Saudi-led coalition air raid kills 31 in Yemen: medics 


A man sits amid the rubble of his family house damaged in an air-strike by the Saudi-led coalition (AFP) 

Sunday 30 August 2015
The Saudi-led coalition carried out at least 12 air raids in north Yemen on Sunday

A Saudi-led coalition air raid struck a factory in northern Yemen on Sunday killing 17 civilians and 14 Houthi rebels, medics and witnesses said.

The raid targeted a bottled-water plant in Hajja, a province bordering Saudi Arabia. Most of the bodies transferred to the main public hospital in Hajja were charred, according to medics.

A similar air strike last month killed 65 civilians at residences of employees of a power plant in Mokha, according to Human Rights Watch.

Another attack on a dairy plant in the Red Sea port city of Hodeida in April left 35 civilians dead.

Warplanes from the Saudi-led coalition on Sunday carried out at least 12 raids on rebel positions in northern Yemen, where the Houthis have their stronghold.

Four strikes took place in the central Baida province, witnesses said, and other air raids targeted rebel positions south of Sanaa.

The coalition in late March launched an air campaign against the Houthis in support of exiled President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.  

Afghan forces retake Musa Qala from Taliban

Officials say Taliban attacks are for propaganda purposes rather than to establish permanent hold over district

 Members of the Afghan security services man a checkpoint on a roadside in the Gereshk district of Helmand province. Photograph: Watan Yar/EPA

Sune Engel Rasmussen in Kabul-Sunday 30 August 2015

Afghan forces say they have retaken Musa Qala, a desolate district in Helmand province where more than 20 British soldiers died duringBritain’s involvement in the war. The district fell to the Taliban on Wednesday.

About 220 Taliban fighters were killed in the operation on Saturday night, the defence ministry said. National security forces, backed by US airstrikes, captured large weapons caches and expelled the insurgents from the district governor’s office and police headquarters, said Haji Muallem, a tribal elder from Musa Qala.

Helmand’s governor, Mirza Khan Rahimi, said 33 security forces personnel had been killed or injured during the past four days. Among them was Musa Qala’s police chief, who remains in hospital in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital.

The assault on Musa Qala is the latest evidence of the struggle to contain the Taliban, who look emboldened by last year’s drawdown of foreign combat troops. However, the swift recapture is also a sign that although the insurgents are generally unable to hold district centres for sustained periods of time. Part of the reason is that they rarely try.

“The Taliban’s aim is not to keep the districts. They are just attacking for propaganda purposes,” said a defence ministry spokesman, Dawlat Waziri, at a press conference.

Razia Baloch, a provincial council member from Helmand, said the insurgents never intended to establish a permanent hold over Musa Qala. “In the past we have seen the Taliban take districts but they don’t try to hold them.” By showing that they could threaten Musa Qala, she said, “they accomplished their mission.”

The Afghan government claims that the Taliban control just four of the country’s almost 400 districts. In late July, insurgents captured Nawzad, also in Helmand, and held it for two days.

However, anti-government fighters have made significant advances outside district centres, gaining territory in the northern Badakhshan and Faryab provinces, and forcing the government to send thousands of troops to bolster the defence of Kunduz.

Since January, the 13,000 troops that make up Nato’s Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan have been limited to advising, training and assisting Afghan security forces. International soldiers are largely confined to bases in the country’s larger cities. However, several thousand US combat troops and special forces remain, independent of the Nato mission, some of whom were involved in reclaiming Musa Qala.

US forces conducted 18 airstrikes in the Musa Qala area over the past seven days, said Colonel Brian Tribus, spokesman for the international forces in Afghanistan. The US conducted 380 strikes in Afghanistan between January and July,according to military statistics.

In addition, Nato soldiers based at Camp Leatherneck and Camp Bastion advised Afghan forces involved in defending Musa Qala.

Musa Qala is symbolically important to British troops who spent effort and lives defending the district until their exit from Helmand in October last year. Although the district’s military strategic value is limited, it is coveted as part of a drug-trafficking route going north toward central Asia.

“Musa Qala has often become highly insecure when the government has created problems for the Taliban’s drug trade,” said Ali Mohammad Ali, a security analyst in Kabul.

