP should also take some credit, since it is after all the single largest party in Parliament. The greatest credit of course goes to President Sirisena, whose patient diplomacy crafted the compromises necessary to achieve a consensus and also showed that the SLFP and the UNP can work together for the greater good of the nation. It portends well for a possible national government after the general elections.

I must say though, I was rather surprised at some of the objections that were raised by the learned Professor G.L. Peiris on behalf of the SLFP earlier on, it was a pity he was unable to be as focused or articulate when the abominable 18th amendment was passed in essentially half a day, without a semblance of a debate. Perhaps in that avatar he believed that ignorance was bliss.

I must also congratulate you, my dear Nimal, on keeping your job as Leader of the Opposition in Parliament. It was only a few weeks ago, that Dinesh Gunawardena was making a valiant bid to oust you and occupy your seat and it struck me then, that a party (the MEP) with only himself elected to Parliament and his brother appointed through the national list, trying to be opposition leader was rather thick. It took the TNA, to remind the Speaker that in the event that the UPFA was unable to lead the opposition, that they were the third largest party in Parliament. Like much of the other non issues and hot air raised by die hard Mahinda supporters in Parliament, this too came to nothing. Except perhaps to give Dinesh some unexpected but nonetheless for him a welcome lime light before the general elections.

However, the real reason I wanted to write to you is to address the issues of the so called, “bring back Mahinda campaign” which has been launched by some of the erstwhile minor partners of the SLFP in the UPFA. Firstly of course their campaign seems to losing steam despite all the money thrown at it. Bussing the same rent a crowd around the country is expensive. But clearly the bring back Mahinda campaign is not short of funds and is unlikely to ever be so. But it runs against the majority mood in the country and the people’s mandate as well as some serious policy and political problems.

1. Firstly, for Mahinda apologists who accuse the current national government of not having a parliamentary mandate, though their presidential campaign was the winner, it is mind boggling that the loser in the presidential election now wants to use the back door as it were to grab whatever residue power he can hold onto through the SLFP party structure. This despite the SLFP quite correctly opting to move with the winning President Sirisena into the future than to retreat with the losing Mahinda into the past.

2. It is even more surprising that the few SLFP colleagues who are in the Mahinda camp, do not realize that the Maithripala Sirisena presidential campaign was very much about ending the misrule of the Rajapakse’s and with the voters having delivered their verdict, their voice and mandate should be respected. I am glad that President Sirisena was very public that he would not let down the 6.2 million Sri Lankans who voted for him.

3. As a campaign activist and voter for President Sirisena, I must say I was appalled at the low down personal and vitriolic campaign that was run by Mahinda Rajapakse in his loosing reelection bid, where President Sirisena was called everything from a Diaspora lackey to a foreign stooge. Now nowhere do I see or hear any expression of regret, remorse or a recanting of these claims by Mahinda Rajapakse. Surely this must be a first step.

4. I am also rather surprised at this call to not investigate allegations of corruption and misrule of the Rajapakse Administration, which was made a campaign issue, so that a public mandate has even been received for this. The allegations are rather long and voluminous and need no mention here. But voters have not forgotten and there needs to be accountability for the world’s most expensive highways per kilometer, the missing vehicles from the presidential secretariat, the sovereignty selling giveaway terms of the port city project, a long list of unsolicited projects approved without tender processes, floating armories and unlicensed weapons to private parties, massive corruption at Sri Lankan Airlines, casinos made strategic enterprises, using TRC funds for the election campaign to name just a few, of a very long list.

5. Regarding the local councils, which have finished their term of office, I would not fight to be extending their term. This unwillingness to retire or give up office is a distressing Rajapakse trait and there is no need to pass on that toxic political virus to local government. The SLFP and indeed all local authorities can and must be prepared to contest regular elections and get a public mandate to hold office.

6. My humble suggestion by the way, is for the SLFP to dump the pro Mahinda UPFA allies for the general elections and run an SLFP slate of candidates. Frankly more SLFPers will get elected that way and SLFP votes would not be going towards electing those stuck in the past.

I hope you will consider the above ideas and suggestions in the formulation of SLFP policies going forward. Please accept my best wishes for the same.

Best regards,

Harim Peiris