With international forces dwindling, Afghans are suffering worrying casualty rates. In the past week, 50 security forces were killed in separate attacks around Afghanistan. More than 5,000 soldiers and policemen have died so far in 2015.

In Helmand on Wednesday, two US soldiers were shot and killed by men dressed in Afghan army uniforms, bringing to 11 the number of American soldiers or contractors killed this year.

The League of Empire

Despite the myths we are fed about it being about freedom and democracy, when considering the First World War, it is easy to see it as a battle among colonial powers for supremacy.

by Ron Jacobs

( August 29, 2015, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) World War One was the first round of the long war that defined the twentieth century. Although this century long conflict is conventionally thought of as a series of wars, anyone with a consistent anti-imperialist analysis can quite easily perceive it as one long war. Of course, World War One and World War Two were the largest and therefore bloodiest conflicts of this 100 year conflict. However, several other conflagrations–from the various colonialist battles on the African continent to the more recent US-led conflicts in the far East, the body count of the earth’s most recent millennium is almost beyond comprehension. The first few years of our current century reveal how little things have changed in this regard.

Despite the myths we are fed about it being about freedom and democracy, when considering the First World War, it is easy to see it as a battle among colonial powers for supremacy. Likewise, the negotiations after the end of hostilities were merely a continuation of those battles, with the victorious powers forcing the losing nations to accept their terms for the division of the spoils. Simultaneously, however, was a desire by some men in the halls of power for a new institution whose purpose would be the peaceful resolution of rivalries like those that led to the war. It was from this desire that the League of Nations was created.

However, even in its creation, there was a fundamental understanding that the colonial powers would remain colonial powers. The colonized peoples would not be gaining nationhood any time soon under the League’s rules. Indeed, if certain forces inside the League had their way, such nations would never have their independence. This is the subject of Susan Pederson’s recently published history of the League of Nations. An epic and incredibly researched work, the core thesis of The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire seems to be that the League of Nations was both a challenge to the European colonial system and an attempt to continue that system. It was this contradiction that helped ensure the leagues demise. Nowhere was this clearer than in the establishment and maintenance of the mandates in certain regions of the globe.

The first page of The Guardians makes it clear the creation and administration of the mandates was grounded in a colonial mindset. These mandates, from the South Pacific to southern Africa and the Middle East, were the focus of much of the League’s administration and were also the cause of many of its internal conflicts. As Pederson describes the creation of the mandate system, the reader is introduced to an interesting mix of well-meaning internationalists, anti-slavery crusaders, and just plain old unreformed European colonialists. The result of this mix of philosophies, intentions, and ambition was the creation of what could best be termed a colonialists club informed by paternalist and supremacist ideologies and underlined with a desire to steal the wealth and labor of the subject peoples.

The rest of this magnificent history of the League of Nations mandate system relates the story of how, in practice, this mindset was even worse than it sounds. It manifested itself in massacres of local indigenous peoples bordering on genocide, the manipulation of local rivalries to benefit European capitals, aerial bombardment of civilians in the name of pacification, and the never-ending theft of resources from the colonized mandates. Informed by racist and supremacist philosophies developed by men with similar motives and a certain ignorance of the human race, the story told in these pages is a tale of collusion between colonial governments and their henchmen to maintain a dying colonial order.

Speaking of henchmen, the story of one particular mandate is one almost certainly familiar to every reader. That is, of course, the story of Palestine. Pederson details the collusion between elements of the Zionist movement and the British government to prevent the possibility of a Palestinian nation in order to establish a future Jewish state instead. The series of actions undertaken with this goal in mind not only helped lead to the ultimate failure of the mandate system, it also led to the current situation of occupation and conflict that exists today in the former mandate and throughout the Middle East. It is while reading this section especially that Pederson’s text reminds the reader of how much nothing has truly changed in the attitudes and practices of the western capitals’ understanding of treatment of the rest of the world, especially as regards the nations and peoples of Asia Africa and the Middle East.

Despite the best intentions of some of the internationalists involved, the imperial governments made certain the league was structured to maintain and protect their interests. Naturally, those interests were in large part financial. Policies in both the remaining colonies and in the mandates were established to insure the colonial powers would reap the benefits at a rate much greater than any group in the subject nations. In what is now called free trade, the siphoning of resources from the latter group to the former combined with cheap (and sometimes forced) labor was part and parcel of the League’s form of governance. Even when a formerly subject nation was granted a nominal form of independence, as in the case of Iraq, that independence was, in Pederson’s words, “safe for Empire.”

Pederson’s voluminous text makes a few things quite clear. Among those is the fact that the League of Nations was intended to prevent wars between imperial nations over colonies, not to support struggles for national independence by colonized peoples. This was apparent in its structure, bylaws, and methods of governance. Ironically, Pederson writes, its very existence paved the way for the success of those national liberation struggles in its attempt to prevent wars between colonial powers. Indeed, The Guardians is not just the history of an ill-fated attempt to rewrite the world order; it is also a history of how that order was rewritten in ways not foreseen by those powers that created the League. Furthermore, it is a description of how the machinations of the League of Nations foretold the century of bloodshed and struggle that followed.

Ron Jacobs is the author of a series of crime novels and The Way the Wind Blew:A History of the Weather Underground. His new book is titled Daydream Sunset:60s Counterculture in the ’70s. He can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com

How the West Lost Burundi

While Western powers were making threats, Russia and China were wooing the country's defiant government. And that should be a wake-up call for countries like the United States.

BY CARA JONES, ORION DONOVAN-SMITH-AUGUST 28, 2015

Last Thursday morning, Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza stepped in front of a house of newly elected members of parliament and was sworn in for a third consecutive term. In attendance were the ambassadors of Russia and China. Western diplomats had been informed just that morning that the inauguration, for which an official date had not been set, was to take place, and a few low-level officials managed to make it. Their higher-level counterparts would not have attended anyway.

How the West Lost Burundi by Thavam Ratna

As tragedies shock Europe, a bigger refugee crisis looms in the Middle East

Children play amid garbage at an informal Syrian refugee settlement near Zahle, Lebanon. (Sam Tarling/For The Washington Post)

By Liz Sly-August 29
AL-MINYA, Lebanon — While the world’s attention is fixed on the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees swarming into Europe, a potentially far more profound crisis is unfolding in the countries of the Middle East that have borne the brunt of the world’s failure to resolve the Syrian war.

As Tragedies Shock Europe, A Bigger Refugee Crisis Looms in the Middle East by Thavam Ratna

Watershed Development of Nuclear Weapon Computer Simulations vs CTBT

A grim reminder on International Day against Nuclear Tests

 by Maimuna Ashraf

( August 28, 2015, Islamabad, Sri Lanka Guardian) “Now we are all sons-of-bitches”, an immediate response of Dr. Kenneth T. Bainbridge, the physicist who directed the first atomic bomb test, on the first ever detonation of nuclear weapon. “Trinity” was the code name given to the world’s first nuclear explosion by Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as the ‘father of atomic bomb’ for leading the World War II Manhattan Project that produced the first atomic bomb. His reaction to Trinity Test, in which he recalled line from Bhagavad-Gita is also remarkable; “Now I am become death, the destroyers of worlds.”  ‘The foul and awesome display’ of this plutonium implosion device was seen on July 16, 1945 at a site known as “Jornade del Muerto” located in the New Mexico desert at Alamogordo, some miles south of Los Alamos. The world lately observed the 70th anniversary of the dawn of nuclear age.

Since this first nuclear explosion till now, 2,053 nuclear test explosions have been recorded at dozens of test sites around the world by eight states; P5, India, Pakistan and North Korea. US detonated 1,030 atomic bomb. Russia, the second nuclear power, tested 715 nuclear tests. UK carried out 45 nuclear weapon tests, France 210, China 43. India tested its first nuclear device in 1974, while reportedly 6 other nuclear tests were conducted in 1998. Responding to India’s nuclear weapon explosions, Pakistan detonated 6 nuclear devices at Chagai. North Korea exploded 3 nuclear weapons in 2006, 2009 and 2013 respectively. To ensure the protection of people’s lives and environment, most of the atomic tests are conducted underwater or underground, however almost 528 tests in early years were detonated in the atmosphere, resulted in spread of radioactive material. Often the underground nuclear explosions also vent radiations into the atmosphere and leave radioactive contamination in soil.

To advocate the banning of nuclear tests and to educate the world about the legacy impacts of nuclear detonation, UN unanimously approved a draft resolution on December, 02, 2009 to declare 29 August the “International Day against Nuclear Tests”. The resolution was initiated by the Republic of Kazakhstan with a view to commemorate the closure of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear test facility on August, 29, 1991, which was the world’s largest underground nuclear test site containing 181 separate tunnels and almost 460 nuclear explosions were conducted there, few reportedly resulted in dispersion of plutonium in the environment. The facility was closed by Kazakhstan government after dissolution of USSR in 1991. After the establishment of International Day against Nuclear Test, all states parties to NPT committed themselves to “achieve peace and security of world without nuclear weapons” in May 2010. The inaugural commemoration of the International Day against Nuclear Tests was marked on August 29, 2010.

Therein lies the question that why states at the first place detonate nuclear weapons if they jeopardize human health and environment? And is it enough to celebrate an international day against nuclear tests or what other international mechanism has been placed in this deference? Pragmatically, states conduct nuclear tests to evaluate new warhead designs and to create more sophisticated weapons. An international instrument to ban all civilian or military purposed nuclear tests in all environments is not novel agenda of nuclear arms control. In August 1963, Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), signed by US, UK and USSR, entered into force and banned the nuclear testing of signatory states in the atmosphere, outer space, underwater but not underground. Albeit underground, still not only the nuclear weapons testing continued but the quantity also increased. Later, PTBT redundant with the signing of Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in September 1996, which bans all nuclear explosions in all environments. Before CTBT, all treaties entered into force limit but not ban the nuclear tests. Nonetheless, CTBT will enter into force only after the 44 states listed in the treaty ratify it. Of which 41 signed the treaty, 36 ratified, while DPRK, India and Pakistan has neither signed nor ratified.  Interestingly, five nuclear-capable states Egypt, Iran, Israel, including two NPT signatory states China and US, has signed but not ratified CTBT. Eight conferences on facilitating entry into force of CTBT have been held and ninth will take place this year on September, 29, 2015. Since 1996, three states India, Pakistan and DPRK tested their nuclear weapons while many states including US and Russia claim they have not tested nuclear weapon after this time framework.

Although, in 2009, President Obama outlined his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons but later he forged new treaties to reduce the number of and spread of nuclear arsenals. On the contrary, he promised in his 2010 Nuclear Posture Review to uphold the triad of nuclear arsenals supported by every former US president. At the end of 2010, US ratified New START agreement with Russia to limit both sides’ arsenals to 1,550 but again no advancement ensued on a treaty which puts a permanent ban on nuclear tests.

Notwithstanding that US and Russia did not exploded nuclear weapon after signing CTBT, since 1997-2014, US has held twenty-eight ‘subcritical, sub-zero tests in form of computer simulations’ at the Nevada National Security Site, conversely, Russia has also been conducting sub-critical experiments involving both uranium and weapons-grade plutonium at Novaya Zemlya test site near Arctic circle. It means that in the absence of an option for underground testing which previously provided assurance about the reliability of deployed nukes, the designers of nuclear weapons are now depending on computer simulations along with laboratory level nuclear tests, to ensure and enhance the safety and reliability of nuclear weapons. Los Alamos National Laboratory was the first to conduct the subcritical experiment in 1997. The website of US Department of State on computer simulation says “Today, weapons designers benefit from better simulation tools and computers capable of running highly detailed calculations. Successes to date indicate that a cadre of world-class scientists and engineers can employ physics-based simulations, modern experiments, validations against collections of re-analyzed data from previous underground nuclear explosive tests, and peer reviews to support stockpile decisions well into the future without the need to return to nuclear explosive testing. These computer simulation advances provide the United States with the ability to monitor and maintain the nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear explosive testing.”

Evidently, keeping an option by not ratifying CTBT and conducting subcritical tests shows that US aims to improve its arsenals qualitatively and want to maintain its option or ability to conduct onerous underground nuclear testing if it becomes indispensable. Inevitably, Russia would also change its attitude towards CTBT, albeit Russia has ratified CTBT in 2000, if the safety or readiness of their nuclear would no more compliance with treaty. CTBT is a zero-yield ban but U.S. and UK held “hydronuclear” tests with yields up to four pounds, whereas Russia, France, and China chose yield limits of 10 tons, 300 tons, or an exemption for peaceful nuclear detonation, respectively. Such yield limits are unacceptable to many NNWS while a preference for peaceful nuclear explosion exemption has been rejected by almost every NNWS.

Thus the contour of subject is that there is still a possibility to modernize the nuclear warheads components, verify the reliability of aging nuclear stockpiles and stimulate the environmental effects even if all 44 states ratify CTBT because it does not stop from hydronuclear, subcritical test through computer simulation and allows NWS to qualitatively improve their arsenals at sub-zero. A grim reminder on International Day against Nuclear Test is that a discriminatory CTBT would not fulfill the nuclear-test-ban ethos till it removes any escaping including explosives or non-explosive tests.

The writer is a member of an Islamabad based think-tank, Strategic Vision Institute (SVI) and can be reached at maimuna.svi@gmail.com. She tweets at @emm_aey.

Modi accepts defeat on contentious land decree, will change law

ndia's Prime Minister Narendra Modi listens to a speaker ahead of launching three new national social security schemes at a function in Kolkata May 9, 2015.

Chief of India's Congress party Sonia Gandhi (C) marches along with the members of other opposition parties, to Rashtrapati Bhavan, in New Delhi March 17, 2015

Sun Aug 30, 2015

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will let an executive order making it easier for businesses to buy land lapse on Monday after failing to win support from opposition parties in a major blow to his economic reform agenda.

Modi said on Sunday the government was ready to amend the proposed law and criticised the spreading of false rumours that made farmers afraid of the changes.

"I have always said that, in the dispute related to the land acquisition law, the government is open minded," Modi said in his monthly radio address. "I am willing to accept any suggestion for the benefit of farmers."

Modi swept to power last year on expectations he would accelerate an economic transformation that began in the 1990s but is struggling to build support for reforms in parliament, where his party is in the minority in the upper house.

Leaders of Modi's party said they had not given up on making it easier to acquire land needed to kick-start hundreds of billions of dollars in stalled projects. However, after failing to win support in parliament, they may ask states to pass their own laws.

Modi has had to issue temporary executive orders in the past seven months that allow the government to forcibly purchase farmland for industrial development. He has failed to secure the votes in parliament needed to make the changes permanent.

Land reform is critical for Modi's drive to build new roads, homes and factories and, if stalled, would blight his vision of 100 new 'smart' cities across India linked by industrial corridors and high-speed rail routes criss-crossing the country.

Conflict between farmers and companies trying to secure land for industrial projects has hampered India's plans to expand its network of highways, build mines and other infrastructure, holding up about $300 billion of investment.

(Reporting By Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Paul Tait)

This Is What Happens When You Place An Ice Cube At This Point On Your Head! You Will Be Surprised!

Fit Body Center-Author: FitBodyCenter August 22, 2015

If you ordinarily put an ice cube on this spot, Chinese people say that your organism rejuvenates, lot of diseases disappear, and you are healthy, happy and full of energy.

This spot is between the tendons in the neck, on the back side as you can see in the picture. Here is the spot, which in the Chinese acupuncture is called Feng Fu or wind refuge.

Method:

The method is next: lay down on your stomach (or just seat) and put 1 ice cube (about 2×2 cm) on the Feng Fu point (the hole in the back of your head) and keep it there for about 20 minutes. The ice cube can be fixed with a scarf or gauze. Do this often, with 2 to 3 days break, in the morning and at night, before you go to bed. It is also important to mention that you can’t get a cold with this procedure.

In the beginning you can feel cold, but in 30-40 seconds the feeling of cold will disappear, and you’ll start feeling how the spot is getting warm. The first few days you will feel euphoria because of the liberation of endorphins into the bloodstream.

Results:

What do we achieve with regularly putting an ice cube in the back of our head, on the Feng Fu point?

• Improves your sleep
• Boosts your mood and general vitality
• excellent work of the digestive tract
• Proper digestion
• Bye-bye colds (use the same treatment to decrease high body temperature)
• Relief in cases of headache, toothache, joint pain

You should always apply this method when you treat conditions like:

• Respiratory diseases
• Cardiovascular diseases
• Neurological diseases and degenerative changes in spine
• Acute, gastrointestinal and sexually transmitted infections
• Improper function of the thyroid gland
• Arthritis, hypertension and hypotension
• Bronchial asthma
• Problems with gastrointestinal tract, obesity and malnutrition
• Cellulite (especially at an early stage)
• Irregular menstrual cycle and endocrine infertility
• Psycho-emotional disorders, stress, chronic fatigue, depression, insomnia

You should know that this treatment doesn’t heal any health condition. You can just rejuvenate the body, keep the physiological balance and strengthen the organism.

Don’t do this treatment if you are pregnant, you suffer from epilepsy or schizophrenia.

In the Chinese medicine the body is considered as an energetic system, and acupuncture and massages affect the energy flow and the function of your organs.

Human remains suspected inside covered up Mannar well Photographs Tamilwin  29 August 2015 Investigations began on Friday into a covered up well in Mannar, unearthed adjacent to where a mass grave containing over 80 bodies was found last year, which is believed to hold human remains. The well, found near Thiruketheesvaram in Mannar district, was inspected by the Mannar judge, A G Alexrajah on Friday, together with a lawyer representing missing persons, Niranjan and Ranitha and a representative of the Mannar Lawyers Forum, M Sapoortheen, land surveyors from the Mannar district council and police officers. On Wednesday, Justice Alexrajah had marked the site and ordered that the woods surrounding the site should be cleared and cordoned off ahead of the inspection on Friday. Visiting the site on Friday, Justice Alexrajah requested the land surveyors to produce maps of the site and ordered that the site should be guarded 24 hours a day with police protection, ensuring there is no unauthorised access into the cordoned off area. The investigation into the well will continue on October 7 at Mannar court. Excavations at an adjacent site last year, found over 80 human remains. The mass grave was first discovered when construction workers found two human skeletons on December 20th when digging in Thirukketheeswaram.  The following week, a further four skulls were unearthed, with more over subsequent weeks (see also here, here, here, here and here). The Bishop of Mannar, who called for an international investigation into the mass grave due to the lack of credibility associated with any internal process, said that the holes in many of the skulls were believed to be from gunshot wounds.

UK says fully committed to UN process, 

follow-up action War crimes probe 

By Shamindra Ferdinando-August 29, 2015, 8:12 am

The British government yesterday said that its position vis-a-vis the investigation undertaken by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) into alleged war crimes accusations hadn’t changed.

The British HC in Colombo was responding to a query by The Island whether the US had consulted UK regarding its decision to back Sri Lanka’s domestic investigation into alleged war crimes accusations and whether UK would throw its weight behind the proposed US resolution in Geneva backing the Sri Lankan initiative.

The OHCHR ordered an exhaustive external investigation in accordance with a US sponsored resolution at the Geneva based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in March 2014. The UK backed the US initiative.

The Island also sought UK’s stand on the forthcoming report prepared by an investigation team led by Sandra Beidas under the supervision of three international experts in accordance with a US sponsored resolution adopted in Geneva in March 2014. Beidas formerly with the UK headquartered Amnesty International is now with the OHCHR.

A spokesperson for the British HC said: "The UK remains fully committed to the UN process, including the OHCHR investigation and the publication of its report in September. It will then be for the government of Sri Lanka to demonstrate what progress it has made towards reconciliation and accountability, and how it will take forward the recommendations of the OHCHR report. We have consistently called for Sri Lanka to make progress domestically. It is important that any accountability process is credible, inclusive, transparent, independent and meets international standards."

The OHCHR put off the publication of the report previously scheduled for last March until September following a request made by the new Sri Lankan government consequent to January 8 presidential election.

Responding to the same query that was posed to the British HC, a senior spokesperson for the Indian High Commission said that the government of India regularly consulted its partners, including the US on issues of mutual interest. Commenting on the proposed US resolution in Geneva next month, the spokesperson said that India couldn’t comment because the text of the resolution was yet to be made available publicly. The HC said that India’s stand on this issue had been detailed in the "Explanation of Vote" in March 2014 by the Permanent Representative of India to the UN in Geneva.

The Canadian government failed to respond to The Island query regarding shift in US stand vis a vis war crimes investigation, though an official based in Ottawa inquired about our requirement. The EU mission in Colombo was also not available for comment.

US Falls in Line With India on Lanka War Crimes Probe

By P.K. Balachandran-29th August 2015

COLOMBO: The United States appears to have fallen in line with India’s consistent position that charges of war crimes and human rights violations relating to Sri Lanka are best investigated by an independent and credible domestic mechanism rather than an intrusive international mechanism, threatening its sovereignty.

The US, which had made the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) pass a resolution calling for an international investigation into the charges in the March 2014, has climbed down to accepting a independent and credible domestic investigation.

It has also said that it will move a resolution in the September session of the UNHRC, which will be drafted in “collaboration” with the Lankan government and other stake holders. It says that it is doing so after taking into account the changed Lankan political landscape and the “tremendous” progress made by the new regime in Colombo, in addressing the reconciliation issue.

This is in line with the India’s case for a credible domestic probe as opposed to an international probe, enunciated in the March 2014 session of the UNHRC.

Explaining India’s decision to abstain from voting on the US resolution, Ambassador Dilip Sinha had said that it ignored the progress already made by Lanka. He pointed out that the High Commissioner's report had itself acknowledged the progress made in reconstruction and resettlement and in the implementation of some of the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).

While calling for an effective and timely implementation of the recommendations of the LLRC report, including those pertaining to missing persons, detainees, reduction of High Security Zones, return of private lands by the military and withdrawal of security forces from the civilian domain in the Northern Province, Sinha pointed out that India had consistently taken the stand that every country should address human rights violations through robust national mechanisms.

“The Council's efforts should therefore be in a direction to enable Sri Lanka to investigate all allegations of human rights violations through comprehensive, independent and credible national investigative mechanisms and bring to justice those found guilty. Sri Lanka should be provided all assistance it desires in a cooperative and collaborative manner,” Sinha said.

The Day of the Disappeared: Enforced disappearances continue unabated in every region of the world

27 August 2015

The use of enforced disappearance by governments to silence its critics and instil fear into targeted groups continues unabated in every region of the world, said Amnesty International as the world marks the International Day of the Disappeared on 30 August.

The organization is currently actively campaigning on the cases of more than 500 individuals who have been subjected to enforced disappearance, and is continuing to pressure governments to determine the fate and whereabouts of all those who have been disappeared.

Governments in every region of the world, from Syria to Mexico and from Sri Lanka to Gambia may be holding hundreds or even thousands in secret detention.

The Day of the Disappeared Enforced Disappearances Continue Unabated in Every Region of the World by Thavam Ratna

There is no right of  self-determination

By Izeth Hussain-August 28, 2015, 7:17 pm 

 In theory the post-General Elections situation looks very propitious for a political solution of the Tamil ethnic problem. There has been a note of moderation on the Tamil side, both on the part of the TNA and the GTF. On the Sinhalese side the new Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe has been famously a soft-liner on the ethnic problem, and his political record shows that he could be expected to show a reasonable pragmatic accommodativeness in approaching the problem. That is the situation in theory, but in practice our unconscionably protracted ethnic imbroglio could well continue into the indefinite future. There are two reasons for this. One is that there are ambiguities about the outcome of the recent General Elections. The other is that the Tamil insistence on a fundamental that has stood in the way of a solution up to now has not changed at all.

 As I have argued in my last article the UNP-led coalition won with a comfortable majority. It was not an outright victory but one that enables the UNP to run a stable Government with the help of cross-overs mainly from the SLFP. Therefore the new Government will not have to depend on the TNA for its survival and consequently it will be under no pressure to be particularly accommodative to Tamil demands. We must also bear in mind that the SLFP won in 1994 with just one seat less than the present UNP and formed a stable Government but lost at the next round of General Elections. It may be that that defeat was due to complex factors and not just due to Chandrika Kumaratunga’s accommodativeness towards Tamil demands. But obviously, with its long-term survival in mind, the new Government has to be wary about being seen as too accommodative towards the Tamils.

 I come now to the ambiguities about the outcome of the recent General Elections. It can be seen as a comfortable victory for the UNP in the sense that I have defined above. But it can also be seen as a narrow victory for the UNP, with 95 seats for the UPFA against the UNP’s 106. It was not an outright victory and certainly not an overwhelming one, but one that showed the formidable strength of the opposition to the UNP. A substantial number of SLFP Parliamentarians may cross over to the Government, but that does not diminish the strength of the opposition to it among the people. That strength came basically from the Sinhalese Buddhist majority, and the appeal behind that strength was racist neo-Fascism. It is expected that Mahinda Rajapakse will remain a formidable force in our politics, and it has to be expected that he will tap that racist neo-Fascist appeal to counter anything that might seem excessively accommodative to the Tamils. Racist neo-Fascism may not be the wave of the future but its present strength should not be under-estimated.

 The other reason why the ethnic imbroglio might continue is that the Tamil side continues to insist on what it regards as a fundamental, which in fact is the fundamental reason why there has been no political solution up to now. This fundamental is the right of self-determination. The argument is that the Tamils are not just another minority like recent immigrants in the West but a national minority. They are a nation in Sri Lanka because they are indigenous to a particularly territory consisting of the North and part of the Eastern Province, a concept that implies much more than an area of traditional habitation. Consequently the argument is that the Tamils have the right of self-determination. That right includes the right to set up a separate state, and also the right to internal self-determination meaning the right to a wide measure of devolution. Therefore the TNA, which is today the representative of the Tamil moderates, is asking not for a separate state but for a federal system.

 The core of the ethnic imbroglio is that on the whole the Sinhalese have been allergic to the idea of federalism because of an unshakeable conviction that it will lead by an ineluctable linear progression to a separate state. The right of self-determination does after all include the right to a separate state. I have argued in the past that fears about the danger posed by federalism are unrealistic. The problem is that fears may be unrealistic but they could be real all the same. On the Tamil side, the notion that they are a national minority is not a new-fangled one but something that goes back to the ‘twenties or even earlier. They can argue that the right of self-determination is inherent in their being a national minority, something that is inalienable and not something that they can jettison at will. 

 How do we find a way out of this imbroglio? I believe that the first essential is that we recognize that there is no such thing as a right of self-determination in the contemporary world. Therefore, all the historical controversies in which we have been indulging for decades, about the duration of the Jaffna kingdom and the extent of its territory, are entirely beside the point. Let us assume that historians have established beyond dispute that the Tamils are even more indigenous to Sri Lankan territory than the Sinhalese because they have been here even longer, and let us also assume that the Jaffna kingdom lasted a thousand years and covered the entirety of the North and the East – none of that strengthens one whit the case for self-determination. The reason is that a case can be strengthened only if in the first place the case exists. My argument is that the case for the right of self-determination does not exist.

 When Woodrow Wilson first propounded the theory of self-determination during the First World War, the question quickly arose as to who were the "people" who were entitled to self-determination. There was a widespread view that Wilson was being wildly idealistic. After the Second World War the international consensus was that the "people" referred to the colonized peoples of the world. The principle of self-determination was seen as having validity only in a colonial context, and the reason for that limitation was not far to seek. If "people" is defined as an ethnic group and language is the criterion for determining ethnicity, there will be around 6,000 nation states in the world. If "people" is defined as an ethnic group with a valid claim to a homeland, in the sense that it is indigenous to a particular territory, there will still be hundreds of nation states. It is not necessary to labour the point that all that is simply not in the realm of practical politics. As for the right of internal self-determination, meaning devolution to the extent desired by an ethnic group, commonsense dictates that there can be no hard and fast rule about it, and that the extent of devolution has to depend on local contingencies.

 The right of self-determination might be defined as a "notional right", something that exists in the heads of people as a notion but has little or no correspondence with realities on the ground. It is a significant fact, surely, that no Government has been arraigned at Geneva or elsewhere for failing to allow self-determination as a right, not as something that has become desirable due to circumstances. Likewise no Government has been arraigned for failing to allow a wide measure of devolution. And it is for this non-existent right that the Tamil side has been jeopardizing the prospects for a political solution. When the Tamil side asks for federalism, it is understood that it is asking only for a second-best alternative to outright separation, to which it claims it has a right on the principle of self-determination. Therefore the Sinhalese side in agreeing to federalism would arguably be acknowledging a Tamil right to set up a separate state. I am not agreeing with these arguments. I am merely noting the way the Sinhalese psyche works, and can be expected to continue working, on demands for a wide measure of devolution. I suggest that it would be best for the Tamil side to forget about the non-existent principle of self-determination, and ask for a wide measure of devolution only on the grounds of equity and nothing else.

 izethhussain@gmail.com